desert poem

Toyota in the desert.

From a heat shimmering distance

It looked like a camp

Coming closer, no movement betrayed something

No flash of light

No glass in the car windows, no chrome

Nothing left. These were new cars

Stripped of everything. Everything.

Ali prised off with his knife

The Toyota emblem holder (emblem long gone)

Brought in for spares from Libya

Left belly down in the sand

In the sand- ten or twenty live rounds too

Casings shiny, the only living thing they left behind.