honeyed hives

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20

Quick,
before instinct gallops away
chase that whim through honeyed fields.
Resist logic.
Listen to buzzing undercurrents and
fluttering hearts .
Pollinate twisted papyrus hives
into colorful enzymatic etchings
where hibernating thoughts
cosset dreams and percolate
a viscous amber river
thrust into the world
through honeybees’ bellies
into this bumbling sticky poem.

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Admittedly an odd piece, it is where the words took me. Being on the start of a family vacation, I played with it a bit in the car yesterday, and do not know where else to go with it. I read something about hornets recently. They make their papery hives by ingesting bark from area trees and puking it up. In areas with multicolored trees, they surpass magnificence. Honey also runs through a bee’s digestive system. They add enzymes to it to make it more viscous….apparently it starts out watery. Interesting stuff…I wanted to work it into this piece, and this piece resulted.

Please visit The Sunday Whirl for more pieces that incorporate the twelve words in the following wordle.

seven saved

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14

Seven elephant calves
huddled in the wooden kraal.
Tears streamed gray trails through golden
dust collected on their leathery skin
as trunks snaked across trembling faces and bodies
seeking solace and familiarity.

On that inconceivable day,
two-leggeds pulled and prodded the seven
over long dusty roads, away
from the Zambezi river valley, away
from a vanishing parade of female Elders.

Who would teach them to be elephants?

A new moon darkened the savannah,
while fourteen ears heard murmurs of
a wind-garbled tale the Matriarch
trumpeted as she sketched reprisal
to a fervent battalion of Cows.

Arriving as barely discernible silhouettes,
the Ladies encircled the hut
where every man slept off
a late night’s whiskey.

At the Matriarch’s signal,
the Madams stomped until carcasses
merged soil and thatching grass
into one flattened mass.

Dulari the Eldest freed the seven calves
pulling boards from the walls of the kraal.

Trunk to tail to trunk to tail they fled
deep into Africa’s shadows

where sojourned in a sacred circle, Crons’ trunks
fingered every inch of the seven rescued ones
with coos and moans and rumbles
that rendered them home.

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The prompt at We Write Poems this week ask that we revise an old piece.  In November of 2009 I wrote a poem a day from a different word each day. The word for this piece was kraal.  It is a corral for livestock in Africa.

My intention in revision was to give the reader a better for feel for the elephants.  The original piece is here:  kraal

The Siren’s Harp

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21

The Siren’s taloned toes grasp a driftwood limb
wedged among jagged rocks that loomed
like headstones tossed in the shallow hell
of Purgatory Point. Through his scope
Josiah witnesses her crimson hair tumble
a dazzling mask around her nakedness.
Dissipating clouds waft flecks through tangled
tendrils as she preens fresh salt from her wings.

Josiah casts angels to the wind as his heart
hurtles toward sparkling droplets of the Pacific
that nest on the Siren’s clear plumed skin.
Everything his world holds sacred wanes
as she feathers songs on her whalebone harp.
It’s flossy sinew strings strum mesmerizing
melodies that urge Josiah to turn his ship’s wheel
into the fading light of his last breathing day.

Reaching the Siren’s illusion, splintering
explodes, wood flies and Josiah draws his sword
to slice through sinew. Savoring the crew
of Josiah’s Good Fortune, thousands of piranhas
eat flesh to bone. The Siren keens a haunting dirge,
while she restrings her whalebone harp.

Brenda Warren 2011
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Visit one of my other blogs, The Sunday Whirl for more poems with this week’s wordle words. Construct a piece yourself, and post a link to it there so our community can celebrate your results.

Rojo

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11

Rojo plays a banjo
his talons pull the strings
and every time the music starts
young Maria sings.

Rojo learns a new song
as Maria combs her hair.
She hears a twang of sorrow
from a bird inside a lair.

Maria feels the pain he plays.
She slowly lifts the latch,
then opens doors and windows
setting free her catch.

Rojo looks her in the eye,
his pupils shrink and grow.
He says hello.  I love you,
and then he says Freak Show.

She closes up the windows
and she closes up the doors.
She loves Rojo, he makes her glow,
he snores her papa’s snores.

Rojo plays a banjo
his talons pull the strings
and every time the music starts
young Maria sings.

Brenda Warren 2009

Reviving Spaz

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6

Somewhere along the way I found out
being called Spaz on the playground
only mocked misunderstanding,
not me.

Somewhere along the way I found
myself flawed and fertile
ready to be plucked
tattoed and fuck you’d.
Mess with me.
I dare ya.
Black veins ran cold
through my turquoise heart.

Now Spaz spins spider webs,
ensaring leeches
that feed on my heart.
One by one she wraps
threads of black on black
until they burn, heating
veins in this tumbled blue heart

that somewhere along the way discovered
twinkling eyes grow when love
sluices anger clean.

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

This poem is in response to a prompt at Tuesday Tryouts over at Margo Roby’s Wordgathering.

Benton Lake National Wildlife Refuge

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16

The handrail’s wooden slats
mimic themselves in shadows
lining the boardwalk.
Three people leave as I arrive, we say
our good mornings and
the day is mine.

At boardwalk’s end, I sit
on an iron wrought bench
listening to the morning’s
symphony of birdsong,
crickets and wind
crashing currents that
rustle across two seasons’ grasses.
Last year’s bone white cattail remnants clump
shelter for ferocious marsh wrens
who perch askance shooting stalks of new growth
and warn me off
like cartoon birds
their tiny tails rise and fall
as they screech me gone.

In the distance
a gadwall hen pushes air
against the plump tenderness
of her rising breast.
Two others join her—
thrumming a whooshing retreat
to protest my arrival
to protest my decision to sing along
or simply to feel the feathered strength of wings
propel them upward across their wet domain
leaving me grounded
amidst a smell of death and wet fecundity
that lingers in this living marsh.

We cycle
dying and rising
season after season
this marsh, this lake,
one in a region of
prairie potholes
scoured into earth
by ice age glaciers
filled now with rain and snow melt
nesting grounds
for nomadic bug eaters
that migrate to
make Benton Lake home
so I can sit on this iron wrought
bench
on the end of a boardwalk
that juts itself over this prairie pothole
filled to the brim with Montana’s abundant
wet spring surrounded by a symphony of song
this is me
this is we
this is everything
the cry of the red winged blackbird
rises in my throat as
I write.

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A shout out to Pamela Sayers who provide the prompt at We Write Poems this week. Check out the link for more observational pieces.

bike ride at dusk

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12

a pervasive humming
thrummms
in the shallow hollows
of my body’s geography
tickling like wingtips
vulgar and insistent
it prowls about
the edges of my dwelling
dropping claws
like shale thrumming
ridges through my
spirit’s soft song
it preens out parasites
as light seeps out my back
illuminating the falling
black feathers
that follow me home

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Happy Birthday to One Shot Wednesday, and thank you for the place to post.

convergence

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17

 white to black gradations
corrugate lines that
gather at a central fertile nub
an amphitheater where
droplets converge to
witness light’s slow miracles

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The inspiration for this piece is a picture by Adam Romanowicz. You can click on the picture to visit his website. A shout out to One Stop Poetry for an interview with Romanowicz. Visit the link for more inspired writes.

pepper me with grace

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20

pepper me with grace
let me peer beyond shapes of surface haze
where senses unfasten perception
flitting light kisses
through spirit’s copper sands
inhaling myrrh
exhaling sandalwood
in this silent
façade of cerulean shade
pepper me with grace

This is a piece using the wordle from The Sunday Whirl. Follow the link to check out other poets’ responses to the prompt.

story opener

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8

Piano riffs ran through Lane’s brain to cover thoughts of Lola. That skull in the picture didn’t have the flecks of yellow in Lola’s brown eyes, but Lane felt connected to its shape and knew it was her. The third movement of Tchaikovsky’s piano concerto No. 3 in E-flat flew Lane outside of his Amtrak berth soaring over unfamiliar landscapes. An eagle touched him with the tip of his black feathered wing. Rapid-fire knocking landed Lane abruptly. The detective was back. He met Lane’s eye through the window and entered his space. “I hate to interrupt your reverie,” he put quotes in the air around the word reverie and rolled his eyes as he said it, “but I believe this keyboard belongs to you?” Lane hated when anyone posed questions as answers, and he hated this cop for questioning him at all with his dumbass way of saying one thing while implying another.  Lane didn’t kill Lola but he knew the person who did, and he knew that person already paid for his crime.

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The prompt over at One Stop Poetry today asked that we write a story opener. The set-up is there, go take a look, see how others began this murderous train journey.