Category Archives: Love

Blue Mountain House

December 3, 2023Love, Song, StellaBonWagner

See and Hear in rare live performance!

A stranger in line asks me why I smile
I’m in love with that woman down the cereal aisle

The twirling delight, stocking Lucky Charms
A sleeve of roses up and down her arm

My Melrose mystic, once or twice my dealer
Blew apart my heart when she asked me to be hers

So much to cry
(We’ve got)
So much to cry

We fled the city, we married in June
No one around, just the stars and the moon

Put our pasts in the past, but man what a blast
Got her mom situated, said goodbye to my dad

Blue mountain house, facing south
Paycheck to paycheck, hand to mouth

So much to cry
(We’ve got)
So much to cry

Still too many sleepless nights
Still too many rich men lying
Still too many hungry crying
Still too many justifying
Still, I can’t deny: It’s good to be alive

Still too many sleepless nights
Still too many waters rising
Still too many gardens dying
Still too many truth denying
Still, I ain’t gonna lie: It’s good to be alive

It’s good!

So don’t go messing
With my third-act blessings

I’ve learned every next generation is better than the last
Their photos on our fridge warn this too shall pass

I better kiss her mouth before the day is done
Hey! Come dance with me, Stella, ‘neath this melting sun

So much to cry
(We got)
So much to cry

Come dance with me, darling, when our shift is done

When I Was A Billionaire

August 21, 2022Family Life, Love, Mourning, Prayer, YouthBonWagner

When I was a billionaire, the air
Seemed to fold ’round the frame of my name
My soul, soil and skin
Buttressed by the billions

No pain here in these extra folds
Dimpled by the excess
Dimpled by the desire
To make you smile

This is, yes, indeed, another cry for you
My unrequited
My blindsided
Love

We were bound by blood
Blood the billions could not dissolve
I could never resolve the puzzle you presented
The tangled untie-able knots I resented

I was a billionaire
But you never believed
Never conceived
The rarefied air I breathed

And it was a moment only
Only a moment
And don’t I know it
Don’t I know it

You never understood how I could lose the billions
The interest alone, you snarked, would finance a nation
Yeah, a nation of slaves, ruled by
By your master race
I howled to the stone wall,
The stone wall of your terrifying face
You need to feel something like my pain
So wild and wordless, wordless and wild
But true, so vital, agonizingly real
Real and oh so true

I’ve lost the poem
Lost the billions too
There was a time we’d laugh
Me and you

Laughed till the earth stopped spinning
All the good we were winning
We were winning!
We were winning!

I never needed billions
I never did
I never needed you
I did

But it’s been so hard
So hard to admit
To submit and admit
Let me just admit:

I only needed
You I only needed
You to be you
And be proud
Be proud
Of me
I only needed you

The Mishap

August 13, 2022Free Form, Love, Work LifeBonWagner

It was the cadence
It was the rhythm
Made me murmur:
(Made me admit?):
“I love you”

Terms agreed to
Plans to sign by Friday
I murmur:
(I admit?):
“I love you”

It was the cadence
It was the rhythm
My wife uses
My mom uses
My sister and me

But you’re a stranger
I’ve never seen
And I don’t love you
(Don’t I?)
And yet

It was the cadence
It was the rhythm
I murmured
Murmured: “I love you”
On our late afternoon conference call

“Ok all, great meeting”
“Terrific, terrific”
“Thank you”
“Oh no, thank you!”
“Ok then well have a great evening all”
“Good night”
“Good night”
“I love you”
“Um”
“I don’t know why”
“Um, well”
“I don’t know why, why I said that”

It was the cadence
It was the rhythm
Your polite chuckle
Your quick goodbye

And now
At this late hour
At the bottom of this tumbler
In this low-lit cavern
I wonder:
“Do we still have a deal?”

Hashtag You Too

Coping, by the lake

May 22, 2021Love, Mourning, Navel Gazing, PrayerBonWagner

I’ve been pretending
Just like you
Never comprehending
The best of you
And me
And the best of you

The years crept in
While I’ve been pretending
To understand the reckoning
To come

How are we to understand
This simple but grand
Grand design
To which we’re assigned

I’ve survived by laughing
All my nervous white-water rafting
Pulsing forward and mapping
The rapids snapping God’s thin wrapping
Clapping blindly along with the cohort you done trapped me in:

Confounded corporate colleagues
Desperate despots desperately diseased
Ungrateful lovers gone to snores
Badly maligned hookers and whores
Bratty kids
Career skids
Age defeating us all
Father’s sudden fall
Blot clots dropping
My best buddy shopping
At Target
The ruin of us all
The mall, the goddamned mall
Tear it all, tear it all
Down

May we just be
In peace
Increase our ease
Ah, consider these wild geese before ye as they float without strain or pain into the main thing, that jet-stream-thing, that thing that’s some god’s invisible dream driving all pollination, all elation, all cosmic fellation, the seedlings going deep, all sharing our
All sharing our caring hearts with one another
Consider these geese
Cease your seizing, your wheezing
And breathe
And breathe
And end
End
Pretending

Stella, Rebounding

May 16, 2021Free Form, Health, Love, StellaBonWagner

Marco is a fantastic lover
I’m telling you the hours
The sheer flexibility not only of limb but mind my my
My, my
I’m telling you we flower
Marco is a fantastic lover

Why, just look there:
The agile thoughtfully silent nimble elegance of his tip toeing out my disheveled room
Half-clad pre-dawn to attend rehearsal on time
The dentist, his accountant, or something
Well, a finer gentleman Yahweh hath never crafted
A genius so cunning with his tongue

The blinding suns of Los Angeles are massaging me in their gauzy white glow
I am nourished dear ones
I am nourished and I shall flourish and I am not blind
Just wise
Wise, my dears, to the singularity of the moment
So please
Please
Let me be

Happy Anniversary. Here’s a poem! Wait, this year is crystal? Oh. Oh dear…

May 1, 2021Family Life, LoveBonWagner

I asked your daddy for your hand in a letter
Every warming year we got better and better
Our droughts got hotter, our floods got wetter
Like you, the moon’s a riser
Like me, the sun’s a setter
A clenched jaw in-your-face fretter
A jilted lover’s torn-up sweater (strewn across my dorm room floor that night, remember?)
So, yeah, we only got this rusty water in our oily red rusted kettle
And nothin’ else
But it’s enough
It’s enough

In this calamity
This vapid loud city
Messianic mess most definitely
Like you, it’s real real pretty
Like me, the poetry’s real real shitty
And barely witty
An ugly unloved bitty
A sour off key ditty
But it’s enough
It’s enough

And it’s enough I say enough
Deeper than pink fluff
Softer than sand paper rough
Like you, it takes no guff
Like me, it’s besieged by stuff
Silky but tough
Tethered to you in this paper handcuff
And it’s enough
It’s enough
Cause I got you
Yeah I got you
And

I I
Love love
You you you you you!

Mwah!

Stella, in lament

April 19, 2021Free Form, Love, StellaBonWagner

Oh Sam, I don’t know about you
You’re just out here looking for something to confess and be ashamed of
So someone like me will rub your shoulders and tell you you’re ok
And oh don’t you work so hard and ain’t this world so unfair
What an unfair place
All the oozing love and comfort to further conceal all the shortcuts you’ve taken
And handouts you’ve indulged from day one of your privilege
I know too many men like you
And it ain’t gonna do for me
God no not for me
Let my loneliness resume

old friend

April 18, 2021Love, Poetry, YouthBonWagner

Please remember once I love you it never ends I love you always.
Always.
How could I not?

Offsite

June 23, 2018Free Form, Love, Poetry, Work LifeBonWagner

I’m staring this executive in the eye
He’s providing me the gift of constructive feedback
I’m listening and reflecting
Dancing the triangle of effective communication
And all that’s on my mind
Is you

We’re digging deep into this leadership development exercise
We’re learning to delegate and speak with command
Providing context and clear objectives
Standards for success
And all I’m dreaming of is your mouth
On mine

The noise around me is warm and supportive and an investment in my future
And I’m grateful and more engaged than ever
Motivated to perform, baby!
And consumed by the thoughts of my nose near your neck
The warmth and aroma of you just millimeters from me
Nearing the moment we lose ourselves and dissolve

We’re sharing our stories with brave vulnerability in this sterilized setting
Shining a light on our blind spots
Bathing in this pre-programmed artificial light
And I swear I hear your low purr in my ear
As we maneuver naked in the dark
Swimming the gentle currents of these naked sheets

I’m staring this executive in the eye
And your body is sliding on mine
Sliding, our eyes align and shine
As we disappear in the culmination
The orgasm that must not manifest
In this present environment of tolerance and mutual respect.