William John Watkins Poetry, Mandalas, Science Fiction, and More

Acrostic for a Lover’s Day

Venus, of course, has no arms,
And Mona Lisa turns out to have been a man.
Lots of Marylin’s have come & gone since then,
Even, despite the oxymoron, one Madonna.
Not withstanding them, the Classic Helen, and Medieval Heloise,
The Dark Lady, Browning’s Barrett, and Poe’s Anabelle,
Immortal Leda, Gatsby’s Daisy, and the rest,
Nobody’s ever mirrored Beauty’s all withstanding and
Eternal face like you.

Why, in destiny’s intricate unfolding,
Ineluctably, Beauty should always
Find the voice to glorify it I can’t say. I only know I’m glad
Eternally to be your beauty’s poet through the years.

©WILLIAM JOHN WATKINS

The Seeds of Purgatory are Regret

Indifferent as God I plant
this stand of irises along the wall
of our foundation.
Transplants from a ravaged bed
driveway traffic forced to move, they’ve spent
a season in the dry, brown paper bag in our garage.
That dark despair, their purgatory, leads
to ressurection here
if faith redeems them,
and my wife is right.

I am a pessimist myself and so expect
long suffering to lead to longer death,
and so I plant in better soil
sometimes the bigger bulbs,
sometimes the small,
though neither has much chance to flourish here
in the original excavation’s dust bowl dirt
lain dormant in a pile beside the house,
weedless even, for so many years.

I do not plant to please myself;
my orchid wife wants daffodils to grow,
and grow they will,
unless the pachysandras crowd them out, as I expect,
as I expect that I’ll be kneeling here again
within a year
on all fours,
like a swaybacked horse
hitched by necessity to a rusty plow,
cursing a labor only love
could force upon a man my age,
or harsh words, undeserved,
uttered in a fit of masculine rage,
at everything and nothing, with regret,
trailing them like an echo but unheard.
No doubt, before these rootings fail to bloom
I’ll owe some greater penance than this toil
of burying battered bulbs in barren soil.

©WILLIAM JOHN WATKINS

The Marriage Pool

New dumping stopped, old toxins settling out,
the marriage pool
clears down its watery syncline by degrees,
and though no bottom can be seen
subsurface fogs of old debris are thinning
and the bleached remains
no longer float
up unsuspecting as we kneel
through our reflections to appall,
and though no slick and slender trout survive,
the smaller flora, once thought dead, now thrive
in water where the graygreen mat
of algae bloom once choked all life.
Sunk murky deep, old poisons stratify, worst lowermost,
and animosities too hard to soften or decay
lie thickly covered by the bottom’s muck;
still, if we do not stir
by the intensity of thought or thirst,
the bottom sediments to rise
with their contaminants, we may,
if we drink shallow, still drink sweet.

©WILLIAM JOHN WATKINS

Marry Like Rock Stars on the Road

For Jessica and Alex

Live your marriage like a band on tour
and let the tedious bus hours of the longest ride
be Grammy Moments gathered by the mile.
Play as you ride, not for the money or the fame,
but because the music that you make
sweetens everything you do. Don’t spare your praise
for every note, don’t hold back waiting for a better time.
Now’s all you get this time around,
live in it, don’t just watch it pass.
Live your marriage so that when the music slows,
what you remember most is bus ride melodies, the casual jam,
the unrehearsed free playing when the music flowed
out of you both in rivers of delight.
Let the one who plays support the one that sings.
Anticipate the tempo’s unpredictable and sudden change,
so that the music sometimes leads, sometimes the song,
Make every note you can a Grace Note.
When you make the squeaky sound, the miss-timed beat, be quick
to recognize your mistake, apologize, admit your fault,
and cue the sound technician for another take.
And when the false note isn’t yours, make sure
you don’t pounce like a critic, on the insignificant
and made it bigger than the song itself.
The greatest songs survive forgotten lyrics and the sour notes,
and though strings break, and voices crack some times,
don’t let the music slacken and degrade
into the jangle of an uncompleted song.
And in that moment when the music stops,
the one between the argument and the make-up sex,
resolve to make amends and think how empty
would the world be if your music stopped for good.
Resolve the next time that a beat is missed, you’ll realize
it doesn’t matter which one was off key,
forgive, and better yet forget; play on, one note
does not contain the song.
Remember it’s a love song after all,
and every love song no one can forget
contains wild passages gently played,
and counterpoints of sweetness rendered loud.
Give every note your soul and play
your marriage so the crowd goes home exhausted,
smiling, not at your lyrics or your golden voices,
but at the passion and the joy with which you played.

©WILLIAM JOHN WATKINS

Marriage is Not a Sometimes Thing

Marriage is not a sometimes thing.
Married is married, twenty-four seven.
There are no time-outs when it’s hell,
and no do-overs when it’s heaven.

It can’t stopped once it’s begun,
laws and lawyers notwithstanding.
It’s not a frolic or a club,
that cuts all ties by just disbanding.

It’s not a job that you can quit,
or a vacation never-ending.
It’s storm and sunshine all along,
that teaches us the art of bending.

It teaches too the art of swaying,
the dance we do in clement weather,
till when you move, you move as one,
you learn to stand and bend together.

You start with what’s already known,
but all the rest is constant learning
the need for two to be as one
is at the bottom of all yearning.

Marriage is an end and start
a circle route that once set spinning
will lead you to its furthest point
and show all ending is beginning.

So joined is not to be undone,
one life, two halves that cleave and cling,
the process of becoming one
makes marrying an always thing.

©WILLIAM JOHN WATKINS

Only Four of Us in Bed

At first, there are only four of us in bed,
my You, and your You,
your Me, and Mine.
We are like rabbits hidden in the trees
of a child’s puzzle;
half of us are obvious,
half are invisible.
The four of us would make a great couple

if there were not six of us.

You-as-you-used-to-be
keeps turning off the light,
and me-as-I-used-to-be sulks.

But even THEY don’t come alone.
There is MY you-as-you-used-to-be,
with whom I don’t get along,
and there is YOUR me-as-I-used-to-be,
who I hate outright.
And the same on your side.

It’s like a family reunion
where nobody is talking to anybody else.
MY you-as-you-used-to-be
hates you-as-you-are-now
like sisters-in-law who are fat and thin.
YOUR me-as-I-used-to-be
is always looking for a fight,
and MY me-as-I-used-to-be
always makes sure he gets it.
If you did not bring in
both-of-us-as-we-will-be
to act as doddering peacemakers,
there would be bloodshed every time.

I tell you the truth, sometimes
I wish we could slip away,
just the two of us.
The only problem is,
I don’t know who I’d take,
YOUR you, or MINE.
And what’s more,
I’m not sure which ME
they’d go with.

©WILLIAM JOHN WATKINS

Marriage is a Church We Build

For Chad & Mariann
Marriage is a church we build
to worship one another in
and like cathedrals put up over time
each day adds buttresses and vivid glass,
a beam shaved smooth,
or a lock rock dropped
in an arch’s apex, defying Physics,
making stone hang curved in empty space.

Marriage is full of miracles like that.

Marriage is a church we build
to worship one another in.
Great towers pointing up
we build by faith
in one another’s own best self
and by belief make spires
even angel architects can’t conceive.
We build our marriage stone by stone
to blueprints no one’s ever seen,
not even us.
Marriage is full of miracles like that.

Marriage is a church we build
to worship one another in.
We shape the stones with work
and hold them firm
against the world’s worst wind
with love,
mixed fresh each day
and carried aloft,
wind, hail, or lightning crack,
up scaffolding Physics says can never hold,
yet always does,
in quantities Science say we cannot lift,
yet always do.
Marriage is full of miracles like that.

Marriage is a church we build
to worship one another in;
love’s our religion and we make
our marriage holy
by the zeal with which we build,
knowing that though each day
we build it over from the first stone up
until it stands more magnificent than the day before,
the building’s never done.
Marriage is made of miracles like that.

Young Girl Contemplates Marriage

My dog would be a perfect cat,
if he could just meow,
he’ll love to do that for me,
once I can teach him how.

He will not want to eat all day
or spend the day in bed
or follow growling always
like he needs to be fed.

I’ll take him to my girlfriend’s house,
he’ll go on small cat feet
and never mind our chatter,
or care if she’s in heat.

He won’t upset the furniture
or leave a greasy ring,
he’ll be so glad he isn’t
still such a doggy thing.

He’ll listen to my every word,
and follow at my whim,
and lick my hand for making
a pussycat of him.

Snow White’s Mother’s Curse

Perhaps it was the pain of a child three days in coming,
or the final realization that the coming would kill her,
that brought the curse to the lips of the dying queen,
but queens are made queens by beauty
and both beauties and queens are vain by nature,
so the dying queen must have seen as her shape got lost
and the lines like scars on her stomach grew wider and spread
she would never be perfect again in the eyes of the king,
so perhaps the curse was a long time coming,
and the birth itself just the last chance to do it,
perhaps it was said in the darkness
moon up & moon down, relentless,
“Hecate goddess of Witches, take this thing from me!”
and perhaps she tripled the saying
when the runes said truly, it would not be a boy.
Queens may be made by their beauty, but they stay queens
by ruthlessly plotting, by subtle insidious invention,
by the endless perfection of nuance,
by webs within webs within webs,
and who would know better the danger,
the fear of the sudden betrayal
the source of her power made certain,
than one who had suffered it herself,
so she cried with a voice hoarse with screaming,
“Hecate, goddess of witches, Hecate mother of queens,
let her skin be as snow in the morning,
and her hair like the wing of the raven,
let her lips be as red as the fire
and her beauty the mirror of mine!”
But perhaps the curse was more subtle
than anything men can imagine
and Snow White was only the method
to blight all the days with dark envy
of the king’s next young beautiful queen.

©WILLIAM JOHN WATKINS

The Werewolf’s Dotage

The werewolf is pushing seventy.
When he is a wolf,
his coat is whitening almost past transparency
with bare spots that look like the mange.
When he is a man, he has no hair at all.

His gums are receding, and his teeth are loose;
he is afraid they would come out if he bit anything sticky.
But there is little chance of that.
He runs with a limp, when he runs at all,
and even the moon cannot make him run faster.
Hunched and brittle, even turtles outrun him;
children let him catch up and dash away laughing.
Everyone suspects his human identity, no one cares.
Those with old grudges are dead or dying,
and the rest are too weak to lift
even a torch against him, let alone a pitchfork.
They do not sell silver bullets anymore,
and even the oldest hunter in the village
can’t remember how to make them.

Even his rage is almost gone.
Come moonrise, all he can muster is cantankerousness
or a surly, shabby grumbling.
He dreams of a running, roaring end, full of blood spatter
and bones broken for marrow in the silvery light.
He longs to see them all scattering before him again,
like hares before the dogs, terrified one last time.

He is sure there are drugs he could take, wizards he could consult,
bargains with dark forces, deals with the lunar devil.
All that holds him back
is his endless, self-renewing
fascination for his wife,
still more powerful and mysterious than the moon.