Amid the Scent of Mescalito

Melting sedation drools down mother
superior's chin the way a child's runny nose
curls over his upper lip and dribbles snot
into his mouth, gums and tongue numbed
by his mother's lack of perspicacious
vision under midnight's cloudy haze.

Conundrums riddle through swiss cheese
gray areas like Billy Bonney's lead bullets
boring holes into his victims' gray matter
across the monsoon-gray skies of Arizonan
and New Mexican hammer-slamming-anvil,
lightning-sparked, firing-chamber, high noons.

An inauspicious chart hangs a pall from limb
warping nooses, interwoven cords skew
perceptions into pack hunting deceptions
as the distant, dry, desert sands undulate,
rolling swells ripple mirages - conjured
images from inside an inner world outside
conscious boundaries - upon solemn dusk.

Pythons slither in cold, dark alleyways,
coiling around the throats of circus barkers
beneath sunset skies the color of campfire
flames sparking and spitting into the carnival
of a night while all the rivers cease flowing,
dammed up within prismatic plexiglass.

Flashing yellow corridors' replete arcane
charade washes me in a warm rain, removing
the stains ancient talismen hand painted
upon my soul as the sun rose over the lake
of dreams, affectations slip through
grasping, clutching fingers seeking to own.

Under a street lamp, resting in the eye
of a storm, a delightful cacophony
interjects nonsense into the traffic
merging between the two-laned
asphalt hiding from the moon's
view, where sage mixes with rosemary -
haunting amid the scent of mescalito.