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.