Venom & Cadmium

The mesa dreams its grueling dream
Caustic and fragile
And poisons paint its sleeping streams
Venom and cadmium

What souls would roam your suffering slopes
Shall stand transformed; their other course
Is strewn with spines, cords bleached and tanned
By brilliance, beast, or ferrous storm

My worn pride bruised the dust before
My stricken weight, my burden spilled
And picked apart by omnivores
Who slithered forth in armored plate
From dens that pierce your scarp-swelled silt

Your cursеd earth collects its tithe
In fеvers ‘tween the anticlines
Where fools presumed to understand
What waits for them in this drained land