The Day of Inner Fervor

O fatal sun of Sonora only you keep your word
Let the desert wind abide in its faithless flighty

Voice the lies the silent offices of the white-

Tongued day and we if we survive shall be 

Discovered driving a ’72 Impala down a pig-trail

A tail of dust between Nogales and Hermosillo

O dry terrain you tremble at the thought of our

Nocturnal oceans you who dream of how

We flood this desiccated land with our vices

And our virtues you who see how we resemble

These incalculable flies replying to the parched

Messages you strew across the sand and after

This fine desperado madness will we feel better?

Will we feel anything at all?

The Day of Flamboyance

You stand at a doorstep that does not exist

Counting anachronisms at least three when

A widow opens the door says come in dear girl!

Nashville’s burning the pillars falter O the stars!

She says winter is convulsively droll this year

And you smile with such unseasonable charm

What I want to know she says is why you don’t

Rise against the silence this absence of God

In the grace of your sweet unpersuadable face

Even the stars feel assiduously hard and grim

You no longer know how to pray but see here

She says I am listening so be brief and don't

Say with two words what can be said with one

Your curls tumble too languorously near the sun

The Day of Abandon

Dreaming years ago today quite possibly

Tomorrow the path of eschewment leads

To an amiable pavilion where we toss all

Our favorite vices over a neighbor’s fence

Dreaming we hear whoever has tears for us

Must be this rain henceforth to be called

The sad-thing-about-life-is or maybe to be

Called why-should-we-not-hear-us dreaming

Heavenly aspirations happen at least twice

A day these days dreaming we unlike our

Fathers unlike our mothers we’re dreaming

Our way through sambas till the rain stops

Dreaming we could lose us in this trouble we

Are dreaming we should leave us on the double

The Day of Idiosyncrasy

You say I'm a tad peculiar like a French phrase

The one for the belated wit of the staircase

The one for a look shared by two people

Who expect the other to initiate something

Some gesture you no doubt already tallied

In the incarnadine pearls spit by such a spindrift 

Day as if you had at best only a talent to factor

Poetry and naked storms O these curly waves

Smell of your hair the updo-ocean cascading

Slender tendrils on the smooth shore of your voice

How’s that for a metaphoric jig you could

Come waltz with me on this empty beach

The grayness of the day all of a sudden

Is blonde so what? this ain't no devil’s dance

The Day of Extraction

Suddenly we must be discovered soon

And disappear in a flame of banners gone

In a wave of trumpets wahoo we’re alive

With us! together for once and sipping sighs

Of entire generations from empty teacups

The lids of our faces opening as the first

Rude clouds rush between what my fire

Drenches what your water singes this desire

Quickened and quenched by our eyes

The ruined towers of our souls rising and those

Aren’t clouds they’re crows O god it’s difficult

To find ourselves finally here together in these

Wobbly chairs of poetry where we can see

Nothing but the trees at least are thoughtful

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