This Cup

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I’m learning how to cry in deep despair and pour my blessed hot coffee at the very same time

Pain and gratitude in the same cup, indeed

I’m becoming better at praying goodness for others at my broken heart’s expense

Love and sacrifice from the same vein, it frees

I’m deciding to live with the dread of the box I was put into and with hope that I’ll one day be free

Abuse and healing in the same lifetime, glory

In Sales

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The left of my brain, omnipresent, churns in the background, planning to acquire real estate, shaking hands with all my synapses, as a snake, propagating the message, “don’t ask for too much.”

The whole of my heart, hope-trained, stands in the line of fire, clad in silvery full armor, bravely readying my skin, deflecting endless barbs of propaganda, imparting the beautiful truth, “I am her too much.”

The Slumberless Way

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He almost asked me out I know

But the law got in the way

I gave him my sky, I preyed him, go

Tell what the stars have to say

Each night I’ve dreams I wish to share

But time’s gotten in the way

It’s midnight, and no one wants to care

A woman’s prophesied play

I’m watching out for his soft heart

But my ache, it wants its way

It’s likely I’ll only know such art

From afar, my eyes kept at bay

Unorthodox

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Each of us has a Saturday song, resting patient in our heart

It stays there, soft, anonymous -almost nary a one makes its way

Upstairs and outward it ought go, and easy it must stay

Into our head, that our ears could hear to conduct our hands and feet

Combined ethnicities and God-ward now, as it should have been

Take her, the song, into your arms, and find together, the dance

(Architecture Credit: Frank Lloyd Wright; Annunciation Greek Orthodox Church, Milwaukee, Wisconsin)

Shadowless

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For it is with the deepest pride I make a mess of things

I stink up the kitchen most fierce and pull out all the stops

Innocent ingredients -seemingly so- I’d have to say

Or at least to some they’d be, depending upon one’s appetite

I do this with delight, sometime near sundown each day

All to keep the Vampire away

Outside

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So there I was settin’ on the outside stair, put there as punishment, I guess

Though, unlike most youngsters, I didn’t know what I’d done wrong

Left out to live, exposing my skin and my heart to the harsh elements

An occasional smile from a passing turtle or bumble bee sustained me

Probably they spotted my deer-in-the-headlights desperation from afar

Speaking some kindness, they felt, wouldn’t hurt any

If only they knew, scarcity would have me hanging on their every glorious word

Writing of them, strangers, all these years and footsteps forward, later

Filling in the blanks left by the one who left me settin’, sad on the outside stair