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

Through The Screen Door: A Poetic Parable

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Through The Screen Door

She sat
Legs crossed
Hopes dashed
World tumbling, hunched over peering into the pool of liquid salt
Bruised a bit by the news
Uncrossed her legs
Stood and rose
Rose and walked
No it was more of a march
One step into the dark and she began to dash
No sprint
Her ambivalent speed
Mirrored her ambivalent hope
But the screen, ripped and torn, worked as a sieve
And the more she pressed her nose into the ragged and rough, pressed not into glass but mesh
The clearer she saw the what was to be seen
Past the fog
Into
Revealed truth
The veil of truth through the rough and ragged rust. No Windex could wipe the dirt and bring a shine. Not with the screen.
No cleansing or scrubbing or grit and might. Power and grease from the elbow of her hand could wipe it till it squeaks a perfectly polished squeak.

So she resolved to see through the filter of filth and pain. Past the crosshairs of the wire that warped the view.
And so it was.
She befriended the screen. And grew to love the protection it brought. The shield it was in its role as screen. And she loved the screen and the view from its other side.
No longer did she long for the polish and pristine lens of a clear view through glass.
She saw the door made of screen as a portal of hope.
Hope lead to hope on hope.
And that lead her to see the cross in her hunched and leaning stance
As the cross of hope, seated at the threshold of Mercy.
New.
And she loved the screen and her view from right here. And she put to rest her longing for more.
And grew to love her view through the ragged screen door.

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A Titleless Poem

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A Titleless Poem

Somehow you are too bare and raw
without a name
Emptied of a banner over you
Hold a quiet pause
as if your very breath
You appear to
Come to me as
All the unknown people
I have never met
Wrapped in a place that holds
The unmarked spot
Like the tombs of soldiers
Never named
Known only
Unknown

So I will name you
With what I have been given too
Embrace you with my words
Call you all the Grace that ever lived
Poured down from Heaven, unto the Earth
Transform you with vibrant
Pantone color of the year
Shade you with every one
All life and color that has come before
Pull you into the company
Of those who share the name
Amazing
What a name can do

Grace looks good on you

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Joining my friend Laura and her beautiful community

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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