Las Vegas: Energy Budget

In this city of glass-fronted unreality,
refrigerated bubbles float on furnace breath
off blister-hot bare ground under sizzling sun.

Boulevards of air-conditioned limousines
criss-cross the desert dust on compass lines
careless of contour and dry watercourse.

Grass lies like green cellophane on dead red rock
framed by untamed lion-colored ranges.
Falling rain can't find the unreal earth.

This city's an hourglass turned inside out.
Outside, Time and the trickling desert sands.
Inside, perpetual motion, cold wrung from heat.

Here water runs uphill in the water-clocks,
Out in the boneyard, entropy deals the last hand.