Sacrificial social issues scatter,
then rise again like mist
mirrored upon the tattered banks of now
reflecting the vast underbellies
of skirted straw dogs.

***

Raw over Sandy Hook,
remembering Aurora,
the media spins its guns,
opening fire on our right to bear arms.

Opening fire on victims
the scales of justice blindly allow
insanity as defense
and edge people out of jail free
attempting to rehabilitate them
to rid them of a desire to annihilate lives.

Opening fire on human dignity,
the dental hygienist,
with hands in my mouth,
curves me this ball, “You know,
Adam Lanza (the Sandy Hook shooter) had
Asperger’s Syndrome.
Those kids need a school of their own.
They shouldn’t be with our kids.”
She scrapes my teeth with stainless steel.
“We have one in our town, you know,
a kid with Asperger’s. He knows everything
about guns. It’s all he talks about.”
She shines my teeth with minty polish.
“We’ve got this girl, too.
Her brain grew too big for her head or something,
so they had to crack her skull open.
She’s nice and everything, but she wears a helmet.
She could go to that school, too.
We can consolidate these kids
from all the rural communities
and bus them to that school.
They could all be together.”

I close my eyes and keep my metaphorical mouth shout,
waiting until my literal mouth is free from her hands
before opening fire.

Outside, a bell tower chimes reminding me that holiness
is always peering just around the curtain’s edge.

Brenda Warren 2013

*************

Process Notes:
I wrote the first stanza, then read it several times and mulled it over. Eventually, it lead me to the rest of the piece. I did try to educate my dental hygienist after the cleaning. She lives in a community about 45 miles out of our town. Her ideas may not change, but she listened and we had a respectful conversation. A little piece at a time… a little peace at a time.

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Stories stored in stone
venture out through cracks of bitter cold;
with clarity, giddy like breath
they step into now.

Grandfathers
blasted awake in fire
cover tumult’s wake with wisdom.
Time’s winds will eventually erode faces into pillars—
six grandfathers watching.

Practice.
Still yourself and listen;
their voices linger deep within granite
forced from Earth.

Brenda Warren 2012

Six Grandfathers from Wikimedia Commons

The Six Grandfathers is what the Lakota called Mount Rushmore.  If you are interested, this article fueled my writing.

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Black Friday holds her sway over zombified shoppers,
arms outstretched, into the crowded jostle
that marks her prominent parade of people
heaped into American shopping malls
heaped into Walmarts and Targets and Macy’s, oh my!
Hip hip Hooray, and fill up with goods.

Christmas opens her doors early in America,
shining as a beacon far enough away
to light the piles beneath your decked out tree,
skimming the illusory surface of
nothing is ever enough.

Load up your carts good people:
evergreen candles to scent your home Christmas,
iPads, now minis, Mister Coffee’s like Keurigs,
all of these things that you don’t really need,
promoting your spending, feeding your greed.
In the end game,
all that matters,
is that he who dies with the most toys wins.

Wake up!

The mall falls silent
while shoppers consider
illogical trips through the aisles of the store
where there are still flecks left of deal great galore.

Black Friday insists that there is nothing more—

doling out her ever present persuasion,
safe in the knowledge
of human greed.

Last year’s numbers topple beneath best ever sales.
The system remains intact.
Black Friday curtsies her smile.

Brenda Warren 2012

Process Notes: I don’t shop Black Friday. Mostly though, I just don’t shop. Crowds do me in, Black Friday crowds would crush me. The system has control over our spending. We need to wake up, collectively.

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When beauty becomes business
parameters are set
proliferating pretty ideas
that turn us into pawns
running off to purchase products
designed to bust us out of who
we really are
to create who we can be,

Ta-da!

The mirror hides our real faces
cast aside and silent,
sorry they were never enough,
trampled upon by societal ideals
as needling procedures
entice our easy vain pride
filling in our laughter’s life
eating up its lines.

When beauty becomes business,
daughters desire more than they are.
Society teaches our children enhancement.
Find a mask that covers what’s wrong.
Women and children buy it:
lock, stock, and help us belong,
shooting for media envisioned standards.
Ready. Aim. Fire.

Pinching a pretty profit,
industry eats original face.

(unless we stop feeding the beast)

Brenda Warren 2012

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Post-argument pain beats through hollow hearts
like birds behind bars fluttering nowhere.
Leaping words cascade into rocky landscapes
and dry woods rise between eyes.

Although in the distance
a brook’s current glistens deliverance,
phantom pain persists, pulling its chest up,
righting its wronged regality,
denying deliverance into love’s sweet flow.

Eventually, the current rubs smooth words
hanging out there, all craggy and sharp
wishing they’d never been said.

New moments peer up through earth in the wood,
shining there, lighting the dark.

Brenda Warren 2012

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Process Notes:  The first line originally read “phantom pain;” I changed it to “post-argument pain” to provide a richer context.

A tumultuous scramble of eggs
dances on a Teflon shore.
Sizzling its upbeat charm,
it congeals its epicurean fate.

The toaster’s wrath glows until dark lines
score bread with images
of keys and fences,
blanketed with buttery swellings
that slowly seep into its porous depths.

Coffee’s bitterness flees
beneath cream’s heavy comfort
as breakfast enables morning
to dispel rotten dreams,
opening potential’s door
with a slow creeping smile.

Brenda Warren 2012

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Eleven women gather in the darkening of dusk;
eleven threads of story are exhumed from beating hearts.
Grief and fear comingle into winds that whisper messages,
seeking relief from men corrupting power to control,
men who don’t know what it’s like to live within a female form
impregnated by your mother’s slimy boyfriend—
or raped by a football player and his friends,
or assaulted on your way home from the library
and left damaged and alone.

Your femaleness invited it,
your vagina,
your sex
and now you’re bound by this parasite,
this tiny feeding being,
too angry to think about rape,
and babies,
and the intentions of God.

Too scared to hate the world any more,
too scared to nurture life within,
too scared to let your mother know
when she’d beat you for doing her boyfriend,
or the football players would haze you in the halls,
or you’d revisit in a belly round, the pummeled pillaged mess
that you’d become; the baby a scarlet letter,
a rape tied around your waist.

Eleven women gather in the darkening of dusk;
eleven threads of story are exhumed from beating hearts.
Second chances dance their histories, their lives without that “we”
banished to the freedom of not having to be.
Eleven liberated women gather in the gloaming
rippling outward inklings of energy through darkening skies
all their wishes woven into one single thread
that grants the right for future women
not to be forced to bear their rapists’ bread.

Brenda Warren 2012

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
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