a ritual to start the work week
left left
forgotten side
feeling weaker
needing work
balance owed
get even
take space
walk walk
step pivot
own own
crowned gowns
ate nines
tens flowers
gworl gawd
finding strength
fixing power
favored wing
right right
love notes
a ritual to start the work week
Bloom, baby, bloom
That’s all and that’s only
Open your light and glow
The world is your dance floor
Bloom, baby, bloom
That’s all and that’s only
Curl and twirl, unfurl
The change is inside you
Bloom, baby, bloom
That’s all and that’s only
Bud out and lose control
Your now is your always
Bloom, baby, bloom
That’s all and that’s only
Rise up and be seen
We need all your colors
love notes
a ritual to start the work week
Palms, like poems,
can open like petals,
offering us moments
to take in and touch,
sharing, making theirs
ours.
love notes
a ritual to start the work week
Poesy pauses on pursed lips,
poised to open its pink bits
with one final silent push,
all breath and soft petals,
its pronouncement more word-bloom
unfolding its empathy
than some predatory pounce
by the hungry young puss-puss
currently crouched and peering
up at the perched birds who peck
at seed piles, small plant-pouches
waiting for their beginnings.
love notes
a ritual to start the work week
Now.
Here.
This.
What else
can be
as deserving of honor,
as worthy of worship,
as in need of reverence
as these fleeting wonders?
Hold them gently, friends,
and let them go.
love notes
a ritual to start the work week
Readying for a new day, week, month
like a crumpled sheet of paper,
seemingly spent, tossed aside,
just in need of a little smoothing
under careful hands. The soothing
tug from a finger and a thumb
easily opens and unfolds, but
even encyclopedic heft can’t
erase the memory of these creases.
No matter — fresh ink can find
new use for old contours and
even scratched out lines,
in morning’s warmth, can
pipe up and sing new truths.
love notes
a ritual to start the work week
Seated and strapped in, we have no
choice but to ride the ride. How can
we stand up to two-thousand tons
of fear-fueling steel? All gasp and
momentum, designed for shock, sheer
stomach-drop and awful thrill-feasts—
gobbling up our screams for its next
marketing scheme. Eaten, we heave
unheard across their screens, bulging
eyes seen, but not our sight, just fright:
delicacy served piping hot,
meat pie following a fresh shave.
I don’t think we can handle this,
we whisper, as our falling fate
clicks closer, unavoidable.
And once it comes and takes and hurts
and then fades, why do we pay it
to take us for a ride again?
love notes
a ritual to start the work week
Brake lights backed up through
a four-way standstill signal
a nearby new beginning:
months of discomfort,
delays and detours as years of
quick-fix concrete and steel patches
are remade more enduring.
The Right Way hurts, you see:
smarts and throbs and stays sore
for far longer than we’d like.
Inconvenient and infeasible —
an unreasonable expenditure;
a clear and present assault on
a normalcy with invisible risks
and unseen harms — it asks patience
from a short-fused powder keg.
But for healing to be ours,
so too must be pain.
love notes
a ritual to start the work week
Metaphor Warning:
What You Are About to Consume
Is Pure Fabrication.
No Words Were Harmed
In the Making of This Fiction.
Do Not Be Alarmed.
whether “love is blind,”
or “a red, red rose,” or
“life is a cabaret,” or
“just a bowl of cherries,”
I can’t be sure. But
what I do know —
the rock and the root
of my heart and my every move —
is this: love is
life is love is life
is love.
love notes
a ritual to start the work week
Transformation is an act of love,
for self-loathing can not change us,
only harden our hearts apart from us.
Yet we need not feed our actualization alone.
Love, like breath, goes both ways — flows in
and builds reservoirs to be tapped by all —
while shame must be thrust upon us.
love notes
a ritual to start the work week
stars open and shine up at us
from their beds, tiny alarms
telling us it’s time to say
goodbye to a winter that never
quite took hold, an old man,
maybe, but one whose eyes
glinted with perpetual spring
love notes
a ritual to start the work week
