Unfamiliar Places


By Arkiver

I opened my eyes to an unfamiliar place
a strange land
I knew not where, just that I was far
from home, and all the things that I
have ever known.
Sand stretched out, a desolate mirror
hanging on the underside of the sky's belly.
Sand shimmer, shift, elusive to the grasp
of my newly awakened vision
The skies are a deeper softer blue than I
have ever seen
and the scent is the purest cleanest air
that has ever passed my lungs
that air burns as I inhale, I'm higher
on that air than I've ever been.
The clouds form a great wheeling dome overhead,
spinning spiraling turning above
the rocks red rocks that break up these
plains, the wastelands this desert and all I can think is
I am home
only it's no home that I had ever known, not
a place to stay and live but
a place to carry in your heart
your soul
That desert is more of America than the stars
and stripes, of ravaged and pillaged hills where
the conquerors faces sit in stone judgement
over me and you
Those sands that surround me convulse, frail
contractions that gave birth to
a strange creature
a salamander
A most brilliant and bejeweled, small earthly Lizard
whose red fiery eyes blaze with
Knowledge
heated anger heated love and I feel
that special kinship with that
strange on
that I have oh so rarely ever known
his scarlet tongue flicks out, tasting with helium caresses
that air and I laugh and
his eye
that blazing flame
catches me and takes me
a flash a cardinal inspiration
that I have not the words to describe
this wordless wave of knowing that sweeps thru me
these tears
they pour their trail of sadness down the
agonized burning skin of my face
I'm so happy so high so knowing
His eye just holds mine -- do I
perceive the ghost of a smile on that reptilian
face, that old familiar
friend
who somehow I have always known
under this place my home where the skies are
ablaze and that fire has caught
in my soul
and I smile and smile
and this laugh that builds in me to you might
sound crazy
but to me
it sounds like love and I ask do you know what color
love is because impossibly I do and
I run over the sands in that impossible place and it feels
like running down the curves and hills of myself the
real one nothing but
the Real Thing as I breathe and run under
that sky and
laugh so hard and so long that I am absolutely
silent but
I can still hear the whisper of my friend's voice
that strange one that Salamander
     "you are always welcome here."
I close my eyes and step
out of the dream but
I carry with me the memory of home and I know I
will never be alone
but sometimes it's hard to remember so I chase
those memories as I can, try foolishly
to convey
them to you, but you don't understand, something
is missing and I feel the
need deep down in that unfamiliar place I
will be fulfilled
someday.
 
 

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