Shoulds fizzle under my skull,
someone else’s wretched designs
caught within. What want, I wonder,
do they reveal? What desire
quivers to be noticed?
love notes
a ritual to start the work week
love notes
a ritual to start the work week
No end in sight, only more
choice, piling up like alarm
blares at sunrise. Yellow leaps
off the horizon, nice things
just out of reach. For worry
keeps us homebound,
protecting some precious
unknown from becoming ours.
love notes
a ritual to start the work week
Sirens cry in the streets (choose joy)
Bad news breaks in our hands (choose joy)
Bitterness spills from our cups (choose joy)
Smoke rises from the land (choose joy)
Wealth compounds out of reach (choose joy)
Power bends us in half (choose joy)
Hunger tugs at our guts (choose joy)
Fear eats on our laps (choose joy)
… (choose joy) … (choose joy) … (choose joy) … (choose joy) …
love notes
a ritual to start the work week
We see each other peeking
between clenched teeth,
white-knuckled brains straining
to spin and climb, gain
the slightest sliver to light
a path away from our pain.
So why not glow — burn
ochre against slate skies; cry
sappy tears from our tapped
trunks, eyes sunken under
knotted fists; leave our roots
to recharge — and release into
the fall?
love notes
a ritual to start the work week
Cosmos bloom fuchsia-pink,
eight-pointed star between
my fingertips. Directionless
as the fog lifts, no way but up
off this island. No hero, here —
he wrote, hopefully or woefully
we may never know — only
waves echoing prayer-like out
into the infinite, uninhibited
beyond.
love notes
a ritual to start the work week
Nectar opens endlessly, unstable
unable to keep from filling
eager nostrils with its
sweetness, forever wafting, volatile
and vulnerable, taken
and given and giving and
taking, using our self-sustaining
insatiability for its own ends
and endings and beginnings.
love notes
a ritual to start the work week
all this static
and mental crossfire
have my brain waves
going hay-wire
fighting battles
with no foes
and trading secrets
with no codes
but I know
closed blinds
don’t let sun shine
into cobwebbed corners
morning finds me
awake and aching
already exhausted
from night-years
of longing of woe
as one below
of one above
we wander
wondering why
we feel so alone
split by our wills
and our wealth
hiding inside
our selves
and our cells
finding mighty cons
to busy our minds
while our newness
keeps its peace
marginalized
but creeping
note by blotted note
into its own
center
love notes
a ritual to start the work week
From choosing stop over snooze to
missing the third hup-two in my
moisturizing regimen (merely
watching the minutes whizz by),
minor slippages erode my
morning routine like this September
rain feeds high mountain streams
after a parched August. Perhaps
they’ll rediscover their beds
farther down hill as they
speed toward patient low lakes.
love notes
a ritual to start the work week
just is just is just is just
when lived when felt when blood when dust
earth from flame to heal from blade
be true be fair renew remade
will can burn can hurt can harm
of heart of home of art of arm
born to bear forgive to know
beget be good regret regrow
love notes
a ritual to start the work week
hawk over highway, perched and eyeing
like clouds withholding rain or ballots
boxed and stacked before the cast, standing
and pacing, not running nor flying,
steeping, weak and strengthening, not quite
complete, still turning, survived, alive,
but not yet thriving
love notes
a ritual to start the work week
Please hold me I can’t say my name
he stutters from under our blame
as he unfurls his arm
praying I’ll do no harm
and prescribe more than state-funded shame.
Please hold our hurt in your heart
and consider how you played your part
and that changing the cast
can’t rewrite the past
and empathy is just the start.
Please hold all our lines are busy
and we don’t know how long it’ll be
all beds full, budgets tapped
rivers dry, spirits sapped
when there’s no care to spare are we free?
love notes
a ritual to start the work week