such my boy

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for Sisu


For years I’ve told you, you are such my boy,
while your head pushes under my chin, rumbling,
or when my fingers comb through your silky coat.

You used to be a 22-pound purring beast.
Now, when I rub my cheek against your softness,
your bony spine pokes me into never
wanting to weigh you again.
I don’t want to know what’s left of you.
I want alchemy to work you back to monster cat regality.
I want to feel your bulk against me,
heavy and secure.

Yet you keep shrinking before my eyes.
Your lungs to fill with fluid
congesting breath and sneezing snot.

Purring your love into my cheek,
your spirit wants to live, Sisu.
But how many days,
how many weeks,
how do I know when it’s time?
Please die quietly at home.
Let me wake and find you,
so crocuses can bloom through your ashes next year
and I don’t have to choose an end for you.
Your company brings me comfort.

Oh, how I will miss you
such my boy.

Brenda Warren 2013

trifecta

Process Notes:
This piece is my Day 9 piece for April written in response to a Trifecta Challenge that you can access if you click the Tricycle. It is the first poem that I wept through as I wrote it. Sisu is a Maine Coon. His mother Annie lives with us, too. Annie is still a monster cat, but she is not as big as her boy once was. This picture was taken last September.  Sisu had already begun to shed pounds by then.

Sisu in front of his mother, Annie.

Sisu in front of his mother, Annie.

spin your truth

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7

Dervishes revolve in harmony with both stars and cells
invoking God in everything that exists.
Vermin. Heretics. Words used by humans who lack
understanding and house narrow minds.
Lies hide secrets to appease the greater populace,
governed by bullies disguised as leaders who
invoke fear, scattering fringe elements.
Not being true to your own ideals
generates hypocrisy.
Spin your truth like the dervish
erode tyranny with tenacity
like rivers spread canyons through stone.
Fight oppression with honest expression.

Brenda Warren 2013

8

Miz Quickly’s is a click away.

Process Notes:
Miz Quickly prompted us to follow the form found here. The phrase divulging self is the acrostic I used to guide the piece. From there I opened my trusty purple dictionary to the letter “d” and put my finger on a word, dervish. That word along with the acrostic guided the content of the piece. It’s not my favorite but it works. And hey, Day 8 is complete with a poem to post.

Just Saying

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Educate yourself prior to pontificating political perspective on Facebook, or anywhere else for that matter. If you can’t produce facts, and primary source documents illuminate your misrepresentation of issues, then hogwash is afoot.

Brenda Warren 2013

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Process Notes: This piece is in response to the Trifextra Week 62 Challenge.  We were asked to write 33 words of advice.

Place, Sense, and the Mizquicks

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(never been to Hawaii)
(never even imagined being there until now)

Waves must sing delicious on volcanic island shores,
projecting ocean mantra into foam against the stone.

But technology encroaches roads with parasitic people,
beaches swarming, merging masses, leaving splashes
of anxiety in my quiet Montana mind.

In Montana, a stellar sense of solitude
urges road trips over Bridger Canyon Drive,
where clover’s sweetness inundates my senses,
and paints ditches with its hues.

At the summit of the highway,
just past the road to Brackett Creek,
I stop and smudge the four directions.
Burning sweet grass, ancient blessings
that linger in my hair.

Dropping down out of the Bridgers,
Montana’s high plains start to show.
Rising in a sea of quivering prairie grasses
the Crazies kiss the sky, this is what I think
is meant by candy for the eye.

Crazy Mountains - B. Warren

Crazy Mountains – B. Warren

Inquisitive seedlings of imagination take root.

Years ago, a fleet of Mizquicks landed in the Crazy Mountains
they feasted on its craggy peaks. The minerals activated wild
hallucinations that made the Mizquicks laugh. They mined
the rocks with picks, not unlike our own, put them on their ship,
and flew back home to Zortan, where other Mizquicks dine
on compost rich fecundity, and peaks do not exist.

In the off chance they return,
I’ve left maps with arrows from Montana to Hawaii
on the top of Crazy Peak.

Brenda Warren 2013

7

Well that was an interesting journey. I used a list of 12 words from The Sunday Whirl, and Miz Quickly’s prompt for day 7 of NaPoWriMo. Her prompt asked us to combine sense and place.  Quickly says, “include a place you’ve never been, a place you know well, and a place fictional or imaginary. For each place, appeal to a different pair of senses . . . Do be specific. Beautiful, delicious, loud: nice words, but fuzzy.”

This was a fun exercise.  I do think the break (picture) in the poem would be a nice place to stop. Then again, it was fun to envision the Mizquicks’ eating habits.  😉

Belle of the Ball

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Looking for a place
to hide away her heart,
she floats across the dance floor,
waltzing all alone.
Her lemony chiffon gown
brushes the beaus
of other beauties at the ball.

The women watch her warily.
The men are mesmerized,
their attempts to cut in,
rebuked.
She desires her dream lover’s arms
to lift her as she swirls.

He whispers tender mercies,
reveries delivered
casting stars into her eyes.
Invisibility is charming—
her partner’s clever disguise.

Brenda Warren 2013

6

Miz Quickly prompted us to shuffle an iTunes playlist and write down the first five songs. Quickly says, “Song title one tells you your subject. Number two tells you something to hide (however you want to interpret that). Within the text of the poem, include the other three titles—word for word.”

I used a playlist of Eliza Gilkyson songs and these were the first five after a shuffle:

Belle of the Ball
Looking for a Place
Dream Lover
Tender Mercies
Clever Disguise

Like madder root

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8

the blood
of birth exerts
its red upon the spring’s
white snow. The ewe she bleats, the lamb
it breathes

(its fleece not white as snow).

Brenda Warren 2013

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Process Notes: This piece is written to the April 5 NaPoWriMo prompt for an American Cinquain, a form that has specific word and syllabic requirements for each line. Click on the button and check out the parameters if you’re interested. The parenthetical addition is not to form.

Prosthetic Conscience

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8

Looking like a fleet of frisbees
Abundance of Onslaught
(redundant or not)
will ascend beyond heaven.
Refreshingly unconcerned
with the vulgar exigencies of friendship,
it will carry the common cold virus.
Washington diplomats ran out of tissues,
Handkerchiefs are no longer in vogue,
The loudmouth senator with blue hair declares,
“If we send out the common cold, they will cure it!”
She sneezes to a round of applause.

Brenda Warren 2013

napo2013button1Day 4 Notes:  The NaPo prompt for the 4th (click button) asked participants to choose from a list of a spaceship names from science fiction novels by Scottish writer Iain M. Banks.  Three of the names appear in this piece:  Abundance of Onslaught (the fleet sent out into space), Refreshingly Unconcerned With the Vulgar Exigencies of Veracity(changed to friendship), and the title, Prosthetic Conscience.  How could anyone in good conscience send the common cold virus out in a fleet?  Really?  So here you have it, a slightly absurd poem for the fourth.

Pa leans.

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farmers

Sun drops to cool the day’s refrain
of the shovel’s crunch and ping.
While border collies pant sweat,
wary of the orange feral cat they
and Billy spy in the field behind Ma,
smiling with her camera contraption,
Pa leans, resting on his spade,
tickled to see the sun contort his boy’s
silhouette across the canvas of his pants.

Brenda Warren 2013

3

The photo prompt came from Miz Quickly. Click on the 3 pic to visit her place. The picture is from an website called Shorpy, that boasts an extensive collection of historic photos.

Keeping Ahead of Jimmie

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for Thyra Louise

Most parents of deaf kids applaud conversation.
Your parents, grandparents, and family friends
paid for your silence with quarters in cars.
Soon, we collected bills,
and fanned them in front of your eyes.
After a specified amount of time,
we would rain dollars down on you
paying for quiet on long distance road trips,
where your incessant observations never ended.

Every now and then,
you’d ask us to slow down,
so your invisible friend Jimmie
could keep up with the car.

~~~~~~~~~

No wonder we left our family.
We both needed Len,
who told me once with jewels in his eyes,
“Everything children say is fascinating.”
He laughed, then added,
“How can anyone not listen?”

Years of your imagination were lost
in silent cars,
running down roads I don’t remember,
trying hard to keep ahead of Jimmie.

Brenda Warren 2013

trifecta

The prompt for this piece came from the Trifecta Challenge. Click on the tricycle to visit their site, and read some more pieces that used the word “rain” in a rather odd fashion. I will also share this at open link night at dVerse Poets Pub. Thanks for being there.

This is my third piece for April. Thyra likes it. I am grateful for her life, her wisdom, and her kindness.  Len is the light in my eyes; he inspires me to listen harder.

My customers love her honey and so…

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I keep the wall between us as we go.
She places jars of honey in a row,
conversing about buds and melting snow.
Her eyes contain no kindness that I see;
they never even rise to look at me.
Yet here she is, discussing pleasantries;
like spring, and the arrival of her bees.
My wall builds up with buzzing irony.

Brenda Warren 2013

2

Process Notes:
Miz Quickly’s prompt today offered six lines of iambic pentameter as possible starting points. Rephrase it, add to it, respond to it. Write six more iambic lines to complete your beginning. Er….something like that.  Click on the pic to go to Quickly’s place.

I chose the line “We keep the wall between us as we go…” for my starting point. Miz Quickly tells us that line comes from Robert Frost’s “The Mending Wall.” Thanks to Quickly & Frost for the inspiration.

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