Rhys Langston Under Mine And Over Pleasure, A Short Story By Muckraker Jones
(hydrophile mutants
May your warm sands
Lead you to roads
And insurance claims)
The desert took me in
Yeah I was swallowed by the landless
Finna bury my chest in dunes
Of unmarked desert
Street view to pass along
Under mine and over pleasure
Face was tanned leather
While the pretext was the weather
The whirls of cyclones
Disassembled me better
Lacking water, last straw
Stripped camel's back and law
Sweated over cold steel
While hands gripped, raw
Sun beat down; I felt the sound
Distance to the spring felt profound
Collated my palms with the distance
Traded last leaf of hibiscus
For the passage out of camp
Under darkness
Cover, listless
Ain't trying life with them bandits
For when she left that night, yeah I was stranded
My coffer vacated to be just a shell of what she had branded:
Skin was raised
Sensitive to light
Burnt to the touch for a fortnight
Keloid kept the 20/20 hindsight
Skipped the seance in the canyon for what just might
Headlong toward horizons
The cracked glass
Perfect timing, read the hands
My sweat swallowed the dust
Tallied captain's log, and
I surveyed the land
(This excess nightfall strikes me
As forces beyond my control
Brandishing their egos:
I am not afraid
Never have I been so)
Felt a brooding presence and so I sped forth
By the sky format, stars, I supposed north
The blowing, rising earth had consumed my torch
But darkness had always been my sport
Against the wind held on
Trudged through dunes to where I felt no map would chart from
And at point I dug myself deep
Closed my eyes until I felt the heat