The Day of Confidence

Did I ever tell you that when I was ten I was

Usually lying that I told elaborately bizarre fibs

To family and friends alike for no good reason

And it means something doesn’t it that I was

Unamused that maybe I was just afraid to tell

Your cosmic secrets ruled as you are my dear

By the speedy planet Mercury so quick to think

And change and doesn’t that suggest to you

Some kind of empty platitude like a strong

Vision is important but so is the ability to see

Things as they really are? bleh! I’m waiting here

On the shore of your imagination where it’s cold
The radio says Nelson Mandela died today

The waves whisper something I can't hear

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?