Desolation Devi/l *

Nose Mountain Fire Tower-- transitory torturer of a thousand

disguises (really i wish you’d make up your mind)--

you are a nomadic tick on my tush, you are supreme

outhouse boredom, sitting on your chameleon throne,

above, endless blue webbed sites, below, rug of cumuli,

everyone and everything buried in your grave vapors.

Hey, Nose Mountain Fire Tower, i am your captive

audience--lunatic victim of your postmodern horror show.

In the tower while watching clouds mutate, you send a fine mist

of flying crayfish, terrible hovering harbingers of things

to come. You force me to perform musical chairs,

opening closing a cage of windows. You tinkle

on my books when i’m not looking, then

the electric chair.

Hey, Shocking Nose Mountain Fire Tower, what’s that tingling

on top of my head? You flick spark after spark of lightning

bolts my way--you’re a primitive chain smoker, i’m

not your flint. That zapping sparky crackling shit

freaks me out--one of these days you’re gonna make me jump.

Murderous Mountain Fire Tower, do you know, can you

conceive how much paper work all that lightning generates?

Gleaming Nose Mountain Fire Tower, you know

everything, when i try to escape your torture chamber

you blast me with your wicked breath, a gale force of one

hundred klicks per hour, those rattling winds you send to

shake me up, up in the red and white fiberglass nest.

i open the tower cupola trap door, you drop it on my head

as i grab the grounded iron ladder in my underwear.

You stimulate the winds, Never fear, i hear you howl,

hypothermia is here, you drop 20 degrees cause

you really like dead blue legs, don’t you?

Vulgar Nose Mountain Fire Tower, descending the ladder,

your halitosis smothers me, bombing me in a screaming barf

of hail, i can no longer hear the whisper of elves. On the ground,

you think i’ll slip on those icy ball bearings where once grew grass

and suffocate--a Cindy Sherman photo of death. And you puke on my

vegetable beds, you try to starve me, you know i can take only

so much shriveled morels and fireweed.

Flamboyant Nose Mountain Fire Tower, after a pinball

of purple storms, you not only send me one fucking rain-

bow but two. Seductress of my heightened senses,

you shred me to pieces, i’m just another slow chew

but you want more of me so send in the damn fog,

three long days of obscurity--driving me to the depths

of third degree chocoholism, though cookies resist rising

at your hedonistic heights.

Nose Mountain Fire Tower, spawn of some superspecies

of blood-sucking arachnids, ten pounds later, i waddle

to the outhouse hunched in menstrual huddle (provoked

by your yarrow tea), harangued by a bloodied hare shrieking--

a weasel’s brunch. Everyday a novel sound--i’ve had it.

Stepping over a second hare headless on the boardwalk,

keep it to yourself, in the bush.

Oh, Nose Mountain Fire Tower, you amorous annihilator--

you send shimmering mountain bluebirds, friendly pink bohemian

waxwings that cause my binoculars to drop--my falling black eyes--

my bruised i--you want my job--you want everything.

On my birthday, you send a swarm of noisy barn swallows,

feathered bombers to make my day your day.You take everything.

Then you send a cow moose near the nettles,

send her to kick my brains out. Yeah and thanks

for the hornets nest in the weather station, shrieking baby

bunnies are not enough for your hungry infliction.

Slimy Nose Mountain Fire Tower, after dreaming of sex,

i wander among a minefield of tracks, murky monsters in the night.

Your ravens tramping on the roof sound like gargoyles and you,

disguised as a wandering bear, want to devour my friend’s

cat. And thanks for the white guys you send for entertainment.

i yell hello, they leap into the bush like wolves do.

i hope you die laughing. And when i’m naked with mosquitoes,

taking a solar shower, you send drunk loggers,

knowing i want treehuggers.

Oh, Heartless Nose Mountain Fire Tower, shame on you

and your obnoxious abstinence--no visitors, nothing for

four days, then a family of bears--how close can i get--a Russian

roulette of tag--you make me forget my name.

Nose Mountain Fire Tower, what do you fucking want

from me. i’m seducing someone under your summer night

and you outshine me with your whips of northern lights.

That’s it--you really want to fuck me--fuck the brains out

of me and eat them--i know--i’d die a thousand ecstatic

orgies with you--yeah, i really wanna do it with you babe--

Did you hear that Ranger Bob? --10-4 everthing’s just fine --

up here on plain old Nose Mountain Fire Tower.

* Devi: Hindi for goddess