I was thinking of dust turning into mires when it rains
Mottled dust mostly being pieces of myself that have fallen off, somewhere I read
Happy pieces eager to have escaped away like beaten wives
Recuperating in numbed towns too dark for reading
Isn’t that you there in my window?
Isn't that you there plotting revenge?
Our sad dust bowl displaced half the people of Oklahoma
Her peoples driven to California and other states
of varying disappointment
Desperate men and women of hardship from which I am descended
Their dust, like my dust, of themselves
and their hatreds, I wonder?
The dust of farms and coffins that conquered the skies
dust coughed to bury fathers
dust felled like shadow rain
the dust of this land's conscience
choking some somebody for its sins, a storm
four score and seventy seven years in the making
The bloodlust dust of bodies
The black the blue the gray the red
Riding her simoom winds of yowling ghosts
Grimy smut and horror rising up to clasp the sun
—Here in my room it is black Sunday
under the pall
and still you sit
in the sill
But I see you
do not frighten
The room is muddy now
the room of a farmer without seeds
a farmer without light
The drooping room of sharecroppers freeing themselves of hope
This tiny room of disgusted earth
But still I see you waiting
lucky one
Your lines made clear in the lines of my eyes
though my vision is dampening
And I know your motive, you being once of me
Oh yes, do not surprise
I ally myself to your design
For all you know of hate is mine
I am busy to give you brothers and sisters now
The window grows black with this life I burn
The orange drape of ash and shadows that hides us from the street
The thick soot of betrayal blooming in features
the bloating smoke of an army, a fleet—
It is night now
and you will come for me then
Do not fear, close one
Come for me then
when I’m on the keel of restful dreams
And might you lay with me there?
Like once before
in a lover's fold
And cover my skin, for when I’m cold
— Siddhartha “Syd” Winarchist is a pseudonym. As such, he lives in a twilight Twitter world of macroeconomics and anime. The author he represents enjoys long walks and can be found gambling in cat houses along the US-Mexico border. Follow Syd on X @syd_winarchist.