100 Praises

1. Praise! May this writing become obsession

Singing freely without question

2. Praise the gimlet, praise the tonic!

Praise the drink that slakes your thirst!

Praise the first bird song of morning!

Hello, sunlight, do your worst !

3. Praise the cat on my lap — his name is Shivers.
As he purrs, his belly quivers.
His belly quivers, and his eyes they shine
Praise his warmth and his weight and the fact he is mine.

4. Praise the lion’s massive jaw
So strong, regal and statuesque
His gorgeous head rests on his paw, As he slumbers on my desk.

5. The silence is so loud it sounds like rain,

Thunderous like the downfall of a king —

Praise the sonorous silence deep in my brain

This voiceless throat, silent bells that ring

6. Praise the joy of mastering word play

Praise the way my word doth gleam

Praise! I got Wordle in two today —

Started with grief and ended with dream!

7. Praise the hapless procrastinator

Putting off ten thousand things
I look to you, O, co-creator,
To join in as these praises sing . . .

8. My fear and I are holding hands as we step on cracks,
If we find coins in the crevices we gobble them down as snacks.

9. This day I praise my fellow writers

Silent each of us at our task
We are lovers, we ain’t fighters

Every word removes our mask

10. Let us praise our daily opera

Deep emotion, long held notes

Grand piano, candelabra

Stirring voices from our throats

11. Praise the stew and praise the broccoli!

Praise the coffee and the rice!
Though the writing leaves us hungry
Let us praise at any price.

12. Praise the half rhyme! praise the vowel!

Praise the hearty consonant!
Language shouldn’t disembowel —
Sing, oh, sing to your heart’s content!

13. Praise the proverbs, praise the psalms

Even if you get perplexed
Praise the words that seem all wrong

They may be the words you love next

14. Praise! The gods will not help you, but your friends will.

15. Let us praise the joys of friendship

Let us praise our enemies
I will not let this feeble pen skip
As I scrawl these remedies

16. Praise Diane and praise dear Shep

And their lessons in alchemy
I didn’t learn it step-by-step
I watched instead from the balcony

17. Praise alchemical texts: chant them & the words fly off, yet the meaning is distilled.

18. Praise the man who bought my cello —

44 years since I’d touched the instrument

and now it’s gone and I feel mellow.

Dennis, may your song be infinite!

19. Praise all that is not meditation

I’d rather sing a song of praise
Hail, drifting mind — no dedication.

Still I’ll love you all my days.

20. Praise the child who tells you secrets

And the child who’s circumspect
Both have worlds to leave you sleepless

And wild-eyed dreams you don’t expect

21. Praise Huey, Dewy, Louie, — sweet!

We turn to them for great good luck,
For we know if we had their webbed feet,

T’would be easier to duck

22. Praise the frown and praise the scowl

I love it when our faces flex
Sometimes I wish I was Mr. Owl

Sometimes I wish I was T. rex

23. Praise the school kids playing hooky —

jumping across this bleak abyss.
Each one munching a sugar cookie
Who needs school when there is bliss!

24. Praise the girl playing soccer!
Praise the girl skipping rope!
Praise the mom picking up her daughter!

Praise the joy and praise the hope!

25. Our paperboy sidles by three coyotes.

He howls, “These are my daily routes.”
The golden creatures yowl back like toadies.

Yes, this quartet is in cahoots

26. Two kids punch at each other’s head

Then one stops to laugh like a tiny god.

“That was so funny what you said —

That now we’re even and we’re odd!”

27. Praise this world that is a dream

Praise this world that wakes
Praise the kettle and its steam,
The bacon fat and griddle cakes

28. Praise each swallow - glorious!

The fish, the nuts, the fruits, the cream.

Eat, my darling, eat it for us.

Why should pleasure be a dream?

29. The pancake batter stretching out in the skillet forms a butterfly.

To gobble up that flapjack brings a kaleidoscope of praise.

30. I am the girl in the pantry

I am soup in a pot

Drink me up for breakfast

Never ever stop.

Porridge made of rice

Tasty when it’s hot

Drink me up for breakfast

I am soup in your pot.

31. The wide mouthed tea cup with the lemon on its rim.

32. Because I’ve quit caffeine, I drink dreams for breakfast. The day speeds by but I’m not rushed.

33. She couldn’t help, but tantalize
with her spicy stews and her flaky pies,
I couldn’t refuse — I was hypnotized.
I couldn’t choose to push my spoon aside.
So we got tight on the kitchen floor.
She fed me all night. I was screaming for more,

devouring delight like a starving boar.

34. I sing the anti-machine — the human body,

built for for pleasure, not productivity!
As Walt says, it’s electric, built for change.
No body should retain its shape.

35. My hands curled and arthritic
My hair straight and uncombed
My teeth yellow and crooked
My feet cold in broken plastic sandals

The bottom of my toes triangular,

And yet my arches lift.

36. Praise our ears — without them we would hear no echoes

37. Praise your large and small intestines!

Praise your appendix, long removed!

Death to all life is predestined.

Still your heart beats on, bemused.

38. Praise my hair — so gray I have no recourse but to throw temper tantrums just to prove I’m a redhead.

39. Praise my teeth — that rotting parapet
where my tongue — a gardener or a spy — can’t resist exploring, trying to make sense of the ruins, all the way to the root.

40. Praised be Death — a fat white cat batting around a mouse — Who could be you. . .

41. Praise a voice like sandpaper, grizzled and gray To chase all your blues away.

42. Your breath is the gateway to your voice, he said, and I exhaled.

43. Lemon and honey

Lemon and honey

Why, when you speak,

do you sound so funny?

The scratch in my throat

the shuffle in my step

It could be despair

It could be strep

Lemon and honey

Lemon and honey

You caress my throat

And now it’s sunny

44. Praise! That charming barista is a countertenor. . . . .

45. The larynx lets you sing

and lets you cough

and won’t let you choke —

Praise your little voice box.

46. She swallowed the moon and it sat in her throat

when a cuckoo in a crown sat on her back.

Alas, when she tries to sing — nary a note,

yet all her other wishes are granted — remarkable hack!

47. Praise! I detest these words!

I hate this page!

I revel I disgust!

I rejoice in rage!

48. Praise the glory of spewing hogwash!

Praise the intelligence of pigs!

Praise the zeal of leaping hopscotch!

Praise the fire built of twigs!

49. A gash in my heart, a stone in your shoe.

The thoughts overwhelm me when we’re apart,

but, sweetheart when I’m lying next to you,

Praise, like honey, flows through in my heart

50. Praise! This page intentionally left blank.

51. Praise the nickels in your pocket

Praise the whiskey on your tongue

Praise each word you’ve ever written

Praise the days when you were young. . .

52. Praise how you can turn nothing into something.

53. Praise the year 1953

April 15th the Ohio sunlight shines

Through the snowflakes.

My mother’s eyes widen

As I take my first breath.

54. She danced and danced and would not stop

She howled at the sun and laughed at the moon

She forgot the dream of tomorrow

She forgot the end arrives too soon.

55. A heart of gold is not legal tender, tender though it may be.
You cannot trade it for cash— or truth— despite its obvious splendor.
Your heart is an alembic whenever cry and yet on what side does your heart lie?

56. Praise the one who brings soul butter

Praise the lunch of tea and bread

Praise desire fun and flutter

Praise the glee you find in bed.

57. Praise the voices in the streets

Praise the silence that resounds

Praise our thighs between the sheets

Praise ours hearts that pound and pound

58. When he came, he always cried out a different name.

Surreptitiously, I kept a list of them in my little silver book.

After we broke up, I realized they were names of saints

59. Praise! Chacun a son gout — to each their own. 60.

Praise the flood that lifts all boats!

Praise the drought that makes us thirst

Praise the storm rising in our throats

Confirming that we’re not all cursed!

61. Praise the “sublime of sonorous silence”

Praise the cries of noisy boys

Praise the ones who eschew all violence

Praise the ones who digest all joys

62. Praise the dust — shake it off and it becomes stars in the sky

63. The water from the creek was soft and warm as my grandmother’s washcloth.

64. Praise the sheepish double parker

Praise the cub who cut me off

Praise the gracious, gleeful walker

Lightly, Coyote, hop across

65. Praise speed! When Earl Scruggs plays the banjo on “Foggy Mountain Breakdown,” he plays 14 notes a second.

66. Death is a fiddler
Death is a cloud
Death is a fiddler
Sing it out loud
Hum it on a Sunday
Chant it in at noon
Death is a fiddler
His music makes you swoon.

67. Drink the days like a magic potion,

enchanting as the red head

of the vibrating hummingbird,

frozen as it drinks

68. Praise the dude on a fancy bike who gave us protestors two thumbs up and then

tumbled onto the road. The two cops trolling us rushed to be sure he was all right.

69. False weapon of integration, data is not imagination.

Imagination is not saved by data.

Do not save the data, save the imagination.

70. I wanted to be a god so I dreamed that I could speak Finnish

The language of now: no gender, no future

Praise that cold starry night soaked with the sound of the Kantele

71. The sound of coins clanking in my pocket.

The rustle of the bills my fingers stroke.

Praise the delicious joys of money!

Praise the fact that I’m not broke!

72. Praise! When we celebrate May Day, we make mayhem.

73. I went down to the creek bed and dreamed there was water

And the pink stones shimmered beneath my imagination

If water is my dream, are the stones my reality? —

and can you pay the bills with that philosophy?

I sip my beer and consider the ways I’ve made a mess of my life

And the ways I’ve made it a dream

74. Standing firm, a peach tree, a birch tree, and a crabapple in full bloom

In the chocolatey soil, a golden slug preens and stretches

75. Gently pulling weeds — thistle, and dandelion — lazy as the day is long.

76. Praise what you find on your stroll: a cracked pot, a broken yellow bowl, bay trees scenting the lifting fog, live oak, madrone, calla lilies, monkey grass, and tasty miner’s lettuce.

77. Comb the junkyards, shouting praises!

Find the compartment, find the glove!

Like a light, that’s weak, then blazes,

Praise is but a form of love!

78. Baxter, Baxter,
Why don’t you just ask her?

79. Praise the absence of faith! Praise the arc of action!

80. Praise the rooms you’ve pushed your way into

Praise the rooms you’ve left

Praise the neon that lights the Bijou

Praise everything single way you’re blessed!

81. The Past is embedded in this moment, Now. And Now dreams of the moment when Past and Future kiss.

82. Praise the silent singer who stands in the alley,

her hands rifling through her purse.

She looks so weary,

I wish I had a glass of iced tea,

condensation on its cut glass sides,

to place in her stained hands.

She could press the glass to her forehead,

forget everything,

and let her voice unfurl!

83. So fly away home and come to my window

and sing me a song in words I don’t know.

Does it make sense? Does it swing? Does it tremble? T

he sparrows are hatching and soon they will go

84. Holding a bag full of nails, I stand outside the hardware store listening to a man with a flute, playing a song of praise

85. Praise my former student who picks up garbage. “I love the chance to study ,” he tells me, “what people leave behind.” His cleft pallet looks regal. His voice is low and deep. He stoops and bends and smiles, “I like to see things go round.”

86. Praise the earth — as golden as a globe can be.

87. Praise the moon and praise the sun

as they cruise close to the earth,

intensifying the sea with their gravity

so the king tides surge.

88. When I hear the owl’s question: whoooooo, my voice deepens and I answer, “Meeeeeee.”

89. The austere fir tree shimmies in the breeze.

Below hummingbirds throb, drinking deep

90. Praise me, darling, I’m a sinner.

Name the error— I’ll bet it’s mine.

Though the forests are getting thinner,

you’ll always find a Laughing Pine.

91. A boat drifts across a silent cove, inside everyone’s asleep, except a baby who delights in repeating the word, “anchor.”

92. Dreamer, dreamer, let me praise you

No need to wake — sleep, o, sleep

May the world always amaze you

As you drift across the dreamy deep

93. Sunshine calling, singing praises

Exaltations oh so sweet!

Find the word that still amazes

It will not admit defeat

94. Praise the ways you’ve lost your marbles

Praise the ways you’ve been reborn

Praise the ways your laughter garbles

All the phrases that you mourn

95. Adept, Adept you’re good enough

And so I sing a praise to you:

A sparkling diamond in the rough!

Let us lift a glass or two.

96. Let me praise my inspiration

Paracelsus meet Dr. Seuss!

You both deserve such veneration!

You shake my inspiration loose!

97. Praise the Salt floating down alone!

Alchemist’s sing that’s what remains.

In heaven, Mercury and Sulfur roam,

But Salt delights in earth’s domains

98. Praise every goofy word!

Praise every heart that sings!

Praise every phrase we’ve heard!

Praise, praise everything!

99. In the calla lilies, three coyotes howl at the storm.

Fat golden slugs relish the rain, rejoicing in their own tenderness.

Tear up this draft — revel with them

100. The air is fierce but the heart is open

No one knows how it will end

Take this verse as a token

Praise forever is your friend.