In Which Arizona is Gorgeous, but Fantasy Worlds are Better Sometimes.

keep your head full
of living forest shadows and
moonlit wings dappled
with evenstar-wishes and
golden leaves falling in cool breezes
from oaken-strong trees,
for who wouldn't choose that
bliss,
those misty mountains,
over this never-quenched
and still and stinging desert,
its jagged cliffs rising from
thorns and rocks that have never
met moss or even morning dew?

In Which I Think Maybe I'll Give Myself Weekends Off Of This.

it's only sort of
in spiders crawling under
sunrise-golden door frames
or in breeze-ruffled
oleander-petal afternoons or
in evening sips of cold red wine
through previously parched lips
or even in the burning
incense that takes me back to
starlit-jasmine summer nights
when everything was
not better but less hard
not softer but less responsible
not lonely but less full of you.