If deserving matters then it must be a matter of not anti- but non-matter like aridity and openness and that’s all, starting there in minimal sparse-seeming but full life teeming and lit up neon sun subtle as whispered nothings meaning everything glowing warm in deep dark spaces after sunset words, following and preceding, follow and precede and sometimes most times in between persisting, arid and open, persisting to subsist and subsisting to persist sometimes barely more than barely, sometimes feeling only clinging for dear full life, at times clinging to and at others tumble-blown across parched surfaces but nevertheless delved deep with élan, don’t forget, delved deep and diving into mirage pools like we’re alive and barely there, really, ever, only sometimes passing through on no name horses, slow and sun-drenched and soul-scorching and feeling fooled for having hung hopes on lucky herradura, hopes that rain will come and come down and pour and run into all the cracks and ravines on time lapse like science and there’s nothing to do but slow down and soak up, soak in to exquisite, raw in between, never all but most, at least some, almost free from before and after, and at least we have that, at least, that to almost look forward to, at least at last, looking through heat wave distortions at far-off mountain horizons like backdrops dropped in to place us, to locate, offering a silent reference reminder that time thieves each seemingly motionless, progressless step toward away and stakes are high and rising, they say, with each moment traversing the sublime, teeming wasteland, they say, as if there’s a course or a goal in mind and the steps count but no matter, no matter that each moment of precede and follow might be the last in between, the last steps out away down and around where the jackalopes roam and electric desert butterflies flutter

out where eyes shutter snap capture dichotomies seen felt known in roam and flutter, sun to one side, clouds to the other and no idea what’s next for nom de plume I visible in cracked mirror and strung together, figurative-like like these figures of cacti and coyotes as silhouetted and representational as I am.

The desert we deserve—sounds clean-slated and Cartesian, something as if something for the first time something and you do, are, easing in and that’s why we’ve been found in the midst of the rainy downpour deserving desert season,

that’s why thunder and lightning strikes,

that’s why flash floods and grey-black skies

hopeful and daunting, promising something, promising relief and replenish, promising something big because you didn’t try to earn it and it just is just like you, rolling through, alluring lonesome you of the always undone and unfolding in between but not lonely, never truly but just meandering along beautiful and on occasion dashing for the cover of daydreams or standing in a swoon for exposed sky-watchings while I try to speak through storms we fully secretly believe we’ve caused, remembering storms I’ve been and bringing, been and bringing but no longer being, no longer being brought but just bringing and bringing everything

and I know I deserve—

but what?

The chance, right?

The chance, yes, because chance is all there is, mostly, the chance of the good bad everything in between with all its electric energetics behind it, coursing and moving and holding on for rainy seasons like these and I defy those who tell me it can’t be lived this way like deep desert crossings under storms rolling with pen name You joining me in visions of oases and real mirage mood pools for full life feeling, arid and open but soaking and soaking, soaking up here today and there tomorrow and all time felt in flutterbies and shutter-flies captured caught and for the time being I feel I’m no longer catching the heat of the devil’s kiss like I earned it.

And the grey-black and flashes and rumbles closer getting closer and the heavens part and down it all comes, with you.