QUERECHO PLAINS

Just off the Mescalero Escarpment I pass
through a prickly gray landscape of broken buckskin
dunes and scrub mesquite. A banner 
of flame, orange against blue sky, 
crackles off pieces of fire that vaporize 
into indigo shimmer. All around
are oil wells, pump jacks dipping in obeiance
to the Petroleum God, the bloody God,
the God Destroyer, the dirty uncleanable
God, the God of liars and murderers, God 
of unchecked greed, Bush's God.

These pumps might as well be drawing blood. 

O Thirsty Empire, your mouth is thick 
and black with this foul wine. Your needles 
extract your drug.You pump it, purifiy it, 
mainline it. You are mad with its power, greedy 
for the rush. I cruise along at eighty 
miles an hour, a fine pink elixir
sloshing in the tank, tuned explosions
spinning me at three thousand rpm
across this blasted and abused land.



© 2004 by Richard W. Todd

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