PIP

I like you, and I think
you are a nice person
because of the bubbles.
Perhaps there are other reasons,

too, I don't want to kill you.
The way excitement
sometimes wiggles out
of you on its way

to becoming a worm.
By the way, have I ever
remembered to remind you
what a pip I think you are?

I should have, and I could
have yesterday of all days.

NOT YET

My hope is that seeing
the light will someday
become literal again
and that Christians

big and small will
begin slowly crucifying
themselves on a cross
of actual love. Kits

no one is using
will of course become
kites one can fly
in a sky that's windy.

That is my hope.
My nickname is Not Yet.

EVENTUAL

The mirror that makes
us mortal matters
more than it should.
Or could, actually

if action had its way.
Life has this way
of filling up the time
between spurts with

nonsense. Nothing
comes into its own
in time to be sacred.
Events tend to round

the wrong corner,
erasing the available distance.

JOURNEYS

My mother was an excessively devout Catholic, my father a devoutly stubborn agnostic. I was raised Catholic, but, being a male, gradually journeyed back into the footsteps of my father.

MOTHER

I did what a word
suggested in the dark.
The dry land stirs
beneath its timely mist.

She loved above all else
particles of transformation,
sewn like seeds
across the silent

soil of surrender.
So the air, pleasant
as ever, parted long
enough to let her in.

Now she is what white
birds whisper in the wind.

Djamila Bouhired by Asad Faulwell 2010

TENABLE

We wander in and
out of what we mean,
managing the moment
as we go. As we go,

so goes our best and
only guess. Perhaps
we sleep too desperately
at times. Perhaps we're

apt to dream beyond
our means. The opposite
is far, I think, less
tenable than we are.

We wander in and
out of what we mean.

OUT

I prefer living
to being dead
as far as I know.
That's as far as I

know and everywhere
I go except when
I'm on fire.
When I'm on fire,

I go into the water
to put myself out.
I prefer being out
to being dead

everywhere I go
as far as I know.

ALSO

When it waxes, we weep.
When it wanes,we cry.
The difference is a disciple
of trying, an uninvited

guest of why we dream.
The heat's unbearable,
of course, because heaven's
always just around some

corner. The wind,
forgotten in its branches,
gets lost again looking
for us. Cold

stars describe what
won't be true about us long.

RETURN

Light comes from me
in the correct way when
my head is on fire
and my feet are rooted

in darkness. I am more
myself at such moments,
which occur only as often
as accuracy allows.

When nothing is the case
(which is only the case
when you say so), I let
myself become you again.

Perhaps you notice me
inside you like a baby.

RESCUED

I remember how they found
you, in a dream, wrapped
in that old coat Agnes
let you look younger in.

You were the ex-president
of every event you attended,
though still longing for
more or less of the same.

Because your location
was a well-guarded secret,
we had to look for you
in all the wrong places.

Now we can't remember
who you were.

One Man's Opinion

A poem shouldn't be harder for me to read than it was for the poet to write. Just a thought. It seems to me that many of us are trying either too hard or not hard enough or both.