Be Brave

Spencer and the dolphin

Be Brave

And now that you are here be brave
When you say it as an imperative,
You strip away choice
Courage comes like a crouching tiger
Across the page
Laying in wait for his cowardly prey
He seeks fear, that warrior, Bold
Even the B stands tall, puffed out chest
Posture and stance are more than half of it anyway
Oh, be brave
Your choices are weak

The words birth emotion
Hot breathes seep through the cracks in your teeth as you say it several times
Sizzling heat
Builds up steam as you build strength,
As you inhale the words

Cowardice leaves through the cracks in your armor
At the very sound of the phrase
Power and strength begin as you state it
Again and again
Repetition doubles your chances for a win
And now that you are here be brave
Second cousin to let there be light
The genesis of new life

Ready now to bury fear like you cover me
Gently, as I lay dormant in the night
With your body’s heat
Night after frigid night
We wait
Hoping it into existence
Watering the miniscule seeds

Have you seen the size of a radish seed?
Promise is buried in our own backyard.
Red is the color of brave.

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Writing in community with Tweetspeak Poetry.
Using a line from Peter Gizzi’s poem “Tiny Blast” as a poetry prompt.
Gizzi is author of In Defense of Nothing

For The Hanger-Oner’s

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For The Hanger-Oner’s

It wasn’t the wind that called my name
It was the rustling
A restlessness whipping through the parched Palmetto leaves
Death had shaded them in brown, brittle breaking
Was their song
The only color, parchment brown, silhouetted against the monochrome canvas
Horizon bleeding into sky
Sky bleeding into earth
Every shade of gray

Morning comes for those who are ready
And for those who are not
The sun did not rise today, in my imagination
It remained at rest
Holding out hope, it will rise tomorrow
I will listen to the wind reveal her whispered secrets

Gray mornings come and go
Generous in their appearance
Coming uninvited

But the birds are the storytellers for me, on this day
Washed in hints of gray on gray
A water-colored sky awash in a single shade of void

I watched them on the naked tree, black on black
And wondered in that whipping wind
How do they bare up against the wicked wind
They swayed on boughs, beaks braced and facing into the gusts on gusts
Coming from the East
Breezes warm, this morning, from the sea

The birds would not release, their small clawed feet
Riding out the storm
The rain, the wind

They hang on
Gripping hope, imagining tomorrow
The Palmetto leaves will once again be green

The Snow Globe

Welcome to Day 13. Thank you for joining me during October for #write31days.

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To catch up on the series click on the page link at the top of the home page. I am honored that you are here.

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The Snow Globe

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Strange little egg shaped metaphor
Just as the dust settles,
No snow
Frozen tranquility is restored
To your glass sanctuary
Slowly
Fake flakes fall gently on the plastic turf
Your home’s floor
Photo-shopping beauty
We settle in to a Norman Rockwell-esq
Version of life
Frozen in time and place and space
How perfectly boring you become
With no movement
Living in your glass house
It is when the shaking comes
That the blanket of beauty is laid
The turning of you upside down
And right again
That complex mix of calm and peace and static is restored
Until
The next time
Your perfectly calm snow lined streets
Get wondrously shaken
Again and again
World without end
amen

There in lies the wonder
The beauty
of it all
Globes were meant to turn
Round
And you, little snow globe
A little upside down

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Joining Laura today

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Slaying Dragons

Slaying Dragons

Sometimes we, the royal one, and I
We need paradigm shifts.

Crave, no hunger for, new normals
Feel the burning desire, the fire in the belly
For radical, get with the program plans
Or better yet, write new ones.
That color wild and bold and tempestuously
Outside the lines
White-out replacing old with new
Marking gloriously fresh borders
In pen, not pencil.

And with
Ear to the ground, we hear
Pounding
Hooves and heartbeats,
Like wild bulls, joining wild horses
In a throwing-the-dust-up maddly in the air,
Frenzied
Stampede.

And depart for a good long while
The dog-in, dog-out
Cat-in, cat-out days
To raise
The roof
And the wrist, the ventrical vessel for the overflow of
The fiercely beating
Heart

Pick up dragging feet, or dragging pen
And maybe even an imaginary sword
With the sharpest blade words, not metal
Can make

Foot in stirrup, mounted on horseback
Maybe even two feet
Planted firmly there

And for once and for all

Slay the dang dragons

Who will find themselves pitifully piled up
In the corner, shaking with fear
And trembling
Cowering at the sight

Of one bold and brave
Writer, warrior, woman
Friend.

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Dedicated with love and admiration to the following three women in my world: Amanda Hill, Maggie Wynne, and L.L. Barkat. Slay on.

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