Joshua Tree Poems: Night Moves, Burning Joshua Trees, Crying Interlude, Crossroads Cafe, & Salton Sea
Here are some poems I wrote in Joshua Tree. XOXO
*
Night Moves
under a sky full of UFOs
the joshua trees raise their arms to the stars
petrified in their reaching
listen listenlistenlisten
to the deep night sounds
the movement of strange insects, lizards and bats
something buzzing deep within the boulders
and behind that, the rustle of the wind
and behind that, the slow turn of the planet
around and around the sun
feel how the night moves
how there could be angels here
how the vortex rushes in and pulls at your hair
now the desert prepares for darkness
for dreamtime to rise up from below
for spirits to walk and shadows to crawl
perhaps when it gets dark enough and no one watches
these trees come alive, their spires turning to arms
shaking their spiky heads, they resume their whirlwind rituals
what is there when we cannot see it
what becomes of a memory when no one recalls it
what becomes of a love when it is gone
I think it goes back into the night dance
joins the trees in their reeling waltz
floats around to the dark side of the moon
becomes part of the great vast universe
of everything we cannot see
but can only sense
through dreams, hallucinations
flashbacks, flesh memory
skin hunger, strange music, tricks of the light
all that dark matter
a world both here and not here
all these ghosts of the desert
rain released back into a great sea
tiny sparks sent up to explode into universes
little stars that become galaxies’ suns
tomorrow morning sunlight will warm my face
and I will walk in the dark radiance
of all the roads I will not take
all the memories I will forget
all the multiverses I will not enter
all the hands I will not touch
all the words I will not say
all the change that will not come
all the rain that will not fall
and all the deaths I will not die
all the aliens we will not hear from
and all the cosmos that will not be born.
what we sense of this sliver of a world is like looking through a pinhole
this is just a single planet in a literally infinite universe
who knows what’s out there that we cannot see
somewhere the joshua trees are dancing
somewhere everything is happening
and somewhere nothing is
and somewhere our love still exists
and yet here I am tonight
and tonight the walls between me and all other worlds are thin
and the pinhole is opening up like an eye
and I can see everything
coming in like radio waves from distant galaxies
and I am weaving in and out of dreams
and I swear I saw that tree move
and I swear I saw eyes in the night
or was that just me convincing myself I’m not alone
yet in my deepest solitude I feel the least lonely of all
for in this silent night all worlds are here
the spirit world, the subtle lights, the galaxies twining into ours
the worlds without space, without matter, without sound
but with inexpressible other dimensions, elements, and entities
in the unmoving silence of this desert night
a star falls, a signal beams
a tree moves, a portal opens
a curtain falls
I turn on my car, drive out of the park
the memory returns to the dark side of the moon
the satellites resume their spinning
the night wind moves across the saltbrush and the juniper trees
I remember you’re gone
and time begins to turn again.
*
Burning Joshua Trees
(After Joy Harjo)
In the desert there was a burning bush.
Moses heard it speak. It said
the waters will open for you. It said
the waters will swallow those who enslaved you.
Then the plagues came, locusts and
lamb’s blood smeared on doorframes.
The women played their tambourines
as the Angel of Death moved through the night.
In this desert there is a burning bush. Last summer
fire washed through the Joshua trees
searing them to bone. There in the desert
I heard a voice speaking through a ruined tree. It said:
The waters will swallow those who destroy us.
The plagues will come, wildfires and hurricanes,
acid rains and viruses unleashed from permafrosts.
Drought will bleach this land dry.
The ocean will part for those
who know the land as not separate from themselves.
As refugees they will cross the seas to higher land.
The women will play their guitars on the shores.
And the waves will swallow the trucks and the oil fields
and the cities stained in artificial light.
Las Vegas will explode in a burst of fire.
The shores will turn scarlet with the blood of innocents.
Some will flee to their bunkers underground
others to their floating space stations
but the fiery angels will not spare their children
some of whom will walk into the waves by choice
overcome by their own guilt and despair.
Here is how to ward off the terrible angels, said the tree.
Use your hands to craft symbols of truth.
Use your voice to scream. And then
learn to grow a garden in the yard.
Hang herbs from the windows. Build a strong house somewhere high.
Take shelter when the resource wars come.
Learn to hallucinate water. Build oases in your head.
And when at last the fires have gone
and the world is reduced to smoking rubble
and every songbird has gone quiet
recall your ancestors who made hard bread out of flour in the desert.
Remember you know how to grow things.
You would not have made it this far, had you forgotten.
Fall out of love with gold
and digital glory. Fall back in love
with the dirt and with silence. Know the night in this desert will be long
but one day you will reach a mountain
and a new holy voice will ring out.
The cycle will always continue.
Walk into the junkyards, said the tree. Weep with the skeletons of
the things that once grew. Feel the wildness under your skin.
Know death comes for all things
and all things are reborn. Imagine
some kind of meaning to all this, it said,
something to carry you through the nuclear holocausts.
The waters will swallow the warehouses
and the electric cards and the white pills. You will need
to build a new map.
So said the burning tree
under the desert stars. A rattlesnake hissed
and a coyote howled.
Go and tell the people, the tree said.
Much will be lost, but much has been lost before.
The people were given holy land
only to raze it with missiles.
An asteroid once ripped apex predators
off the face of this earth.
God made a world once
only to flood it.
And now your plague time is here.
But see the tree of life, how its roots underground
mirror the shape of the heavens.
See how man is a branch,
how it is falling, how the wet earth opens up.
Embrace the fall. Root in the earth,
burrow deep through the bleached stone until you reach
the underground rivers, where you will find
fertile ground in which to grow. It is written, said the tree.
Written in the red sky. Written in the pain in your heart.
Embrace the fall, said the tree. Feel the angel wings at your back
as the devil would have as he fell
if devils were real. Judgment Day approaches.
Prayers are meaningless. Learn to survive. Pray anyway.
Then the last flame went out on the tree.
Then all that was left was smoke
billowing towards the stars.
*
Crying Interude
Crying by Roy Orbison is playing on the radio
the theme song of the apocalypse
the slow dance of the end of the world
broken jazz plays in the desert
I will always be crying over you
sing the angels as they light the final match…
*
Crossroads Cafe
Here, a minute of your time.
I know you’re ricocheting around galaxies
running with wolves, consorting with demons
contemplating infinity and the apocalypse
attempting to seed change from
within the stranglehold of capitalism, trying to
maintain sincerity and a cool veneer of irony
trying to open your heart while being smart
trying to utilize your talents while
making money while not sacrificing yourself
to convention while also not going completely insane.
I know you’re dancing between self loathing
and god-sized narcissism, trying to maintain
relationships while healing your past traumas
meaning to learn gardening and new languages
when all you really want to do is sleep
and scroll — I know. But if you have a minute
come and have a coffee with me at Crossroads Cafe.
It’s a desert out there and we only have so much time.
Tell me your story, tell me your visions of
a better world, tell me what keeps you awake at night.
How strange is that we both ended up here, in this small cafe
at the edge of the interstate, on this
singular green planet, in this specific galaxy
in this particular iteration of the cosmos.
How many paths did we have to take
to both wind up here, now? How many tiny
choices made, roads not taken, quiet inner voices heeded?
Maybe we were meant to meet here, at this table
in the corner by the bar, with this very Roy Orbison song
playing on the staticky radio. Or maybe it’s
all random, but even so, what are the odds?
So stop your racing life for a minute, let me
buy you a cool drink, something to take the edge off
before you return to the fiery night.
It’s very strange that we are both alive and
here together, is it not? And I am seeing you
and you are seeing me, and we are both breathing
in, and listening to the hum and roar of the fans.
Soon the waitress will come to fill our glasses with
water, a blessing in this desert. And your
presence, your humanness overlaid with
such divinity and such longing burning beneath your
cool surface, is an oasis in this lonely night.
A nice disruption on this arid highway.
Maybe we’ll go to your hotel room,
fall in love, start a new generation, or maybe
I’ll never see or speak to you again, but
I’m glad you stopped here, at this
intergalactic waystation, at this
crossroads between one reality and the
next, in this somnambulistic roadhouse
somewhere between waking and dreaming,
in this brief burst of light between death and
death, in this body, in this time. Perhaps I met
you here in another life, perhaps I have
always been here with you, will always be here
with you, and the rest of the world is just
an illusion, a programmed memory, a film
playing out on the cave’s walls.
Soon the sun will go down and one of us
will have to leave, pulled by that great hunger
called time, but for now, tell me anything —
my cup is open to your stories, my
heart is open for once, and you can tell me
how you wish for a better world (we all do), how
you’ve wanted to die (we all have), how
you don’t know where you’re going (no one
does), and how you feel both broken (you’re not)
and holy (you are). Maybe you’re not real,
maybe I’m not, maybe we’re dreaming, maybe
it’s a simulation, maybe it means nothing,
but I don’t care. I’m just glad
to be here with you, at the crossroads,
at the still point of the turning world
hearing your stories, feeling your energy
vibrating across the infinite space between us.
Your radiant, extraordinary energy. Your
unbelievable, improbable aliveness. How
strange to be alive in such a vast
and silent universe! You have to go.
Well, be safe on the highway out there. Watch
the road. I wish you great music
and a soft place to rest your head
when the time comes. See you at
the next cosmic rest stop. See you at
the next juncture in time. For now, I know,
we must leave the crossroads,
run into the horizon, actualize our destinies,
live out this grand dream of life,
rejoin the dance. But I’m glad
we stopped here tonight
to see each other with real eyes.
To wink through the haze. To recognize
the improbability of it all, to be seen
in our own mortality, to be truly heard.
To realize each other as mirror images,
magnetically pulled through time to meet
at this little cafe in the stars.
And then you leave, and silence rushes in.
You’re in the memory symphony now, one of the many ghosts
in my brain. I’ll play you out on the radio in my head.
You’ll enter my dreams. How I wish you’d stayed, or asked me to stay
but nothing stays. And yet in your eyes
I saw eternity, and I see blessings and angels and good omens
in your leftover coffee grounds, and even if we
never meet again, and even if the world
someday explodes and the sun folds in on itself, there will always be
a pocket of time where you were here
and I was here,
sharing stories,
becoming real in each others’ eyes.
Painting reality out of our shared delusions.
Making meaning in this dark matter.
The sun is going down. I should hit the highway.
Til next time, love.
Til forever.
*
Salton Sea
Somewhere out there someone needs money
Someone needs love and someone needs a reason to live.
Sometimes the whole world feels like an open wound
And the passage of time feels like a flow of salt straight into it.
Sometimes death seems like a sweet promise
A respite from the heat of the day.
Then the stars come out and the wind picks up
And someone meets a beautiful stranger.
Someone hears a song that reminds them why they are alive.
Someone comes home.
You never know what the strangers around you are going through
If they’re addicts, gods, or like most people, a little bit of both.
You never know who’s walked on the ground beneath your feet
Or who’s stared out at the same view as you
Looked out over the Salton Sea and contemplated those same shores.
How similar we are in our lostness.
How uniform we are in our strangeness.
How united we are in our loneliness.
How comforting it is to sit around the campfire at night
And share our stories.
And build a real.
So let’s sit here and share ourselves by the glowing firelight.
Sit with me here and give me your love.
Until we all return to the sea.
*
Thanks for reading Life is Strange!