Cecelia and Brett,

these vows, they are ancient echoes,
hieroglyphics we've heard on many walls
before Us

in language long forgotten;
they are mystery remembered
among familiar tongue

they feel like places
and things we've known before...

...they are not why we're here


these echoes, they are guests
drawn here like the rest of us
with an envelope

finding an opening, a sound,
becoming too loud
to resist repitition

and temptation to steal the final scene
though, even they know...

...they are not why we're here


these guests, they were not witness
to the days that: dressed this afternoon
in white

nor the calendars of foggy mornings
nor the sleepless, moonless nights
these were yours alone

but we caught glimpses
and took hats off our heads as you passed

such things, that need no words to hold the bow
such things, require pomp
             and circumstance

so here we are.




wb

the sum of water and dirt and sun

i plucked this blossomed creature
from someone else's yard

i didn't ask permission
nor did i worry much, as
such things as flowers
seem an odd sort of property

maybe i should have asked the little tree
who worked so hard to gather water,
hold on to dirt, reach for the sun,
finally producing this plea
for a bird or a bee

but it found me instead
because i found you
and sometimes a flower
is a good way to remember
how much water and dirt and sun it took
before you became my bird or bee



wb

doctor's orders

gonna blow a giant bubble.
gonna put you in it.

deprive you of everything
but love and sleep and sex

until men with shelves in their heads
and nights without beds
are afar and frosted over
in dream sequence



wb

carbon admissions

do you see,
catapults, loaded,
needed to cradle the missing
among the rubble of erosion
to make room for:
mountain crumble,
wider river bank,
oceanic encroachment
over our elder's cartography
once honed in stone?

do you see it?
is it time
to shoot the moon
with dreams?
has it come to this already?
to what will the wolf croon
for his sheepish sins?
has it come to this already?

can't you see:
capulets, montagues,
we needed them to prune off spring
shorten the reach of generations
to empty rooms for
humbled kings
crowning heartache
like the freezing of lakes
leaking boudaries
of once royal blues?

do you see it?
is it time to shoot the moon
or scream?
has it come to this already?
to whom do we look at noon
when salvation missed us this mornin'?
has it come to this already?




wb

materfamilias

i'm sorry
i'm affected by sunlight
and temperature change.

you will define
but never understand me.

i'm sorry
i mourn
the toothless nights.

where light cannot bite
the flesh back to life.

i'm sorry
the drought
outweighs my eighty percent.

and there are other things too,
so many other things.




wb

haiku

these empty spaces:
revolver's guts stuffed with blanks:
louder puffs of smoke




wb

not me

someone else said
to keep it down.
not me.
not me.
not me.
i took the loud road
and rumbled by.

someone else said
to take the high road.
not me.
not me.
not me.
i went lower than before
and got lost in the sky.

someone else said
to take it slow.
not me.
not me.
not me.
i needed more wind
and more time for other trails.




wb

hey dad

hey dad
i hope you are well
i miss you
i love you
(and all of that jazz)

now that i live
so far across the country
(in a place filled with jazz)
it often seems so much farther
from the days
of your big white truck
and the pet fly that you named
a memory that should have been fleeting
as the lives of flies have been

but this fly kept coming back to me this week
as i hunted a fly around the house all week
reminding me of you
and everything of you
that i love
and miss

the silly sense of humor
that would make a six year old's day
like this joke
that spanned the lifetime
of a fly
that lived in your big white truck
for a few days
and had a name

though i guess it's still going
since i still smile at the thought
of naming a fly
so i often think of you
when i see a fly
without a name
or a truck
that's big and white
and as time flies
i hope you might remember
the fly
and that i miss you
and that i love you
and your silly sense of humor




wb

love letters to the moon

stone scrawlers, papyrus penners,
                    quill and inkwell dwellers,
type writers, hunt and peckers,
                     electronic mailers,

everyone has written love letters to the moon
the great pagan,
patron saint of poets

generations, stuffing messages
in bottle rockets
pushing off into the cosmos

it cannot make much sense to her
why we adore her plain round face so
or her sly and slivered smile

though she must have come to realize,
after all these years
she is often the only source of light
in a planet's darkest hours

no, she is no fool
our obsession, likely,
no accident at all

after all,
she's seen every human birth
every death, everything between
in silent observation
she has learned every spell
we will fall for
every trick to cast
on our fragile little bones

maybe she looks longingly back
at our whirling liquid-crust, hung high
against a black and star speckled infinity
our big blue eye wooing her
and she cannot suppress her desire
to add some of our color
to her pale cheeks
some salt water to her dusty tears

but here we are
stuck staring at each other
star-crossed lovers
for all eternity




wb

longing for longer naps

you gave me thirty minutes.
i held my breath for the first two
hoping to impress you.

a sigh overcame the feat
as the world took another turn
around a rusty axis,
along an ancient orbit,
and realized (again)
it had never been here before.

after this contemplation of mortality
it let out a sleepy yawn
and resumed swallowing
our time and space
engulfing the remainder of 28.

and we remained still
hoping they would forget our obligations
and we could hide there
under the covers
forever.

at least until our bodies
contemplated their mortality
and realized (again)
eventually we had to eat.




wb

you are my whetstone

how often it is uneasy
the sound of my inability
to let dull
the edges
along tongue, that pierce lip
then ear, then heart.
my shortcut
along your anatomical trails.

though, i have heard
more fingers are lost
under dull blades.

for you, i will remain
serrated for precisions sake.

since, i have heard
that liars lose fingers
under dull blades
in countries still bleeding
the rein of monarchy.

for you, my love
i will keep the cat at bay
she cannot have
what is in my mouth
that way
you will not need translation.




wb

beyond yeast and butter

when did older cease to feel greater than
toddle to tween to teen to twenty
steps forward, upward, rising

am i now the loaf past completion
the risen grown stale
bread baked, bread sliced, bread eaten

is it time to look forward to filling bellies
hope that someone remembers the taste
as they sweep up the crumbs



wb

me and bones

chicken meat
on chicken bones
on paper plate
at lunch break
of temporary work
i didn't forget
a handful of napkins
or the plastic
but the fork
and her serrated cousin
brainwash my hand to mouth

this mind
of manners
is less than before
i knew the names and faces
and their proper places
on either side

will clean hands save the napkins soul?!

to hell with that
let those absorbent bodies burn
with the rest of us



wb

for all of you

imaginary eulogies
delivered at dark wooden lecterns
for black dresses clutching mascara tissues
and drab suits framing muted ties

everyone is told about the water
you flooded down my dry river bed
when no one was looking

there are echoes
of children fidgeting
over the pauses of my voice
over the pin-drop church

and only the newborns know
where you are
and why you're gone
and how to let out the appropriate screams

why
do these words breed
like mice in the walls
waiting for lights to go out




wb

combustibles

there is no fire in this house.
electric stove.
no candles.
no cigarettes.

though i often inhale
the wafts of secondhand clouds.
the neighbors,
post coital
or stress relieving.

our shared breath
weighs heavy on my chest.
my runner's lungs cringing
at the rusting
of their well oiled pedigree.

and every time i am a boy again.
with a father trying
to keep his dark clouds on the porch
but the front door
was never as strong as he had hoped.



wb

trompe l'oeil

we dance and war paint
around a place for fire
over better truths
unproven nor retired
in homage to giant creators
smaller than our destructive nature

can we meet anywhere but a coffee shop

will i write anything other than
unrequited love songs to myself

when tomorrow gives us more to eat
will it be without reservations
at the same table



wb

my only birthright

a dead man lives in these bones
though he has forgotten how he goes
despite having seen it somewhere before
in a dream or something like it

when he has his déjà vu
will you bury him
like the elephants do
with their dance
exchanging au revoir for adieu
they have not forgotten
how to fondle the lifeless leftover pieces
to attempt to solve the puzzle

will you give him his allotted mound of earth
somewhere he would have loved to run forever




wb

muse on holiday

are these silent fingers waiting
     for louder songs?
more somber, sullen, searing, or soaring notes?

does the earth spin too quietly
to overcome the volume of Lovers?

is Lover the louder profession
quieting once raucous hands
that would scrawl sentence murals
even in their sleep?

the insomnia is gone.
the sleep makes its sound.
the words are fewer
     and farther between.





wb

the dead of winter

this leaf is rotten and arcane

last year's model
yields yellow
then lets go

a slow motion tumble
to be tomorrow's martyr

delicate ribs and
green flesh, bled to red,
decay
for the benefit of branches
with room to grow
and energy to turn a new leaf




wb

and yet, i love the sound of church bells

i am arrogant:

  enough to repeat my
  sunday school questions
  because
  "because"
  has never achieved satiety
  in my belly

  in hidden ways
  since
  arrogance is always insecurity's sorcery

i hide this
in a cedar chest
unfold it
for the wrong kind of company
though
it's not large enough
to blanket myself
and this mess around me
into something so right

only a perfect creator could be blamed

i do suppose
it's possible
but the probability,
given the evidence leaning against me,
says:
 statistically unlikely
      maybe,
            nothing more than the

accidental art of gravity

after all,
  someone suggested to me
    that

gravity is love

and
that made too much sense
not to be
at least partially true
and
if i am nothing
      greater than

the accidental art of love

            that's enough for me



wb