Love Of

Love of family and friends.

Love of pets and plants, poetry and the paintbrush.

A lovers’ quarrel can teach us to love more deeply.

A near-death experience can help us better cherish our next steps forward.

Love of dance and merrymaking madness. Highway’s roadtripping rhythms and puddlejumping gladness.

All the hands involved in the upkeep of love’s well-oiled machinery.

The cheesy, gooey goodness of all good things given freely.

Love of music, movies, and miracles. Hugs, thrift stores, and cool haircuts.

Truth and acceptance, deep listening, and being present.

Love of fast cars and slow hands.

The lack of crosstown existential traffic, and getting to where you need in life as the crow flies.

I do not want to be a tongue in the mouth of war

I do not want to speak its grammar of hammers, its sick syntax of power and profit.

But I will honor the war dead with prayer, song and flowers.

I’ll clean away the relic heaps of angelic weeping strewn across battlefields.

Rusted dreams will be unearthed. Pulsings of peace will be reshined into shimmer.

If we can feel our way toward that light, there may come a day we can embody that melody,

learn to speak tranquility in small measure until it is a natural part of our living diction.

This may be too much to ask,

but I ask it nonetheless with my tongue planted firmly in my own mouth.

By the Way

Aye, aye. Absolutely. Alright, why not? Okie dokie. You got a point. My thoughts exactly. Positively, verily. Fair enough, good deal. Naturally. Most assuredly. Without fail, without hesitation. Brilliant. I’d love to. Forsooth. Let’s go. Definitely with a cherry on top. Totally, indubitably. Sure thing. Bring it. Roger, right on. Of course, you bet. Oh, and by the way—yes.

Talking Through the Tombstones In My Teeth

Death slings its shadow like snake-eyed dice.

Death talks rough and loose like it’s praying to the patron saint of ain’t.

When death asks me to partake in its home cooking, I expect to get some tombstone stuck between my teeth.

When it asks if I’d like to see its birthmark shaped like a gun, I say I got better things to do.

Because when love pays me a call, I listen. I hitchhike a ride wherever it’s going.

The last time love reached out to me, I could’ve sworn its finger was on a trigger when all it wanted was to offer me a rose.

This One Goes Out To All The Moms

Pet moms, plant moms, fertile and Wordle moms. Book moms, Buddhist moms. Mothers of all races, ethnicities, and religions. Mothers of invention, mothers of intuition. Ninja, nightingale, savior, sufferer. Mothers whose mysteries are born of the moon, mothers whose children left them far too soon. Punk rockers and grocery stockers. Fire-bringers and soul singers. Teaching and preaching moms, pot-smoking and chain-smoking moms. Mothers filled with pretty pleases, others suffering from ravaging diseases. The lavish and impoverished, the feline and dogged. Single moms, singing moms, artistic and anarchistic moms. Fierce moms, fun moms, mamba and mama-bear moms. Mothers that can stretch $20 into $50, mothers with the luck of a heads-up penny. Dreamers, schemers, magicians, musicians. Mothers no longer with us in the flesh, but who own vast amounts of prime real estate in our hearts. To all the moms out there, happy Mother’s Day.

What the Sauced Philosopher Said to Me at the Crossroads

A little knowledge is a dangerous thing, but not as perilous as tons of ignorance in high places.

If you’re as busy as a bee you’re probably not dead as a door nail.

Behind every great woman is a great man behind the eight ball.

Don’t jump the gun when the jury’s still out.

Poetic justice is far mightier than the powers that be.

If you’re a chip off the old block of someone with a chip on their shoulder then your deus ex machina will probably make no bones about spilling the milk of human kindness and not crying about it.

You can’t teach an old dog new tricks unless you’re barking up the wrong tree, in which case all bets are off.

Love Be

Love can be quiet as a library.

It can be loud as jukebox sugar.

Love can get loopy, slur songs like a sweet-liquor whistler.

Love can be tender, a soft-struck match of mercy’s light.

Love can be a naptrap, a warm comfort you never wanna leave.

Love can get down and dirty, a bright breakbeat on the wild side.

It can offer a backhand slap of happy, changing the saddest face to a smile.

Communication Buildup/Breakdown

Sometimes communication be a honeyed word or brass-knuckled trouble.

Sometimes communication be a burned bridge or hope’s chokehold, leaving you dizzy with bliss.

Communication be scuzzy or lovey-dovey—a flock of fury or a gaggle of giggles.

Sometimes it’s rancid and racist or noble and knowledgeable.

Sometimes it be screw your fake news, I got my facts down right.

Deadbolts ready to lock out deception. Medicine ready to stave off infection.

Sometimes communication be a witch doctor ready to root out the down. Build roads back up to higher ground.

At the Corner of Sunset and Dante’s Inferno

Beyond latitudes of bad attitudes and hellish terrains where death entertains the notion of going viral;

beyond atomic-age ravers, love cravers, and feasters at the all-night diner of wide-awake dreams—

I stand at the corner of Sunset and Dante’s Inferno.

A bullet hands me a fortune cookie.

The note inside reads, life would be easier had we been born butterflies.

Perhaps, I say. Still, it’s too soon to die and too late to live a life other than your own.

a north star postponed

What happens to compassion postponed?

Does our collective soul implode?

Or maybe it’s left bereft of peace, kneecapped and crippled on the frontlines of a cruel history that can’t stop repeating itself.

What happens to a freedom drum deferred?

Do its rhythms decay, leaving us shackled and wallflowered on the dance floor of imprisonment?

Or maybe we’re rendered speechless, silent in an unlawful land without a beautiful song to call our own.

What happens to a starry night adjourned?

Are we left forever dreamless beneath a nameless night?

Or maybe we become bereft of reverence, robbed of a North Star that has guided so many to freedom.

What happens then?

When we’re left alone in the dark…