The Drowning Sea

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Beneath water’s churning load,
eternity splits into pieces of
before and after.
Waves tunnel caves of grief
through a crazy chattering frenzy of ocean,
swallowing villages,
indiscriminately scooping
anything into its roil.

Frothing beaches melt into a sea
that belches a mass of debris
shattering a wake of absence
with its own broken pieces
cut from before
heaped into after
moonshine and foam.

An invisible sense of delivery
from evil
giggles up from the bottom
of the deep blue sea.
Dark and alluring,
it waits.

Brenda Warren 2013

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Fields of Forever

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Thundering jets,
hooves spew fountains of dirt
as arrows arc from rider’s bows
into rows of Saladin’s Ayyubid army,
lances forward,
fighting on fields of forever.

Silver shimmers on hilts spilling blood
slashing as swords clash and clang,
amputating hands, answering God’s mighty call.
Knights Templar wield their holy swords
warring for Jerusalem,
an unfolding jihad.

Overhead a crow caws,
a tether rippling from its talons
as it scans the warring hordes.
A page of history rises like a status update
while the black bird circles the two Gods’ fighting yard,
an unholy park of steel and flesh—
spilling blood for a city,
spilling blood to prove which God is just:
Allah or Yahweh,
Allah or Our Father.

Horses step and scream.
Chinks in chain mail armor open,
as Ayyubid spears thrust through warrior chests.
Knights Templar rise and fall.

Neither side rests
unable to curb adrenaline’s slice
until death does them part
fervently falling into fields of forever.

Brenda Warren 2013

112

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Process Notes: Salah ad-Din, or Saladin lead an army called the Ayyubid army (I did some searching to find that name, as I wanted to be historically accurate). He captured Jerusalem, defeating the Knights Templar in 1187. I’ve been steeping myself in medieval movies, and watched Arn twice yesterday on Netflix. It is also a six episode series on Netflix. The series goes into far more detail. Both or either are worthy of watching. Arn is a Knight Templar. War in the name of God seems contradictory, yet it is common.

August will come, and you will go.

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for Thyra Louise

I force craving through my throat’s long passage
and place it in the vault of my chest
where nimble, it twirls
like wind dancing channels through prairie grass seas
echoing all we used to be.

Soon, each yearning will rise through my limbs
forcing me outside,
forcing me to swirl trains of thought
into the same stars you see.

We can meet to paint the night
somewhere over Indiana, or Michigan
dissipating my desire to hear you laugh
or touch your skin,
rapturing among constellations.

Fierce, you will glance back at me through Luna’s full face
hinting at the secrets her shadowed halls hold.

Brenda Warren 2013

111

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Beyond Safe Harbor

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for Shelly F

Blazing, your vision crushes ruts.
A torch of fiery breath
it cuts through the redundancy of nebulous
bullshit that wafts up from calling cracks
forging a force of intentional instruction
delivered with timing
bell-to-bell.

Slabs of color warm bleak corners,
as an opaque fog dissipates,
moving students beyond safe harbor
into lives that synthesize and summarize content
strategizing information, mining text for insight.
Your vision burns and buoys us.
A dragon lady and a heroine in one.

(White lady,
sparrow,
rosebud cheeks,
diminutive powerhouse
with heels,
ultra chic.)

Uncertainty hovers its intangibility over next year’s changes,
as your lessons in strength touch my soul,
growing a pillar inside
that brushes off insignificant remarks
like so many pigeons in a park.

Uncertainty dissipates with clear vision,
flinted by the fire in your eyes,
while strategies blaze pathways through tomorrow
stoked in classrooms
wall-to-wall.

Brenda Warren 2013

Process Notes:
The Whirl words sent me spinning, and I couldn’t figure out where to take them. A trip to Immediate Care kept me from my principal’s retirement party on Saturday, and I decided to work the words into a poem that I could give to her, to let her know that she has impacted my life on a profound level. She is a complex person. Her bottom line is family. Right above that lies student performance in our school. Shelly has helped me become not only the teacher that I am, but the person who I am. She hired me as a literacy teacher after I interviewed for a math tutor position. She believed in me, because of the way I talked about my daughter and the importance of her education in the interview. She taught me to believe in myself. Believe the dragon line. It is true. Believe in her strength; it makes her who she is, and every person who has ever stood in front of her knows what it feels like when it emanates from her. Dragon Lady. Sparrow. Rosebud cheeks.

Poets who read my work might remember the lines white lady, sparrow, rosebud cheeks…. I wrote those in a stream of consciousness exercise thinking of Shelly. Her shoes are a trademark. The phrasing is in a piece I wrote in April 2012. Although the shoes and the powerhouse are Shelly, the rest of the piece is not.  That’s how it works, eh?  Bits and pieces of our lives fall onto screens. Here’s a link to that rap ditty if you’re interested.

And here are those damned Whirl words.
109

Binding Spell

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poppet

A binding spell protects me
from the broken circling words
that fall chanting from the cave
of your mouth like fists
to pummel my repute.

Whispering a vow
while sewing a poppet,
my needle works through
the crook in its neck
where I stop to insert
your words in the space
between its nonexistent ears,
stitching them silent.

Hidden from the sun
your slander stops its drone
beneath Montana’s badlands
bound in a doll’s head,
buried in Makoshika,
a few hundred miles away.

Brenda Warren 2013

Process Notes: A good friend dabbled in witchcraft when we were younger. The word binding sparked a memory of a binding spell she showed me once. As the details were foggy, I did a search and found this recipe for binding. It fed my poem. Personally, I don’t dabble in witchcraft. Casting spells to control others goes against my core belief in self-determination.

108

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river of change

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Singing provides a place for grief to move
through the thousand thunderous memories
that flash in bits and pieces
pulsing pictures of your son’s short life—
toothy grins and tomato soup,
grass stained whisperings,
your spit smudging dirt
from his soft pink cheek.

Days count themselves empty
since children and teachers lay crumpled
in red pools of dying self
on December 13.

As the media dish moves beyond Sandy Hook,
singing pulses its balm through crowds
massing movement through hearts,
transforming pain through prayers
that carry messages of love.

Your voices move like a river carving channels
through the spirit of our land,
creating conduits for hope’s flowing grace.

Brenda Warren 2013

Francine and David Wheeler lost six year old Ben in the massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut. This piece is my response to an interview with Francine, David, and Peter Yarrow (from Peter, Paul and Mary) on Bill Moyer’s show, Moyers & Company. You can see the show in its entirety here. The video above is Francine Wheeler and Dar Williams singing Family. It makes me cry every time.

Visit The Sunday Whirl.

107

13 Ways of Looking at a Dog

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1.
My dog’s tongue is a long pink lick machine.

2.
Victor Little Plume claims he’d rather eat
his grandmother’s dog soup than school lunches.
Any Day.

3.
Laying claim to Earth, Daystar masks
the bright shine of Sirius
engendering summer’s dog days.

4.
Joanie believes a recording
of vicious barking dogs
repels rapists.
Real dogs make her sneeze.

5.
Plains Indians refer to the time before horses
as Dog Days—honoring interdependence.

6.
The sociable docile beagle wags its way into lab experiments.

7.
Only a true dog lover masters the expression of anal glands.

8.
Beneath the city
in the morgue
the coroner pries the victim’s scalp
from the teeth of the Rottweiler
that shredded her pretty blonde head.

9.
If you lie down with dogs
you get up with fleas.

10.
Driving through Browning,
hub of the Blackfeet Nation,
we see more dogs than people.

11.
Corky, Floppy, Bruno
Becky Zent, Bearsy, and Belle
Hopper Doodle-Doo
and Piggy, too.
And BoonDog and Elliot
over in Mizzooo.
ow-ow- owooooooooooooooooooooo!
Howlers howling,
sing it to the moon.

12.
Four legged loyalty
adore me like royalty.

13.
Soother.
Companion.
Protector.
Friend.

Brenda Warren ~ August 2011