Nursurreal Rhyme

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The cruelest months go by each day
they wander with a restless sway
unaware of falling mirth
and sinkholes opening in Earth.

Chinchillas chin chinning with big wolves blow inning
while spoons run circles through sky.
Passersby passing windows entrancing
and catching the little dog’s eye.
Swing deep round the sun with chariots undone
like broken chair yellow hair girls.
Jump over the moon where candlesticks swoon
and Little Bo makes not a peep.

Frickers frick fracking a diller a dollar
a scholar stays up to count sheep.
Dance to the fiddle of monkeys with riddles
while baby bear’s broken chair weeps.
Little Miss Muffet her spider beside her
responds to her followers tweets.
Hickory dickery walnut and chicory
bake those birds up in a pie.

The cruelest months go by each day
they wander with a restless sway
unaware of falling mirth
and sinkholes opening in Earth.

Brenda Warren 2016

Notes: The prompt at NaPo today asked us to write about the cruelest month. I thought for awhile, and couldn’t come up with one. And so began this stream of consciousness that flowed quickly from my fingers. A bunch of nonsense with some nuggets of sense, I think.

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Sex Poem

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11

Brief me erotic with endless grace.
Feed my roots.
Fill me until empty threads itself gone.

We speak of starlings
dancing murmurations
moving through us
rare and rendered sacred.

Beneath Pandora’s shadowed sky
we claim witness.
Brief me erotic
plant your secrets ‘tween my thighs.

Brenda Warren 2016

245

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Monster Haibun

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The monsters in my closet were real. They had three names: Crush, Kill, and Destroy. During the daytime they’d chase me with snakes or meet me in the garage where fear met darkness in cracks of light and my little heart beat holes in 4 year old me.

stitch up my spirit
secrets bloom on thorny stems
monsters lie in wait

Years later, undefined panic sent me to a seer, a shrink with a gift. Blurred lines cleared into cracks of light in the walls. My story made sense. The sacred book that is my life reveals itself in unwritten pages.

crush, kill, destroy me
meet me in the dark garage
where sacred books begin

Brenda Warren 2016

garage

Garage by Randall Talbot

For day 2, Elizabeth prompts us “to write about something we have never written about before: a secret, a childhood fear, something avoided or purposely ignored. Something we have left unwritten.” She provided six words to include in our writing today.

undefined, book, lines, fear, gift, secret

When I saw where this was headed, I decided to write a haibun. A haibun is prose interspersed with haiku. There are holes in this story that may never get filled. Still, it was good to explore it. Thanks for the prompt, Elizabeth.

Relief

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A basin of acid-fluxed ink, her stomach plunges & rises with peppery repression. Months of unwritten words scorch stymied syllables in her throat.

Subjugating silence with sound, she thrums and caws, spinning thought until words break free to proclaim their place in April’s pages.

One word, one poem, one day at a time, she begins to feel writing’s relief.

Brenda Warren 2016

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Notes: The prompt for this piece is breaking the silence. Each day in April Elizabeth Crawford Katch will offer a prompt at 1sojournal. Pay her site a visit to see the prompt in its entirety, and to find other poets’ responses. It’s all about poeming this month.

Lune for NaPo

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April opens to
poets’ souls
casting light through cracks.

Brenda Warren 2016

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Today’s prompt at NaPo is to write a Lune. A Lune has 3 lines, with a 5-3-5 syllable or word pattern.

Three

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Becoming a zealot,
I cringe.
Instances like pebbles through a thousand mattresses
make crooked my face.

Fueled by lead laced water,
God talk, and a staunch belief in climate science
I build holier than thou
nests of words and images
to counter yours.

I am sorry.

Light your fire,
make me see it’s better to be subtle
like a brook
babbling those pebbles smooth
until names become traces
phantoms of ideas
smoke rings.

*

Len & I walk the dogs.

Breathing in we step,
one . . . two . . . three.

Breathing out we step,
one . . . two . . . three.

Three is a magic number,
and tonight the moon is full.

Brenda Warren 2016

244

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untitled

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9

Returning to what never was
she tells herself stories
peppering the journey with
cycles of once upon a never times.
Lines blur
between atoms and source.

Her words become sky
as waiting stands of aspen
quake their flutter through her,
reminding her to be still and breathe.

She’s there
gathering stones.

Placing things she wished for
that were never born
in every stone
she stacks her regrets in a cairn,
ameliorating her spirit
balancing the once upon a never times,
there, where the swooshing of aspen
dances wind with song.

Brenda Warren 2016

243

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Baa, baa, Trump Sheep

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30

Disregard facts
hold tight to your faith
that Donald will transform the world
with words that flower hate.

Baa, baa, Trump sheep
have you any soul?
No ma’am, no ma’am,
we sold it at the store
of bigotry and hatred
punch ‘em in the face
later on we’ll kill them
to further our disgrace.

Disregard facts
disseminate dreams
of a whitewashed world
the home of the free.

Free to be a racist,
proud to be seen
beating up the “other”
on our media screens.

Baa, baa, Trump sheep
have you any soul?
No ma’am, no ma’am,
we sold it at the store
of incendiary language
punch ‘em in the face
treat ‘em like an object
obstructing our race.

Practice smug abhorrence
present it to malign
anyone who interrupts
your hate-filled lies.
Disregard facts
let ignorance shine.

Baa, baa, Trump sheep
have you any soul?
No ma’am, no ma’am,
we sold it at the store.

Brenda Warren 2016

242

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Ashes

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Popping oblivion’s cork, she smiles
unaware of later darkness,
stories that she never wants to hear.

Dancing with liquidity her spirit wafts
through elemental games of chance
bellowing sparks to flames.

Ashes to ashes
to ashes to be
anything else but me,
she sings,
anything else but me.

Her defiant ground recedes
to roiling dreams from ancient seas
bruising morning’s body to the floor.

She places her strength
low on the hearth
stacked among shadows ‘tween bottles of self.

She stares at the ceiling
and screams.

Brenda Warren 2016

241

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