California’s Lassen Dunes

 The year is 1969—Two young men climb aboard a psychedelic space ship - a faded green and rusted 1953 panel truck. Once aboard and righteously ready for a colorful, swirling, trip, they blast off to a cosmic star called Mount Lassen. As their ship approaches the barren volcanic wasteland, the young men observe that the star, Lassen, is a vast pyroclastic universe, a sweeping landscape of wind-driven sand that appears as creamy mounds - the breasts of mother Lassen. Formed by white sand, the powdered milk of desert winds accumulates around her limitless areolas and leaves a mirage of deep thirst in the young traveler's throats. From the back of the space ship, covered under layers of misdirection, Peyote buttons are retrieved and steeped in hot lava-milk. Suckling like babies on the tit, they quench their thirst for the love and warmth of a woman who releases from her red lips a tongue that licks the eternal ground of the dunes. (Poem written in 1969 as we sat high above Mt. Lassen's sand dunes...tripping on the good shit.

Painting by Charles Asher: The Sand Dunes of Mount Lassen.