Recipe for Coming of Age (Hour 2)

Ingredients:
1. Courage
2. Dishonest Lovers
3. Dead Friends
4. Years of Recreational Self-Destruction
5. Surrendered Ego

Directions:

To begin is to fail.
If you are trying to be intentional with this recipe,
you will certainly spoil the flavor of its culmination.
You mustn’t try, you just have to keep participating.
Make choices, have some courage,
but to get anywhere with this you’re going to have to mess it up.

Love comes swiftly, or what you think is love, unripened,
yet so enticing you pick it from the branch before its ready.
Quick to taste it, to make it yours,
And when you give it your breath, it spoils in your hands,
wilts behind your turned back,
rots out of sight of your bowing head.
Pairings will never be perfect,
which is why all of them are critical elements to this recipe.

Hearts grow wide as they deepen.
Those who sing a similar song come and go,
or come and stay to share the weight of life’s approach.
Fun is had, be generous with its amounts.
Dreams are birthed from tender lips, mix them in quickly,
discard lesser ones if you have a change of taste.
A place is created, inhabited in the stories unfolding,
where fellowship and inspiration are cultivated in a trustworthy company.
Death appears like yeast rising too quickly in the oven,
like the white froth boiling over the pot on the stove,
with the burner set too high.
Death’s flavor is bitter and unforgettable
You will never be the same.

Your appetites will change, diseases and demons will want to feed,
the reach for true nourishment shadowed by the luster of hollow magic.
An emptiness that aches to be filled in,
that makes you believe you can add enough ingredients to satiate the hunger,
You’ll be stirring this for a long time
but it’s consistency will never hold.

If you fail hard enough and long enough at this you might get it right.
You might end up with humility that connects you with every other living thing,
void of any identity that separates you from coexistence.
Perhaps a little more careful with what you crave,
aged to taste.

Recipe For Each New Day

Appreciate each eye opening, each breath in, each breath out.
Focus on what is most meaningful, most kind, most joyful.
Accept that it won’t all be.
Resist that which could derail, distract, discourage.
Remain determined to make it and not just accept it as it is.

[Prompt 2: Recipe Poem]

Recipe for Solitude

Recipe for Solitude

Ingredients

1. Window pane
2. Spriinkle of rain
3. Few dashes of remembrances
4. Touch of sorrow
5. Vanish of distances

Hour 2

@varenyas

Where Babies Come From

Before the simple moon was in its place

then no one knew the reason for your face

a lunch where all could gossip, snap, or sneer

Was where the fates discussed and talked about

The many snags that every sweater has

May need a microscope to understand

A luncheon with the temperature of ice

What do with you, already there, we should

The forest woudn’t give us any aid

The silent rock did never blink its eyes

Said you were here to police all the brass

To turn the spots of mica into gold

You never did annoynce your purpose here

Needless to say, a persona may adhere

to goals celestial, measured out by stars

or if the mission fades, find your own way.

Hour 2…. The Revolution Has Begun

Patrick Henry said give me liberty or give me death

Harriot Tubman said she would shoot anyone who made a sound or dared turn around

There is a price to be paid to be free.

I do not know who said ignorance is bliss

But I do know this…

Stockholm syndrome is a real thing.

That is not to say I live happily every day under my oppressors thumb-

Only that sometimes the beat of my ancestors drum goes dim

And I wonder if the rhythm is done

The sound drowned out by the incessant noise of the same old wheel

There is a price to be paid to be free.

Can the spirits of my long dead relatives feel

That the revolution has begun?

Well, Duck You Too, Buddy (A Tanka Poem, Hour One)

Well, Duck You Too, Buddy!

 

If my phone were smart,

then perhaps autocorrect

would have learned by now

the proper use of McPoop

is only to pass McRib.

 

(A tanka is a five line poem with the syllable count 5/7/5/7/7. This poem was inspired by true events. I once was trying to type the word “cool” while texting and driving and mistakenly typed “Ciio” instead. My phone, being the smartphone that it was, instantly replaced my typo with “McPoop,” a word that I had never in my life typed prior to that day. This poem also inspired by one of my favorite guilty pleasures, the ever so tasty mystery meat that makes up the McRib.)

Recipe For Sanity (Hour 2)

Recipe For Sanity

 

This cookbook won’t put up with none of your self-centered archaic antics.

It’s recipes have such a tang, that you will know nothing exists but here and now.

 

After all, haven’t you spent enough time doing what was expected?

Why not add a spoonful of cayenne even though you don’t like heat.

 

Everything would be boring if it all worked out exactly as planned.

So why not stand on the edge of a cliff and twirl as fast as you can – eyes closed – and then take a step forward.

 

Well – you’re still here – so I guess it worked out.

 

Your reward is to be Michael Jordan about to shoot the biggest shot of your career.

Millions are watching. You are in the ocean. Waves lapping at your knees. All you have to do is throw this big ol’ basketball and hit the water that is all around you. Can’t miss.

 

But what if a hurricane blows into your face just as you let go and blows that ball onto the shore so you lose the game. Dejectedly walk away amidst a medley of boos that drift into the marrow of your being.

 

Can you realize that there are things bigger than you?

 

Can you accept that everything doesn’t work out the way you planned?

 

Well… if you can then you are ready to bake this cake.

 

It will only taste right if it is infused with love.

This love is not meant to make you feel good about yourself.

 

This love is a form of art nonexistent until right now.

That’s right…something new.

 

And you are not creating it.

It created you.

She Loves You

Even if it’s imperceptible to both of you.

Even if it’s not the way in which you would have preferred to be loved,

it’s still better than the full force of a bus colliding on impact

waiting for you to dig your head out the sand.

when i was younger, i thought i neither wanted nor needed it

but then i realized it’s like a jetpack. it may not be essential for survival

but it’s still a pretty awesome thing to possess.

2

2/

At night fall,
Turn on a gentle white whirring
Hang a large black cloth over each window
Squeeze orange foam to stop the ear drum’s resonance with the dark
In blue ballpoint, write the day’s missed marks
Burn the list

Embrace the virtue of vanishing

Hour 2–Removes his Glasses

Glasses removed we see

the person behind the defenses

Weakness of sight is a vulnerability

no one praises

Perfection is a heavy burden

eventually everyone tires

Exposed, human, struggling

for a brief second we know

the soul within the corpus.