I’m nailed to the middle of nowhere,
a barrier to breezes.
Listen as I stretch nothingness
behind these battered eyes
beneath their lidded skin
where faltering birds perch
their silent screech
ridiculously indistinct.
Brenda Warren 2017
Clerihew Sigh
There’s this poet named Brenda
with a clerihew on her agenda
a poem about a person
and she can’t get one verse in.
Brenda Warren
Tick Tock
Tick tock
Poppy cock
Hickory dickory dock
A scarlet harlot
A scheming starlet
Creates a hullabaloo
For howdy doody
Her hallowed booty
Reeks hither – ability
Celebrity snatches
At pussy galore
What more
Should a woman
Strive for
Come hither then wither
You dithery dick
Miles from slick
You’re sick
Eventually
Sequentially
The dominoes will drop
Tick tock
Poppy cock
Hickory dickory dock
Brenda Warren
A skeleton of word pairs took shape quickly following yesterday’s prompt requesting assonance and alliteration. I left them for future use. Struggling to construct a Ghazal for today’s NaPo prompt, I returned to yesterday’s word pairings. This raunchy little rhyme resulted.
Feeding the Monkey
People emerge
to pursue paradigms
of synergistic systems
office and technology
compete and eat
multitasking corporate identity
vision, position, mission
maximizing moments
winning bread
for that competitive
little monkey
that rides their back
begging them
to neglect everything
in pursuit of it all.
Brenda Warren
Plus Side
angel grace
Like a psychedelic memory
a raw electric experiment
a junk dream
her life approaches grace
as if it were the vivid silhouette
of a dazzling half-drunk angel
an absurd shimmering miasma
lost in inner space.
Brenda Warren
This is an older piece that I reworked for today. My muse is resting.
Attention Deficit Meditation Syndrome
om mani
pardon me
your breathing is distracting me
could you,
maybe
do it over there?
Brenda Warren 2017
Brown Sugar
Brown sugar, strap me down
Black my eyes, paint me clown
Lobotomize my heaving
Your needles trim this slack
Lift the edge from my back
Brown sugar, keep deceiving
Let loose the rubber straps
I’ll fall into your lapse
Brown sugar, cease my grieving
Brenda Warren 2017
The NaPo prompt asked that we write a nine line poem, and provided several forms that we could chase. I chose the Balassi Stanza which has a specific rhyme scheme and syllable count.
aadbbdccb / 667667667
This started as a poem about a circus side show, but forms almost always force something other. It became a poem about heroin addiction. I looked up nicknames for heroin, and chose brown sugar for this piece. Heroin draws people in and kills them. I’m thankful that I never tried it in my youth, and now I am wise enough to avoid it.
Forms provide fun word play. Even though this is dark, it was fun to piece together.
Immigration Pantoum
The tears you shed for children dead
Defy principles you proffer.
Months ago you rallied hate
And cheered an “immigration ban.”
Defy principles you proffer.
Form them into nails for your palms.
Go! Cheer your immigration ban,
While sarin gas dissipates.
Pound the nails into your palms;
You do so much for everyone!
While sarin gas dissipates
And Syrian people die,
You do so much for everyone.
Months ago you rallied hate
And Syrian people die.
Please, dry tears shed for children dead.
What right do you have to cry?
Brenda Warren 2017
Fortune
Whenever children laugh,
stories stir within the tiny green she bear
peeking out from the grass
at the base of the ginkgo tree.
Here, in Pandora Park.
Years past, her hard plastic body
shielded her from the onslaught
of angry green army men—
bayonets poised,
rifles aimed.
Rising up,
the she bear lumbered toward them.
She bellowed outrage as
bullets bounced off her hard plastic shell
and bayonet blades broke.
Chunks of army men litter
her hibernation’s wake.
These days, the she bear sits
camouflaged by grass,
there beneath the ginkgo tree.
Sometimes, she pictures the plastic parts of army men
bulldozed into the baseball diamond
on the other side of Riley Creek.
Those were the days.
Wistful, the she bear waits.
Then, as spring’s first butterflies flutter,
and turtles rise from the muck of Riley Creek,
a child’s hand surrounds the she bear
and whispers fill her ears.
Laughter bubbles through promises
the child can’t wait to keep.
They arrive at Barbie’s Dream House
just in time for tea.
Brenda Warren 2017
undercaws 