Picking Petals: An Invocation to Love

Poetry by The Irrational Sage

It takes courage to open up...to bloom... vulnerability splays open the heart and soul, to let your true self be shown, to shatter walls that are overgrown...to trust that if pain comes or others try to take your sweetness that you still remain upon the throne of your completeness.

With love so deep you fear not bleed
the thorns may prick but you’re not afraid

let your essence reach out and touch the flow

unafraid to repel
unafraid to be alone
unafraid to shine
unafraid to know
unafraid to love
unafraid to grow
unafraid to float

like flower petals opening…
freedom of “being” the only task...
expand and welcome it in…
spread your arms open, learn how to bask...

and bloom

and make room

for that courage to come out of you

even if your heart is broken….
no matter how many times it was stolen….
even if it was rung out a hundred times….
Keep going, keep opening…

For you can love another…
again and again…
Just start with yourself…
Let it all in…

And feel the warmth
from the Divine
as every petal
is a yes, every time.

To love can be painful because it holds no guarantees that it will be reciprocated, but do it anyway…do it because you can…do it because you choose…do it because, even if it hurts, you never lose.

Love superficially.
Love deeply.
Love weirdly.
Love strangers.
Love the Land.
Love your pets.
Love your life.
Love all you can.
Love yourself.
Love God.
Love your enemy.
Love our kin.
Love your friends.
Love your memories.
Love the truth.
Love the way.
Love good.
Love being misunderstood.
Love Love.
Love regrets.
Love your woes.
Love the mess.
Love the yes.
Love the no.
Love the blessings.
Love the lessons.
Love the endings.
Love to begin again.

Wear it out. Exhaust it. Put it on your sleeve, but don’t flaunt it. Over use it, but never throw it out….and definitely don’t abuse it.

I’ve learned a kind of love that one can only get from too many heartaches, heartbreaks, and a life mostly of solitude that has taught me to just try to love life some way every day, to appreciate the simple things. I guess I’ve learned to “love” my aloneness, while always remaining in openness.

Love is many things: a noun, a verb, unconditional, conditional…when held inside a reverence of being it can carry its own tune. 

It’s funny how one person can say something and it mean so much and someone else say it and it’s just empty words…so most of all, mean it, or don’t use it.

It’s ironic too…you can spend a ton of time getting to know someone, yet there not be any love there, not really, while feeling deep love from someone you hardly know…you can love an animal without ever speaking words…you can love someone (from afar) who is not healthy to be around (or there is distance for many possible reasons) yet still see beyond the wounds that they haven’t been able to overcome, or situation that required appropriate boundaries be set…you can love a flower for its beauty….you can love an object for its duty…you can love a song because it moves you…you can love from a place of pure essence for the one thing we all share in common…LIFE…yet in all this know that some types of love must include far more than just the feeling….more than just being…but love translated into a language that gives proof to it being real and not a fantasy, meaningful and not just fanciful….imagination made material….effort as appreciation for its presence.

And most of all remember, people pleasing is not love…avoiding confrontation is not love…fearing someone’s reaction to your vulnerability…not love. The courage to be honest, even if it means losing someone you care about…that’s love (for yourself and them).

This very short poem is called Picking Petals…. it’s a sort of invocation for the frozen hearts in this overly intellectualized modern day, to breathe life back into the bones of humanity again, a “defibrillator” prayer for a world that desperately needs a kickstart to the heart in more ways than one (if you know, you know)…..a return to real connection with Source…to nature (after all the earth is the heart, our Pachamama, and we can feel her resonance, the electrical impulse always there waiting on our souls/soles to touch the soil and charge up…to reconnect with her)

May your heart beat to a rhythm that makes you want to dance through life… may these words be a kick-start as fuel for a return to a fiery, free, and full heartbeat.

Now go tell someone you love them, even if it’s you in a mirror, or your dog, or your chickens. (note to self).. or get heart to heart in some hugging.

Love is irrational AF. It can heal and drive people mad, it’s the strangest part of life that knocks all reason out of kilter. It wears many hats.

Guard your heart…open it up….guard it though, but seriously, open it… hahaha! (do both..in the right time, be wise)

Pricked my finger on a rose thorn in the yard, now I’m writing about this topic…it’s like the ouchie for which there is no bandaid (the heart that is, not my finger).

Follow your heart AND head AND ears AND gut AND nose…

Remember, love isn’t always a pretty little thing, it’s terrible, it’s revealing, it hurts, it’s healing, it’s lovely, it’s a fright, it’s a daredevil of the night, it’s an angel of delight…

There are different kinds of love, different ways to love, but it feels to me that in its rawest form:

• Love is a gift

• Love is an initiation that strips you of ego and prepares you for lifes tribulations and celebrations

• Love is a bind that transcends time

• Love is sacrifice, defeat, the mystery of life we all must meet

• Love can’t be contained

• Love is a bridge between fate and will, between what we run to, or from, a revelation that comes without explanation, yet can grow in proportion to exchanges in relation, a biological exaltation of something greater to partake in

• Love is a test, an offer to throw your hands up and do what is best beyond the self…and sometimes for the self….the paradox of paradise lives inside the EVOLution of LOVE

Tough Love is needed in these times we’re living in, it might be the most selfless kind because it usually means doing the hard thing, the right thing for yourself and/or another from a pure place, from a place of reason when the heart is screaming otherwise…it’s never the status quo, yet hangs out in the underbelly of the collective boat. No one can save another from apathy formed by a numbed out cavity, a darkened heart that forgot to give itself permission to grieve…forgot that the heart is an alchemist that needs to be allowed to feel ALL the feelings.

And none of that love and light phony-boloney will do, it has to be real and wild, to be as it is…show me how brave you can love, show me how free you can be….tear down those walls and let your heart bleed, let it weep, let it breathe, let the debris fall down in jubilee…and pay no mind to those strangled by the fear of what could be, if only they opened the cage to their spirit held tight under lock and key

With love and courage,

(Picking Petals)