STERLING WARNER - POEMS

A Washington-based author, educator, and pushcart nominee for poetry, Sterling Warner’s works have appeared in many international literary magazines, journals, and anthologies such as The Flatbush Review, Street Lit: Representing the Urban Landscape, the Atherton Review, Metamorphoses, The Fib Review, Stardust Review, and the Scarlett Leaf Review. Warner also has written several volumes of poetry, including Edges, Rags & Feathers, Without Wheels, ShadowCat, and Memento Mori: A Chapbook Redux. His most recent work, a collection of flash fiction & short stories, will be published in 2020. Apart from washing hands, distancing, and wearing a facemask these days, Warner spends his time writing, wood working, and salmon fishing. 

Acclamations
​

Praise to all first responders, medical workers,
firefighters, peace officers & volunteer staff
           Women & men who lay down their
           lives in the service of strangers.
 
Praise to all drummers who
swagger rhythmically out to battle
           to the ones who lay down beats for
           marching band and color guard footsteps.
 
Praise to affectionate, lofty lovers
who lie down indifferent to turbulence,
          making time for themselves immersed
          in the moment and a future less bleak.
 
Kudos to all the single mothers, orphans and
civil servants dedicated to common sense,
          whose passion’s most perfect and ideals
          unquestioned when seeking preservation.
 
Hats off to our entertainers who
amuse even as our assaulted minds moan
          and remind us there’s more to life than
           soundbites showcasing disasters, and defeat.
 
Praise to the dilettantes, poets, pipers,
philosophers, and politicians, without whom
           we’d have no visionaries, revolutionaries, leaders, or
          blind tyrants casting evil apparitions to oppress us.
 
Praise to the workers, vacationers and the
indolent for roads traveled often without reward--
            experiences and achievements compressed into brief, memorable
            moments, while pressured to exceed high expectations.
 
Praise to the multitude, society’s unwashed faces,
sporting smiling mouths full of partial teeth, conveying
           generosity, goodness and sensitivity, seldomly
           measured accurately by acumen or wealth.
 
 
 
 
 

Ēostre
​

​All hail Ēostre,
goddess resolute
who transforms
winter wastelands on
the spring equinox
when sacred, acrobatic
hares hop in geometric
patterns, their unnatural
movements bringing life to
Mercia’s barren fields,
Northumbria’s dormant
wildflowers, as holy hands
place eggs, fertility’s
pure embodiment, in
obvious locals to be
easily detected &
reverently appreciated by
neo-pagan worshippers
celebrating rebirth &
renewal long before Rome’s
reach touched British
shores, merely affirming
beliefs held sacred:
"Omne vivum ex ovo"
(all life comes from an egg)

Class Struggle: A Villanelle
​

​History endures as struggles of class
Despite declarations assuring change,
Social privilege returns as the years pass.
 
Leaders’ false promises shatter like glass
They rot in mansions with ring worms and mange,
History endures as struggles of class.
 
Workers toil without protection, alas!
Creating goods and growing crops to exchange,
Social privilege returns as the years pass.
 
Bankers build mighty vaults with steel and brass
Hoard riches like dragons—fearfully strange,
History endures as struggles of class.
 
Aristocrats’ clout’s an empty crevasse
Guard white picket fences on a grange,
Social privilege returns as the years pass.
 
Revolutions attract soldiers en masse
Each new order cites wrongs to rearrange,
History endures as struggles of class
Social privilege returns as the years pass.

Navigating Rapids  
​

​Desert rain lovers share
Sultry, subtropical fevers
Producing surreal sweat;
Bountiful bodies join
Corporal cravings as wild as
Waterways clashing—converging
Like the Tigris and Euphrates, the
Human confluence creating a
Singular river of passion—a
Flesh and blood Shatt-al-Arab--
Rising in size and momentum,
Emptying  into a Gulf of desire.

Bebe
​

​I
loved
Bebe
just like a
protective brother,
stood right by her side since grade school
then, in college, I found her bruised , semi-nude, & dead;
sexually abused at five years old Bebe told me
she felt trashy, not deserving
confidants like me;
we hugged, wept,
confessed
soiled
thoughts.
 
I
served
as her
witness, she
married at eighteen,
protective, yet husband friendly 
until I dropped by one night when Bebe was alone
hearing my voice, she opened the door, arms black and blue,
in the porch light still professing
love for the foul man
who minutes
before
beat
her.
 
Some
time
later,
a friend helped
pack all belongings
moved Beba to her mother’s house,
hoped time’d heal mental, physical scars, increase self-worth.
sought professional counseling, entered a psych ward;
when an orderly raped her, she
wanted to give birth,
lost the child,
depressed
checked
out.
 
Bright,
she
enrolled
in college,
together we took
lit classes, shared notes, crammed for tests;
going to her apartment en route to the college one morn,
Bebe neither heard the bell ring nor harkened to knocks
I entered the unlocked door, found
her naked body:
Dexedrine
addict
O.
D.
 
In
an
effort
to look like
Karen Carpenter,
Bebe secured a doctor who would
prescribe amphetamines as appetite suppressants;
last evening, I assured her leaving an abuser’s
best; she said, “Thank-you, Richard,” then
hung up the phone; that
night I should’ve
been there
for
her.