Elijah of Victorville

God has commanded me to write you a poem.

Who am I that I was chosen?  Can I refuse?

Can I not tell you

that which God would have you hear?

I don’t want to take a fish ride to Nineveh

so I will tell you.

Here is the word of God as it came to me.

In dream or through discorporation

I was taken, as I slept, to a sandstorm outside Barstow.

There I could hear nothing.

God showed me a freight train swallowed

by a small hill

and the hill undulated unto the Lord.

Then, on the other side, the train

popped out, browned by the dust

into Victorville, loaded with goats,

silk, shiny rocks, and tent pegs.

I saw four steel cables

reaching into the heart of Barstow

pulling it away from the will of God

away from the desert, towards Bakersfield.

Take heed and hear the word of God

oh men of Victorville.

That which the Lord gives must be taken.

Therefore rise up and go to Barstow,

which the Lord would have you have.

Send first your men with the shortest mullets

that their hair may not block blessed Victorvillian vision.

Three days and nights these men shall watch carefully,

and mark all those there who put their mouths

directly on the fountain’s spout while drinking.

On the forth day the rest shall ride into Barstow.

Gather up all those thus marked

and march them before you,

to Bakersfield.  Do this that the Lord may humble your enemy

before you.  When little sores appear on the mouths

of the people of Bakersfield return you to Barstow

and feast in that manor of great kings

on the wedding day of their last unmarried daughter.

God has chosen Barstow for your sons

take what is given unto you, for sorrow and suffering

come to those who would reject what the Lord has given.

Be warned that you shall live under the yoke of Bakersfield

for ten generations if you refuse God’s gift.

Your daughters will be despoiled by less hairy men

with small to mid-sized two wheel drive trucks.

Until a day one among you will be raised up

to slay the rulers of Bakersfield

in a war of a thousand years.  Now go

in faith to Barstow and on to Bakersfield.

For when a King commands his ships, “Sail,”

is it only wind that moves them?

Desert Ecology

Monday comes, same as always.

The day after the other one

elevated by missionaries’ promises

of permanence. After a baptism at silent spring

the attention to my actions

drops away today, while I deal in concrete.

A man’s gotta eat,

and I am a man who eats meat.

Once in Alaska my cousin chipped

a wooly mammoth out of a thawing glacier,

cut it up with a chain-saw

and shipped me a fifteen pound block

of rump roast. Man, it was tasty.

We’d cut strips and marinade them in molasses,

sea salt, and apple vinegar, and then bake

them on a bed of pinion pine-nuts.

Five Sundays in a row, we had it.

The best meat I ever ate.

I wish to god he’d find another one.

Ruin

in the desert

there are ruins

of a burnt out building

next to highway ten

could have been a home

or a service station

four short pillars

of river rock stand

blackened by fire

a pepper tree has grown tangled

into one

cooled by the stones

nourished by the ash

watered by the wind

it grows wild

concealing clues

that suggest it was planted

Copyright ©1995-2009 The Sun Runner, The Magazine of California Desert Life & Culture
61855 29 Palms Hwy., Joshua Tree, CA 92252, USA
Webmaster: Steve Brown