Like a pulsating lover,
V hugs highway curves
that bring us close to Helena,
heightening our journey to uncover chance.
Brenda Warren 2014
For Elizabeth’s Day 5 prompt.
I wrote this piece in my beloved Volvo, V Otis Walter, on a road trip today.
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blossom
And the day came when the risk to remain tight in a bud
was more painful than the risk it took to blossom. ~ Anais Nin
What if the only thing nurtured is violence?
What blossoms then?
Erosion?
Dead ends with shotgun shells?
Petals pulsating pools of blood?
A tired earth that constantly quakes?
Flakes over cities that never see snow?
Where did all the flowers go?
Brenda Warren 2014
For Day 4, Elizabeth asked us to write a poem in a form we seldom use. For me? Questions. In its entirety. I like it. But I didn’t like it until the last line landed. Sometimes that last line evades you for awhile. The Anais Nin quote floated through a Facebook post and became fodder for this piece.
shine
Find a crack in language,
move into it with dissension.
Disrupt and disgruntle,
create a chasm,
a miasm.
Parse phrases into
segregated clumps of clay and
you will be the one left
holding arms and charms
and hovering swarms.
A truly cracked sorceress
conjuring confusion.
Never knowing up from down.
Turn around, you clown
let the rain make naked
your face.
Explore emptiness.
Learn to let go of
everything but breath.
Fill in those cracks
with the light
from your shine.
Brenda Warren 2014
Written for Elizabeth’s Day 3 prompt.
LaLa
There’s a crack in everything
that’s how the light gets in
– Leonard Cohen
Soil me.
Let your magic hair tickle secrets from my thighs,
as you sing our ragged future through my soul.
There’s no turning back (you fine furry fuck).
You are my man. My sorcerer.
Majestic, you move through the crack in my everything.
That’s how your light gets in.
That’s how you help me breathe.
Your fingers move through the spaces of my bones
as you shoulder loose the gloaming of another well-lived day.
You are it for me, my LaLa.
If only you were home tonight,
connecting constellations
for the monkey on my back,
balancing a lotus act
along its crooked track.
Brenda Warren 2014
Written for Elizabeth’s Day 2 prompt.
April 1
Nurtured beneath time’s fecundity
bulbs root future’s potential
until a line of crocuses bursts purple
through early spring snow.
Mending white with shivering color,
a row of healing heaven
salves the icy growl of winter’s teeth.
Brenda Warren 2014
Written for Elizabeth’s Day 1 prompt.
Life beneath Still
Bottles bend their necks like thighs
diffusing light into green dust
that falls in small strips
through slatted wicker
over apple’s waxed red flesh.
A towering city of cheese
wedges blue-veined buildings
into a pungent neighborhood
where olives fuss over holes in Swiss stoops,
and silver fish squeeze into tin boats
only to be lifted slack
and plopped into the gullets of forever.
Brenda Warren 2014
Notes: I started with the first line, and decided to imagine a still life painting. When the words ‘plop,’ ‘squeeze,’ and ‘slack’ were left, all I could imagine was sardines. They do add to the pungency of the neighborhood, and they brought an unexpected ending to the piece.
Visit The Sunday Whirl
Regret
Back again.
A trial.
A test.
Without a peep,
she slowed her breath.
She left her high horse
blown apart,
its stick figure splintered
the course of her heart.
Under eggs over easy
her patient legs swung.
Tabled elbows angled toward
a steaming mug of coffee black,
a mundane comfort, piping hot.
Salt and pepper, potatoes and eggs
she trusted diner food would
bring her strength.
A form diminished from heavy regret, born
when she opened wide
chests of meanness she had spent,
to keep herself
better than the rest.
Many amends reared
beckoning heads
toward her newly found ethical sense.
She swung her legs, and ate her eggs
and pondered what to address next.
Brenda Warren 2014
Visit The Sunday Whirl
Notes: This week’s words took me in many directions, and wound their way to this piece. The image that I started with was a mental image of a woman eating breakfast, her world changed in an instant. This is a revision far down the road from the original. It kept changing course on me. The woman had something to say.
party of one
“History does not repeat itself
but it does rhyme.”
~Mark Twain
History does not repeat itself
but it does rhyme,
evoking déjà vu.
Mind drips tricks
through dryer vents
onto sidewalks
in multi-colored layers.
A brave virus
courts frames around later
where the wages of forgetting
fail to pave safe our way.
It feels like a wallflower’s dream,
a party of one
no support required.
Brenda Warren 2014
Notes:
When no poem would come, I decided to use the Twain quote to wax surreal. When I gave myself permission to NOT make sense, this piece came. Don’t know if it means anything, but I like it.
Visit The Sunday Whirl
be careful what you wish for
for Philip Seymour Hoffman
Relief becomes addiction,
a gutsy routine,
needled into flesh.
It plucks your empty body from the flow.
Heroin rings around the rosy,
rippling your trunk as it
lists toward a needled stream,
craving escape from the dream.
Ace in the hole.
Be careful what you wish for,
struggle no more.
Brenda Warren 2014
Missing the Groundhog’s Shadow
Open to the cadence of the crow
we cast stories across the groundhog’s hole
bucolic permutations
to stroke our common soul.
Shadows come and shadows go
across the land from clouds and sun.
At Gobbler’s Knob the shadow’s done.
Former this, potential that,
the inner circle tiptoes past
in long black coats and tall top hats
like a balance to be thrown.
This hoopla haunting Gobbler’s Knob
ignores synergy of sky and sun;
it ignores the groundhog’s shadow.
The president in top hat black
declares which scroll the groundhog picks
with a nebulous nod of its nose
a scroll that depicts
the weather to expect
it alternates the edges
of the stories that we own
with six more weeks of winter.
~~~~~
Brenda Warren 2014
Visit The Sunday Whirl
undercaws 