Town of Dust

Vague images sway through my skull, 

Sloshing under the dented cranial dome, 

Like a liquid motherboard, uprooting strands

Of a dream, I thought had been long forgotten. 

As the motion-picture reel plays, I step inside 

Myself, not far enough to become lost in the 

World of cracked screens and wavering signals,

But close enough to taste the bitterness of memory. 

A ghost town veiled in clouds of dust and antiquity 

Emerges, ramshackle buildings roofed in wooden

Shingles, brass hitching posts lining cobbled streets, 

White linen fluttering from splintered fence posts. 

Solitude settles over the abandoned village, 

Temperature rising, the desert wind growing hotter 

And more abrasive as it pelts my sweat-soaked 

Neck with grains of stinging sand and heated mire. 

Tumbleweeds roll across my path, bristling with their

Own sense of revulsion as I enter a boarded-up saloon,

My leather boots whispering as they scuff the whisky-

Stained floor, my thighs clad in faded black denim. 

I look down at a body that no longer exists, a vessel 

Of youth and innocence, thirteen years old again, a

Shock that warps reality, forcing me to question 

Whether this omen links to the past or the future. 

The air wavers, rippling like a decanter of water

Disturbed by exterior forces, the edges of the room

Blurring and receding as the scene shifts, radio static 

Blaring in my ears, my only tether to the present. 

Another layer of the dream unfurls, dragging my body

With it, folding and crunching my bones so they will fit, 

Before propelling me through the glass dome of the 

TV, and depositing me in front of my rewritten future. 

Audra Burwell

Reviews

[Julie McCarthy (juliesp..]

This reminds me returning in time in a dream that becomes a reality
I’ve often had dreams that were so real that I was there I swear I was in that dream living it in a different time and place only to return to my bed hardly recalling all the familiar faces or what transpired
This poem is very deep I love it