Devil’s Weed 

Datura wrightii – deadly poison/deliriant

One fatal taste and the string is cut – 

waking dream moves from tongue to brain  

fingers and toes float like ghost hummingbirds 

attending glowing moonflower trumpets 

what was that I was – 

tinkling wind chime memories 

echoes of sifted chalky colors drawn  

over clear coyote yips popping 

in bubbly puffs of night 

there was someone or not – 

a smoky earth’s stale liquid fragrance 

coos of insect hunters picking through fog’s grit 

sage thrashers’ bold faces dissolving  

to stippled lizard tracks that skitter 

under chamisas’ crowded tenement thickets 

senses slip in grated wisps – 

burning eyes listen ears watch 

conformal invariance peels apart 

moonlit deer’s shadows uncouple 

shatter and stuff their pale darkness 

into subatomic spaces breed fractals  

branching in endless blistering flurries 

sand guzzles tomorrows – 

dry undulating geologic folds 

broken crystal ribbon faults 

globe mallow petals seeds of devil’s claws  

powdered cow bones dusty juniper pollen 

waft between wingbeats of cloudless sulfur butterflies 

metronomes for silent music that seeps  

into the enticing stench of death 

a poison key turns  

in the locked mind 

that holds all the pixels together