VISIONS OF CONCRETE revealed unto me
in a season in California:

Square miles and square mountains,
entire hills leveled and valleys filled
for what? A pompous procession
hieroglyphic, hallucinatory –
a desert of our own making, this asphalt sea
laid bare in silence and sun
tempered by water and ice
made weak made fertile.
Without this, it signifies nothing, but
the ocean floor of the depths of the left-brained mind

the clouded sky is mirrored below
but there is no reflection
only the static melancholy sight
of car lights on a rainy night
static and soft pitter-patter
with the purring of motors.

Straight lines and straight angles
but disjointed with the firmament
One must then ascend above into the clouds
And I beheld the waters above and those below,
Ocean waves peaked with foam,
pierced through gently by the sun
who points his wrath upon the road.



“Recall how Apollo, beating down hybris
brings all our clever inventions to naught –
the asphalt absorbs his rays, turning towards death
while his hand in caressing the dirt and the rocks
sparks delicate growth in evening shade.

But we never learned the lesson or took the hint.

Yes, water shall break and water shall clean
but the desert encroaches.
A city of lost angels angles, turned gray from space,
not simply tan, the color that indicates
tangible hope, the shade of dry grass and seeds,
the color of the dried-up beds of ancient rivers.

The LA river has no such fortune,
as a trickling stream in a concrete ditch.
What is left is only ancient memories,
revealed in the silence of midsummer slumber.
The water has been banished,
relegated by social planners into invisible aqueducts,
thus compounding the acedia of a declining Rome,
wandering, prodigal, profligate,
but this time without any alpine streams,
having been fluoridated, estroginated, dissipated.


but there is still the mountains.

Late summer storm clouds lour in the east,
evening approaches, stirring the clouds from the west
promising the dew that quenches the brush.

Time and the rain shall bear it away,
when we forget and remember what we’ve forgotten,
first bringing forth weeds, taller ones still,
then broken by bushes and springtime flowers,
and at the end of it all the asphalt shall crack,
revealing loose gravel,


O Superficial Strength!
No Roman road, this concrete path
coalesces into buildings,
then crumbles and falls,
as balanced timbers,
brought to a house,
in the course of neglect
fall into rot, and tumble down.

One may dream and one supposes
that the gentle procession of utility poles
hidden blushfully among the trees,
shall remain for a while as they have done,
standing thoughtful at sunset.

O Superficial Strength!
The outline of our works
may remain below, visible from the sky,
as the old lines of the ancient people from the Andes –
Solar figures, mathematical lines,
standing silently below the stars.

We have taken the good fertile land that the LORD has given us
and have made it barren

(Signs of life in a few cracks and fissures)

From the waves leap dolphins, sacred to Apollo
beasts of beauty, the beauty of strength

"Now you shall see who is the better artist.”

The desert encroaches,

and below that,

nothing...

Aug 2024

by Francis Kuss

Visions of Concrete