pour some words into my ear
make a nice stout aural darjeeling
no need to sweeten
i like mine hot and strong
in turn, i'll steep your cochlea
Senno Rikyu at your service
master of libidinous liquids
ceremonial titillated ears
then we'll make oolong to each other
i'll brew your longing leaves
ferment your black dragon lips
sip the liquor from your *****
write it up for the society page
tea today at four and Thea pours

Outside the miner's shack Joshua trees stand silent vigil,
expecting his imminent return, or perhaps his ghost.
Horn silver, weathered by rainwater from volcanic rock,
no longer strews fallow ground to lure the miner back.

In lieu, small succulents feed tortoise and jackrabbit,
replace the metal which only men could value.
Nevada gains a confluence of life in the exchange,
dry-lake flora and fauna bartered for chlorargyrite.

Barren mountains surround this desolation,
where nothing more than fungi lie in vapid dissipation
before the relentless punishment of the sun,
a lattice-work of valleys dissecting their *****.

I ventured here to purge my body of poisons,
exhale the vapors and biles of city living,
to rid the alien presence in my mitochondria,
and let it go the way of Silver State.

More a French shave than five o'clock shadow,
the young artist's way of backing off,
announcing danger, an air of the unexpected,
as the King snake has evolved to feign the Coral.

Yet, where camel hair touched canvas calm,
where quintessential light met quotidian ennui,
not the advertised blackened rose or orchid,
rather the sizzle, the honeyed-heat of azalea.

Each stroke portended floral intifada,
pastel yellows and oily greens igniting
upon a fired-umber background,
threatened to melt the easel into tar.

I stood gape-jawed, nodded approval,
eyeing the second creation within a single flower.