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