a lot of space

are my stick figures enough?

i can draw only stick figures
will this be enough
for art
will they be able to support themselves
on walls
without meat
gnawing at their need
for movement

connected dots have been enough
for countries to mobilize
armed cartographers
to defend
to expand
jagged geometries drawn
to define tongues
and the economies they'll speak

my anemic caricatures
are plenty
to build technology
as this is only the art of
zeros and ones
looped and repeated
beneath the pressure of a button
pinned to a live wire

maybe they will be enough
when all the ice is resurrected
as salt water
and god of this land
leaving us to float atop
in tiny boats
like tiny dots
unconnected



wb

on deaf ears

you love too many things
they'll say
yes, too much love. trim them
to fit in 

with the picture fence
we've framed you with

whack at the weeds
they'll say
run that gasoline knife 

over the blades
so you can rest on a desk
as a manicure to be proud of

with bumper sticker breath
they'll say
airbrushed emotion is the answer
if left to lie
in tombs with men
who've written thick and numbered tomes
about everything 

they've never seen

forgo the touch
they'll say
pluck the lucky from the lineup
let them hammer your hands to the halls
so we can all sleep
with martyrs

it is written in stone
they'll say
here,
where only the wombed wear fruit,
it is the wombless who've conceived
us. dark and brooding
men. who love to smite

those free enough to use the will 

they gave away. 



wb

at a distance

of mountains and sand: dreamt
within bed sweat nights
and reinvented
between hemispheres
of steely thunderheads

a collection of obstacles overcome
by way of seashells and obsidian
gathered into buckets and backpacks

these things
are only lazy visions
of home
and people misplaced
along divided highways.

thus is the lament of talons
grasping at cumulus.

it is all nothing;
an afternoon's monsoon;
cannot wash away.



wb

just shy

can't meet in the eyes
but feet i can see
and ask how it is with the left
or the right
because that's something i can fix
as i recite the pieces of toes
up to each quadricep. but can't trace
the anatomy between here and the
four by fours
swung from an afternoon
hammocked and hung on the fridge

thus,
the silence
that speaks up for us
amongst our noisy neighbors
as i look for things to swing from



wb

ink well

this twilight, a red question
standing still
as a lit candle of puddled wax

why the world continues
to concern itself with
lunar handshakes
when the ink for this
is still burning through her skin...

and i am falling for these
and the other phrases
hung just right on the wall



wb

wall division

the walls close in
to their self evidence
a singularity
spun by a dangling
spider,
the only mosquito
bound by this net,
and me.

i alone witness
this loneliness
as you observe
some other room.



wb

plaid

i could just lay here:
in plaid, without sleep or you.
without sleep, thinking of you.
in a plaid sleep, without you.

instead, i split the differences
with a half sleep
hoping you
don't knock before entering
as i, instead, dream of corn fields
and coca cola bottles
suddenly reaffirming my American flag waive

my banner of spangled stars
one for each night
i am so very far



wb

puddles

to feel dawn melt the bedroom

into the space

where lust sublimates 

to love and back

one face warming

to the other's watch

of a chest rising

and a chest falling

this is where the altar must be built

to lay as a sacrificial lamb

this is the place my headstone shall rest

and where i want to earn it

wb

caution tape

compare the danger
of beds resting in double occupancy
with the intimacy of a shared toothbrush

these two things are nothing
like the summer rain

nor are they anything
like love

except in their legacies
that remain to haunt lifetimes
of:
vacancies, clean teeth, and sunny days;
vagrancy, new bristles, and puffy clouds.



wb

deconstructionism

all of these words between us need to be eaten slowly
with vegetables and large glasses of water
so they can be swallowed whole,
 as swords and stones thrown
from passing cars like guilt flung
from long, neat subdivisions of glass housing

each of their letters will catch
as they try to pass undetected
through gills formed of lungs
stuffed in fishnet stockings
(like sausages in holy casings)
asking for their face to be hidden from the see through structures
who's naked emperors call for all sins to be burned and buried alive
and though
even corpses cringe
at the thought of these burials
(such sudden thickness between them
    and their view of the rest of the cosmos)
most succumb
to the pressure of dirty men
 who've shamed us into tradition

still, it is possible to remember
we are full of the dead's secret wishes
to lay quietly and
sink slowly
until the time passes

as much a sinner as i am alive
i cringe just the same as the corpses
but if you must,
please, tell them it was dirt
but bury me instead
in shreds of paper
covered in:
broken hearted love letters.
the sticky notes that neglected their reminder.
translations no one cared to understand.
poetry to gods who weren't listening.

tear the whole pages into confetti
do it close to my deafened ears
so i can hear each melancholy note.
i'll carry them wherever i'm taken
maybe they will finally find a home
or at least the way away from here;
opening stifled mouths who had been stuck
marveling at the weight of paper.



wb

lacking failures

it is not i
who taught me to forget
the fleshy bite
of time
that gnaws these bodies down
to archeology.

it is not you
who has yet to dig deep
enough to break
bones over bread
to feed
midnight.

it is not we
who have learned to discern
regret from balloons
of inflated guilt
twisted and bent
into animal shapes.




wb

and i hope they chirp tomorrow

somewhere in the midwest,
harvested and brown,
the air drowned us
at 75
miles per, some hour
before the afternoon

sharpened eyes in the corners
of rear view mirrors
bit down on the silence of the road
having its way with the rubber

and we lacked speech
while we sorted out the words
that had just spilled across the interstate

and the next day,
the birds chirped
as well as the day after that





wb

burlesque noir

as if watching an angel lose its wings
each one torn at the roots
bloody stumps drooling
with the ecstasy of freedom
from the strings attached to flight
no longer beholden to god's bidding
you were free
to be her child once again
and the crowd winced and cheered
as you rode them bare backed
with your grin puncturing through
each needle wound

and the spitting of raw meat
upon the open mouthed faces of the front row seats
while you chewed your way through the seams
sewn by your black gloved executioner
defying her breaking of your will with
the rhythmic slapping at the nubs
she left exposed to our bloodlusting bodies
but it was you who drank the cup
of your own making
while you stood high
on endorphins and whiskey,
and for the moment, high above
your pesky mortality.



wb

the binge on purge

all is forgiven
that makes its way to the fat mouth
of this mississippi monday

reaching down through the esophagus
to greet the giant's bloated river belly
by tuesday

come wednesday
we will bear 40 nights of ashes
sloughing our pregnant weight,
offering our flesh to the wind
waiting
a year for a week
to do it all again



wb

one requited day

this, it isn't yours to keep
just to hold, for now
to strain against its weight.

yes, things will crack and buckle
the facade will reveal its meat

tender and exposed to disease
the tissue will rot
the rot, debride


what surfaces, its yours to keep
with scars, and antibodies
and weightless sleep

yet, on down the line you'll see other's
who are cracking, hear their buckling
become labored breath

though their virus un-contagious
your scars will ache
their antibodies, breed

remember then, to tell
each gaunt and pallored face
that every fragile sinew broken
was replaced
and at twice the fee



wb

detritus

here we are
lying in the debris of kisses

and to think, we met
like wet dogs
howling at the rain
to let up

with thawed paws
we found handfuls of fingers
and dug
into licked wounds

and pulling
we found colors that had sunk
beneath the weight of grey-haired days

those fingers, drunk
with colors dripping
painted over the pale of the moon

breaking its frozen horizon
with a blushing-yellow yawn
and the stars bled out
and drowned
in the indigo iris
of the sun



wb