Be Sweet

be sweet with yourself
while donning your arms and armor
for the day.

drink fruits newly juiced
from a cup fashioned from
the skullcap of yesterday’s enemies.

be fierce as a broken daisy
not yet browning
as it droops toward decay.

ask yourself: if you are not
a warrior, 
how are you still here?

in your shelter
as night, whether ripped tent
or bungalow, dim tenement

or high glitz studio:
are they all not 
battlements? lay your hands

upon your sleeping beloved
and swear the only oath
a warrior should take:

here is what I am, here
is what I love. may I not let
this coarse need for war today

grind away my words 
and my deeds. may I
recall the sweet even as I 

traffic in the bitter.
may I come home. may I
sleep there. may I not be alone.