Best Death Valley Poems

The day Democracy died,
I was a little lad, yea, knee high

Papa turned on the telly
to watch the White House news
Curious to hear if the 
whether forecast rumor was true
Did the First Amendment reporters
get carried away
by a baton wavy sea of blue

Horrified streaming video voices said,
it...

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Dusty hot crystals
lie layered through eons past
breathless dinosaur....

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Dead autumn leaves my shroud of love decayed 
Then winter snow my frozen coated heart

I built my lonely hall, with walls so tall, 
Then hid deep down, beneath the ground sans sound
This lone, which I called home was so forlorn
Hospital hell, my self-made get well...

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What lives deep within?
Which thoughts, what vitality?
For from these must we emerge,
As there is little without
Except the baleful wind
Whining across bleached dunes.

Death is a void of expression
Stark, barren, arid.
Mere rocks scoured by flash flood
Twisted and gnarled;
Gravestones of salt extrusion
From emergent times.

What life there is in...

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The sun shining on the brine
To make a Great Salt Lake.
Up the canyon by the corkscrew,
Yet looked like a robe
Awaiting its filling
The setting sun pierced my back.
Dirtly disk with crescent West
Hung with South
Colors in the dirt,
Colors in the rock.
Walk up a canyon,
Go back in time...

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Life In Death Valley

I stand alone
The heat of the day burns my skin
The cold of the night chills to the bone
There is no shelter
No hope in sight
The sand whips around tearing my skin
Mountainous dunes come and go in minutes
A trillion bits of ancient rocks
Lifted and...

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One hundred thirty degrees yesterday.
Somewhere on the border between 
Nevada and California...

I wear wet clothes..
I do it on purpose.
Wet and cold.

I have no ac....

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temperatures rise 
on the death valley landscape ~
shimmering mirage


Written 17th August 2020


For Strand completely new (27) poetry contest
Sponsored by Brian Strand....

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A nightmare
 after something I'd had, 
a cowboy film,
 the late-night news
 and Cervantes at bedtime.

On a spavined jade
the last of all the cowboys
with lean shanks
astride gaunt flanks
rides down
to Death Valley.

The last of all the cowboys
has soon put paid
to enemy tanks
along Stygian banks
way down
Death Valley.

Ever...

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Rushing toward the desert monsoon
I sought to capture a rare midday storm.
We arrived to the valley of ever-changing dunes     
with quilted layers shifting in cadential form.   

Isolated and distant beneath purple majestic peaks    
whose grains of...

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