The desert neglects to advise people
how important it is to drink water,
even the cacti know how to hydrate,
left to their own devices, immigrants,
on condition of anonymity,
neglect to observe the border crossing,
enter the desert without a compass,
as if hoping for a miracle, ghosts
neglect to inform them they are now ghouls,
damned to walk the desert until their bones
leave the level plane of desiccated
earth, sand hard-packed, pressed
into massive sheets,
volume density based on saline mass,
even long before Christ died on the Cross,
left forsaken by his own disciples,
sand is a bounteous commodity
as much as water is one limited
not so much by the heat, but the axis
determined every twenty thousand years,
seems time evaporates on a grand scale,
still, the immigrants and their families
take into account that within a week
reasonable activity will cause
eventual, inevitable death,
trusting in God and the Holy Spirit,
chances are they will die, Heaven can wait,
humans disappear among the cacti,
foreigners seek the American Dream,
adversity builds character, water
restores humanity against systems
ancient as Ozymandias himself,
wasting away, the desert dismantles
archaic, obsolete forms, a statue
yields to no one, broken, crushed into sand.
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Acrostic Format Derived From:
"Ozymandias" by Percy Bysshe Shelley
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Acrostic Format Derived From:
"Ozymandias" by Percy Bysshe Shelley
The lone and level sands stretch far away.
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