Behold my face at a quarter turn: dragonly,
dog-eared, a carnal mask mirroring
half-lit spits of wood. This morning
Nevada furrows, my shoulders
too warm for leather; yet I’ve no better
armour against the wind, the stagey
palms that threaten to bend and replace
my stationary ramps, Caesar’s fountain.
Downrange, I prepare to be bandaged,
hear myself speak fluently in my own language:

“Bridge the strips around my bicep.
It’s where I… fuck, not like that. Grip
the razor down-hilt… there. Push…
shit… it won’t…”. I turn my gaze
towards the melee that surrounds
my bike, making’s landfill a network
of forgotten jumps, a backwards glance
before a maelstrom of sand. Derelict,
I’ve seen how closely my muse lurks,
have heard myself described as hard work:

having the face of an eagle, lion and ox.
Tricked out in off-white chaps, cape,
the valley of the shadow of death,
I gauge the line from rubber to ramp:
uncamp its frame on doubled wings.
Fountain-side, Romans balance,
flock to witness my ramshackle horse couple
with sky: behold my stance,
my corrugated flanks that rake the air, its absence
(as hard to get through as Scotch broth), though once

I groped around and found myself
unmoored at latitude. What mechanics
hold me, having already landed,
what patience, body tossed ass-first
over the gas-tank’s hive? The desert
revives as if in dream: my head a brick,
a helmeted weathervane unraveling
in every plane at once. Lo, it’s clear
that this is paradise, and if given a mic
someone rather bladdered will tell me I’m magnetic.