Origami dreams flash
in exquisite black shapes
that spangle dark the sky.
A cacophony of folded forms
flutters aches behind my eyes.
Ethereal dragons,
not faced in abstract dreamscapes
remain shelved to ferment
and later climb my throat’s slow rise.
Night eats them alive.
Outside my window,
in undulating blankets of blackness
a murder of crows caws a coda,
a dirge to the dragons
that color dark my soul.
Brenda Warren 2012
NaPoWriMo 22, 8 more to go
Visit The Sunday Whirl.
Slug Bug!
No slugs back!
My little green Volkswagen, Gladys,
sports blooming bright U ROCK plates.
We mind our own business
‘til we see children’s fists hit,
then we cannot help but relate:
“The green ones are hug bugs.” We slow and I shout,
spreading our message, my head hanging out ,
“The green ones are hug bugs. Please spread the word.
Don’t slug for the green ones or haven’t you heard?”
Gladys revs up her engine, and I give them a wave
hoping the next time, their slugging is saved,
for the red ones, the yellow, the orange, and the blue,
but when green ones pass like we pass, real hugging ensues.
Brenda Warren 2012
NaPoWriMo Day 21
I turned to Gladys for inspiration today. She is named for “Glad Us.” 🙂 Most days we are happy together, sporting around our fair city.
After yesterday, I was not sure that anything would come today, and am starting to feel that each arriving piece is a gift. Persistence delivers. Thanks for stopping by.
no poem no cry
haiku raises my rescue
new poem no cry
Brenda Warren 2012
~
Inspired by Bob Marley’s “No Woman, No Cry” and a lack of creativity on Day 20.
Spirit is
in waiting,
striving toward the other side of
that coming moment.
You eat air that does not yet exist,
a backward vomit of sorts,
stirring up the acids stress magically infuses
into knots that eat your stomach
right before you meet him to tell him
good-bye.
Spirit tramples his face.
You pull your eyes
away from his grief
to regenerate resolve,
then move in
then move out
of a hollow yearning hug.
Refusing to look back,
you walk into your spirit’s remains,
as the frayed knotted mesh
that connected you together
disintegrates
irrevocably changing
everything tomorrow holds,
leaving a red thread
between you—
a tenuous but endless connection.
Brenda Warren 2012
NaPoWriMo 19
Process notes:
My daughter broke up with her boyfriend this evening. I knew it was happening, and wrote this to work through it myself. LoL She handled it with maturity. Her grace and poise in difficult situations astound me.
This was intended to be a response to the We Write Poems prompt to “define what spirit means.” My endless thread took its own route.
| “An invisible red thread connects those destined to meet, regardless of time, place, or circumstances. The thread may stretch or tangle, but never break.” – Chinese Proverb |
for K Newton
Forever seventeen,
you visit my dreams where
television jingles for Fig Newtons
float your goofy smile.
In slo-mo freeze frame dreamscape,
we hike to the Devil’s Kitchen
beneath a screaming circling hawk.
I wake craving cookies.
Forever seventeen
at mountain keggers
your freckles dance high
on laughing cheeks
flushed from bonfires and beer.
You pile into your old man’s Buick with Edwina
and head to town for a pack of Marlboro’s and some munchies.
Turning sharp on South Davis,
the Buick tilts onto two wheels
between two landscaped maples
framing a family’s home.
The Buick meets the house
head on.
Edwina survives.
Thirty five years later
you still visit my dreams
Ooey gooey rich and chewy inside
golden cakey, tender flaky outside
wrap the inside in the outside
Is it good? Darn tootin!
It’s the Big Fig Newton!
here’s the tricky part…
forever seventeen.
Brenda Warren 2012
NaPoWriMo 18
a dozen remain
Windows open and close,
transposing dream into memory
while impressions impose their will on reality
and obliterate it on impact
fabricating shards that become
the stories of your life.
Everything lived,
becomes something else later.
Brenda Warren 2012
NaPoWriMo 17
This is dedicated to my friend David Arnott, who embellished more stories than I can shake a stick at.
Is it the spiraling nautilus,
empty with yearning,
beneath my solar plexus?
Is it the fertile serpent
that hisses up from my belly’s shell,
releasing its coiled umbilicus,
tempting and rattling my humanity?
Is it fishing with grandpa
out on the lapping waters of Lake Vermilion,
early, before the stars fade, and the edges
of the sky are barely beginning to blue?
Madam in Eden I’m Adam.
Offering up apples and palindromes.
Opening Pandora’s box.
Wallowing in temptation.
Quivering in its wake.
Slithering sustenance.
I sigh,
then curl inside that spiraling nautilus,
allowing its opalescent walls
to generate my breath
and soothe my solar plexus
while grandpa pulls a long worm
from the apple and threads it on my hook
then sends it bobbing through the waters
of my mostly settled soul.
Brenda Warren 2012
Process Notes:
A big thank you to fellow poet Marianne who provided this link to Watermark: a poet’s notebook yesterday, from which I took the title prompt. The sentence, “Madam in Eden, I’m Adam,” reads the same backwards as frontwards. It is the first palindrome I learned, and it seems to fit. My grandpa’s arrival in this piece brings me great joy. It is day 16 of NaPoWriMo. It astounds me that my river still flows.
Your work and ideas feed my own. Thank you.
The river’s tumbling current
pulls me deep into a turbulent dream
where I snatch glimpses of a girl
snagged on branches
like so much debris.
I wake trembling,
disconcerted by the river
eating children in my dreams.
Its growing appetite
swallows spring.
Brenda Warren 2012
NaPoWriMo Day 14
14 poems in 14 days. 16 more to come.
Under the moon
when the coyotes cry
all the town’s children go whistling by
riding like lightning down Gulliver Lane,
hooting and howling—
a pedaling train.
Brenda Warren 2012
NaPoWriMo Day 13
Somewhere in the middle of your bouquet of words
a bee sting pricks the walls of my heart.
Its heat beats through my chest.
Its venom cooks my face.
Salty viscous tears
slide through my soul
and never marry air.
You are a swallow
swimming through the shallows
of my balmy calloused skin.
Intangible shadows rally
and lie in wait
for later sabotage
when echoes of your words
will waft their fetid fragrance
and send you hot and fluttering
through the tender empty shallows
of my ever hungry flesh.
Brenda Warren 2012
NaPoWriMo Day 12
Yesterday’s prompt at NaPoWriMo asked us to consider our senses, which is where this piece took root. Then it took its own direction, and wound up with swallowed shadows. It almost feels like two different pieces to me, but it’s day 12, and I’m tired. It will look completely different to me in the morning, they often do.
Thank you for your support this month. It’s nice to know you read my work.
Adventures in Poetry and Writing
brenda warren
Reclaiming my inner badass at 50
Just another WordPress.com site
poetry by nicolas ryan brown.
Writing for Wholeness
Waiting on Words
A Feminist Literary Collective (& outlaw poets swearing)
"What a strange bundle of consistent inconsistencies we all are." Mary Ronan
The weather and the light are just different out here...and sometimes you have to find the words for things.
My poetry is my religion.
Sunshine on Razor Wire: perspectives from "inside"
Be inspired...Be creative...Be peace...Be
a weekly flash fiction prompt inspired by google maps
Observations from the loose nut behind the wheel.
spiritual enlightenment and self improvement
In real life.....
undercaws 