My engine runs on fear today.
It strives to hide while
all these shiny wings fly by.
There is no truth,
only mornings
that witness
the why.

Pricing papers
shredded and shed.
Life splits into pieces.
Do you feel it?

Fear.
Ubiquitous.
Not free.

I keep thinking I’ll reach this spacious place.
Open.
Clear.

Simple, like pancakes.

But no.
Butter drips through blue-berry stacks that
kill the drowsy plains of afternoon with dreams that shatter sheep, baa – baa – baa-ing over faltering fences.

I keep thinking it will get easy -er.
Seek and ye shall find they say.
Knock and the door shall be open.

Nothing clears into a blur of grace
like blueberry pancakes
whoring their way to something else.
Forks ignored.

We are all afraid of each other.

Maybe we should be.

I am Gladys Kravitz
watching a dead girl rise.
Her pungent eyes cast a stench of black syllables
she spits at the street.
Her glances taste like the rotten apples
Lilith rued in the Garden of Eden.
I am not Gladys Kravitz
but I can’t stop looking out my window.
Slithering succotash.
The dead girl stops to vomit then smiles as
she spins a whistle round her finger.
A broken digit of Paradise.
A field of flowers, serpents, and flame.
To the corner she leaps in one bound
like a black tarp in wind.
She’ll soon be meeting Adam,
that heavenly dealer.
Stifle your needles with your head!
Carpe diem.
The needle needles Adam to exorcise her demons.
Together. Apart. We watch the dead girl rise.

Brenda Warren 2020

Written following the Napo Day 5 prompt

Rooted under eyelids
lost images of pursuit
fled through bedded gardens
where smiling sycophants fawned a preacher
who locked the gate behind me.
Deadly and benign.

Waiting for a sign
he chuckled
and looked toward his god.
Undignified and holy.
He slammed me down.

My face became a radish.
Its roots sought water through the dirt.

Brenda Warren 2020

you misinterpret your existence
sitting amongst your disowned treasures
like the eye of the storm
you never cry without knowing why
you don’t know it’s hard to live
you stop breathing to
keep yourself alive
in this liquid window
that can’t hold anything in
you forget
who you never will be
you misinterpret your existence

~bw

This poem came from Fourteen Sad Lines. When I felt blocked, I went to that poem, and reworked it by trying to come up with an opposing piece line by line.

In my cup
From my hands
To my mouth
Coffee
Magic beans
Brew me up
Coffee

~bw

I’m at a poetry standstill. 🤷🏼‍♀️

Is this what I’m left with?
This final destination
This pit in my gut
This aching at the base of my skull
Living in limbo
Waiting
Wondering if the light will ever shine

Waiting for the axe to fall
To chop me into two distinct selves
The one you think I am
And the one who hides in darkness
Shivering
Waiting for the end of everything
Created by my own necessity
Not knowing how to stop
To stop it from falling
Like an apple from a tree
Rotten to the core
This hidden me
Trying not to rise
It hisses and rattles
Venom and spit
It’s all that’s left
Of empty

~bw