SANTA SUSANA

Now you lay here, in front of me
Or I am here beside you 
Along your winding pass road
Your magnificent
And wounded body 
Like all life you came from the sea
Rose up with the sun 

First, I came to see
The burned down Spahn Ranch
It’s half-moon ground
Covered in high dry weeds
Stories of crime still lingering
Like cricket’s crackle in the thicket
The Son of Man is dead

I am greeted by your attributes
Shaped as vigilant gigants
In your eye sockets 
There are petroglyphs
In shade of the highest sun
I follow your features
Rising above and under
Burned rubber skid marks 

Needle stitches
Diving into tunnels 
Throughout the rugged land
Freight trains slides
Out the die of a coin

Bring your cross and
Put up your box in Box Canyon

The shape of a wide brimmed hat
Cut out above the door 
To make them leave 
The movie ranch
People search prophetic charisma
In the Atomic Stone Age
Panic in the year zero

Machine operators
Cowboyed up missile programs 
King of the Rocket Men
Nuclear reactors melt
Sodium burn
Runs down from Burro Flats 
With their hats 
Covering their heads

Fucked up
Junked up
Now, some make up
Paint it a similar color
Color it Crimson Ghost
Reanimate it and drape the scene
Your face is a picture
A zap shadow 

I stay behind a rock
Like born under a rock
Bedrock
I cover it up
It covers me up
In shade
In sleep

Don’t tread on me
I read your flag
No trespassing
I read your sign
Ye who enters here 
Enters upon holy ground
I read your gate

I entered through 
A dried-out creek 
A depressed fracture in 
The Shimiji Hills
It’s Christmas day 
And no one around
Graffiti show the way

Arrows point into the deep
Creepy crawling
Gargled passages 
The sandstone is worn
To dust and nothing
Swirling spirals formed by breath
Still there are walls 
Too tight to pass
I crawled back up to take a shit

Descending, again 
Grinding myself through
On all four
Sliding and holding 
Back from falling
Into the light of my torch
I reach a room
Covered in carved and painted scrawling 
Imagery and letters
Youths joyous despair
I turn off the light
And listen to the heart of the hill
Coming out of my ears

Out in the night
The pass lay in gloom
Blinded by a neon cross
A tombstone’s doom 
Over you
And your garden 
The garden of the gods

Marius Engh (Oslo, April, 2018)