Wasteland's Of The Mind

Heaving sand dune's desert presence, 

sky's ancient eye, beating backs,

molten fists of indiscriminate fire, 

punishing the trudging ones.

Disobedient of common sense, 

mad dog's dead bleached bones,

Englishmen taking photographs with

vapourising finger's click,

dust blown voyeurs blend with innate

taboo's ocean.

Tourists lay tragically sweating grease

from dying skin,

sunglasses reflecting their two weeks 

allocated time to be unknown,

mysterious fortnight.

Returning drones play back

the memory reel,

disturbed by smiles,

again they're gnashing petulant  savages,

existing in sweat soaked,

sand blasted,

drunken beach haze by gone days.

Roiling theatrical spectres,

now new nation ghosts,

society phantasmagoria,

 plague of town's lying delights,

television junkies shooting up the news,

plastic grinning anchor men,

a favorite pop opiate...

That or imagined blood,

drinking violence on the rocks,

metal bars cooling shame's temperament, 

handcuffing will to greed,

soul chained to lust and fear tied to love,

convinced that feeling needs a cure,

productivity of blood tax pure.

Outside our circus,

The White Face Clown beckons,

"Come on in folks,

step from the womb,

there's plenty of cells inside this tomb,

come...here's your certificate of mortality, 

you get another when you die,

but we're keeping your body."

Now a monetized corpse,

for your carcass they vie,

vultures studying a bloody machine,

pulling tendons of lifeless fingers,

quizzical looks from eye to eye,

limp hand dropped on the flesh operative's slab,

idiotically still...puzzled.

Spirits look down through a tear filled sky,

watching the grains of the sand dunes die,

as man becomes a desert,

a wasteland of the mind.

©David Nickle Read 2014