the tattoo desert.
robert shelton.

I must have been crazy
to set off like this alone on my bike
pedaling through the tropics carrying
a medicine for which no one has found
the disease and hoping
I could make it in time

I passed through a paper village under glass
where explorers first found
silence and taught it to speak
where the old men sat in front
of the houses mercilessly killing the sand

Brothers! I shouted
tell me who has moved the river
where can I find a good place to drown

Richard Shelton