mama said you can’t hurry love
mama said save it for the wedding night
mama said it fits like a glove
mama said don’t worry he won’t bite
mama said talk it out, don’t let anger brew
mama said go easy on yourself
mama said let your words be kind
mama said bring your light into the world
mama said live your truth
mama was the caregiver, kept the peace, the bond that kept us all together.
(inspired by B Elizabeth Beck’s prompt last night)
She stands quietly.
Right where I left her—
still, waiting.
Curves aching to be held,
her polished form fading
beneath my absence.
She’s never asked for much—
just hands, just time,
just the space to be heard.
Strings lie still across her perfect frame,
tuned for moments that never came.
She holds no grudge— only potential,
gathering like dust
beneath the weight of my excuses.
Her voice— I’ve heard it in glimpses,
echoing faintly through closed doors
and crowded schedules.
A sound that once moved me now
muffled by every reason
I gave to walk past her again.
She is the calling I keep postponing.
The open door I never step through.
Maybe doubt. Maybe fear.
Intimidation often creeps up
when confidence is unstable.
She is my dream,
the love I long to display.
Perhaps my pause is born not of doubt—
but of feeling unworthy
to touch what feels divine.
While I tread
the battlefield of my value,
she just waits.
A quiet reminder
that faith without action
is a song written,
yet never played.
fixed on you from across the room
like camera lenses recording you
for some later longer consideration
head tilted lengthening the neck
inviting a fantasy of strange lips
leaving their mark on your heart
or drawing blood to quench thirst
hand holding yours as you dance
as she walks with you to the bar
while you sit thigh to thigh talking
about nothing of real consequence
or describing a bed in the sunrise
(after an undated and untitle photo of a woman seated beneath a painted fan, by Tom Hoops)
All the little snares that come along
Any one of which can trip or trap
Little weak points inside of you
Can dictate your feelings, your predjudices,
Your behavior!
Your inclination to bully meets up
With a situation of little resistance
Points of insensitivity, vacuums of awareness
They’re looking for opportunities to sneak
Past your guard and get out
This of course will blow your freedom
But maybe, now
That’s what you want
The clamp you’re in
The brace, the cast, the rut
Maybe it’s embracing
Sure feels like a Lazy Boy, kicked back
Should Simon Stimson be
The Spirit is no contained, candled wisp.
For Bryce
If only I’d known that at the end of that haunted forest,
tree trunks twisted faces and averted eyes, branches
seizing wrists and ankles, that I would land in your clearing,
I would have thanked God for the muscle sprains.
If only I’d known that 1,000 miles across fields of wheat and longing,
in a town I’d sworn never to return to, you’d be waiting, I would
have skipped through the flaxen sea, embraced the world as
I knew it ending as the dawn of something brilliant,
landed in the back of a room full of worshippers traveling to
lay compliments at your white sneakers. I’d be their acolyte,
my head nodding along to the songs they sing of you. If your mind
is a ball of yarn unspooling, consider me a kitten,
pawing to unravel it and discover every centimeter. A neophyte,
already I need your hands covered in my damp dew and
your titanium. I’ll work out your kinks. Whisper-write your name
on every tree and piece of paper. I hope you see what I see
when our eyes meet: an open door, an unmade bed, a place to just exist.
Dotdot is a texture (fiend) connoisseur she
stretches
her flexible body, back exploring the
velvet or
handknits or some
scatter of puzzle pieces on the table before me.
The goal, or so it appears to me and what
do I know I’m just a person but
she rolls to one side and looks sidelong into me
extends
one paw to
beckon
my silly human hand to show up
for this
living.
I am only in 3rd grade
