Thoughts While Traveling Through The Desert Poem by Kyle Clinton Foley

i begin my journey from new orleans to phoenix. my adrenaline, estuaries and rivers flow. my turbulent hammerheads are racing, my extravagant swans are singing. i am flush with anticipation, hope, surprise and bounty. i love these moments of transition since it is in these moments that my life suspends itself in limbo. who knows what spiritual merlot lay on horiza? ! who knows if i will meet a woman who truly radiates bronze and her spirit is fortified with selfless ivory? ! who knows if God will bless me with a truth that radically diversifies my artistic tastes or essentially causes me to reshape my philosophical foundation. i hunger for the dance, the jubilo and the hymn! i sing the radiant star-song! i hear the resonant trumpet!
my four months service to God and country is now complete. i feel that my soul has been purified of selfish corrosio-grime, i feel that i have risen to a new level of spiritual discipline, that i have earned a religious pomegranate that few people can ever hope to obtain! i feel that i am separated from the selfish leech-men, that i have fully exiled their likeness from my domain.
i see sun-flashing elks, silk caribou, the prodigious jasmine! i see galaxies crashing into each other, columbus setting foot on san salvador, savonarola inspiring all of florence to embrace piety and halo-prayer.
at last my life will once again move forward, at last i will wake each morning wondering if this ultimately will be the day that the door is opened and an especial person of prominence recognizes my talents and promotes me to the plateau silverèskan. once more will i be struggling to procure that sustenance dolcèzzan, that felicia endlèssan, that satisfaction suprastonishan. again will i wrestle with pangxiety's dragons as i rage-wonder if i ever will carve out of a marble stone a truly revolutionary idea. again will i feel all my gears turn, all my soldiers march as i strive for the eternal surge and the endless bloom.
gold-stark! ebullience! o sweet and divine romance! how animated is this desert! how flowing with activity, ambition and hope! the highway i travel upon is active, vigorous, busy. i envelope myself amid its rainbow. i never thought the desert would be so green, so yellow! i never thought to imagine how elevated the sky would arise in beauto-blithe! i never predicted the clouds would irradiate such majestica! nor did i foresee the splendora thrillèndo of the bulge-mountains! in the east the mountains form a large chain endlèssan, vast, but here the mountains are isolated, singular, gently curved and i sing amid their texture and color! and how abandoned is the wilderness! in the east where population density abounds, every corner is claimed, each plot is private. one walks across a forest never knowing when or from whence the owner will arise and command you to exit his holdings, threats accompanying his words. but here (flames! songs!) one can wander amid these barren hills wholly free from the intruder and the iron stranger! one can sing amid these mountains fearless of the property owner and rage-anger!
i enter new mexico. panther! comet! i see something heretofore unacquainted with my mental library: a pavilion flush with new colors, new architecture. it is characteristic indigenous art, intermixed with the expensive modern material, a brilliant juxtaposition of the old and the new. now is my heart racing faster, now are my veins pulsing the cosmic life-trance. so often have i been disappointed by america's poverty of artistic taste, so continually heart-smothered by our buildings all resembling one another, each wall emanating similar dust-dirt, each street more or less similar to the one before. certainly there have been architects who have unearthed wild projects of mind-stun and soul-awe. of course there have been visionaries who have obtained from the fringe a shocking image and embodied it in buildings. but here there is uniform architecture prized above the traditional. here there is an all-encompassing vision of adobe! here there is an entirely different predominance of color! here beige, here red, here yellow! here the green flees and runs! here the blue shames itself in permanent isolation! i await the newness! i await my confrontation with the alien! i am hardened, rigorous and flowing of dream.
i continue to drive in my car. i continue to the feel the flux and the rivet in my interior. who knows what zebulon pike felt as he became the first american to venture into this wilderness for the first time? who knows what emotions cascaded in his cosmos as he witnessed this treeless expanse of big sky? most likely his heart plummeted as he realized that the land was uninhabitable, hostile to industry, commerce, trade, mind-flight, soul-bloom and enterprise. one hundred and fifty years ago our countrymen most likely lamented this dearth of trees, greenery and crysto-rain. but now (flow-gems! brillio-sun) the automobile and the air-conditioner has made this trek a journey into wonder and surprise. now have we carved an oasis of water, transaction and intercommunication out of a desolate region. i have seen countless photos and films set in the west's tumult yet how miraculo-different it is to be within its umbrella than it is to merely see its plastic on the screen! never had its true galvanization of spirit struck me until now! in the past i never made a hard, determined struggle to experience its shake and its shield but now i am forced to and i revel in its dance, its gouge and its slice!
i enter phoenix. i see newness, cleanliness and awe. i see once more a preponderance of evidence that the new, radical and nontraditional architecture rules and governs. i see more reminders of the old west, more tokens of its mavericism, its former confrontation with harshness and enmity to life. how amazed i am that we have successfully constructed a shield against the desert's unforgivable thrall and vacancy. this is a base from which one can venture out into the desert, enjoy its diversity, immerse one's self in its radically distinct form, then escape from it as soon as its vices begin to encroach on one. my entire life i have known trees, crysto-streams, rivers, lush grass, amber wheat and forests. but now i will be navigating through a new reality, i will be exploring a new topography. its hypno-trance will thrill-sweep me, its lessons will surprise me and its zesto-burn will teach me. i eagerly await my confrontation with the alien. i joyously anticipate the bizarre. the adreno-rush of excitement flows for me, the mind-fire of spasmo gushes.