A Sea of Sand (No Man's Land)

Empty dwellings, along empty streets
And a soulless souk, where no one meets
No ears to hear the echoes from minarets
No eyes to see, a sea of sand repossess

Weatherworn stonework, the dust swirls and rises
The desert wants what it despises
A cloud of angry ochre writhes in the wind
The filtered sun opaque and dimmed

Hills of sand creep up to crumbling walls
Tops sailing over in wind whipped squalls
Piled and sculptured, the transforming dunes
Will never live, but will consume

A lizard watches, atop, on dancing feet
A cold blooded sentinel assuaged by heat
Riding the shifting sands, like a desert pilot
A sure footed surfer bathed in ultraviolet

All the scurrying scorpions and venomous vipers
Will no longer be juxtaposed against those outsiders
For those that were are now bones in the dust
A presence diminished by the grains in a gust

Nothing passes; therefore nothing dwells
As the sands, in time, replace the water in wells
In the desert wilderness there is no oasis
That can withstand the inherently invasive

Sand filled ruins, stand by sand filled streets
And a sand swamped souk, where only ghosts now speak
Maybe there's a haunting call from the empty minarets
As a conquering plume of desert whips and pirouettes

It's all reclaimed, it's now no man's land
Repossessed by a sea of sand
And beneath a cold full moon all is quiet
As nothing stirs, not even a desert pilot