The Day of Fortitude

It’s the 4th of December exactly 7:19 p.m.

When we wind our watches twenty-four hours 

Forward to synchronize the date with a silver

Stallion rearing on a bookshelf and restless 

For a rider just as Babieca pined for his El Cid

O let’s just order a pizza with extra mushrooms

If we’re so hungry for the truth and believe

You me my cutie my blue-eyed equestrian 

Gets all excited by these impulsive stars these 
Tempestuous notes on the ole ice piano 
As if we seem to us to have said this all before 
Since when are we so full of brio escondido? when

Will we admit that I'm the Andalusian warhorse 

You'll ride in your campaign of reconquista?

And Then the Way You Straighten Me Out

I am thinking about the eagerness of leaves

How they tremble before a concussive force

Too tiny to make a lip quiver and the smile

Is again so easily arrived at O the emptied

Mind imagines the mercurial number 5 then

Fills with deep plutonic desires yes it’s true

What you heard I am the last flamboyant snail

Not entirely beautiful or bad I am the least

Clairvoyant of men all I want is to spread

My ragged raven's wings good heavens! 

Is it so much to ask this winter breeze to give

Lake roses for a change?  I on the other hand

Have this very serene dream nearly every night

Your thoughts are like an ocean in a whisper

And Then One Day

When I was fifteen I saw this girl so many

Stories begin that way don’t they with being

Young and encountering somebody beneath

A tattooed tree at a county fair a country girl

With blue eyes and wildly curly hair just

The tones of winter beech leaves and she

Leaned against the tree smoking a cigarette

She probably stole from her mother’s purse

Inhaling with more defiance than pleasure

There in the shade beyond the desperate
Conclusions of the sun O we never spoke

But we shared the same painful sense

Of the need to become educated we
Were thinking our own thoughts who else’s?

In the Room inside a Way of Feeling

Harsh December sunlight carpets this bare studio

Where two midcentury rocking chairs

Writhe and bear the fruit of sacred mysteries

As garishly out of place as the gilded samovar

Chuckling on a low coffee table and steamily

Ogling walls of an indifferent blue somehow

Stolen from your eyes and there atop an empty

Bookcase is a naked Egyptian cat surveiling me

With impassioned impartiality me trapped in this

Room of actuality this room of how sweet to be

Anywhere in sunlight! this room of a desperado 
Sense of nightness O room of one plus one equals

Jupiter and the moon and you see in the flashes

Of the captive these bright feelings that are facts