Process Notes
Generally, I save process notes until the end of a piece.  However, this piece has a rather graphic / brutal ending.  The first piece came easily, and left me wanting to explore the character more fully, so I wrote the second piece.  After that, I challenged myself to take on the person who had attacked the woman in taffeta. I used the words to guide each of the pieces. In all of them, the word sister was the hardest for me to incorporate. The piece is not autobiograpical, but was inspired by a dozen words offered up at The Sunday Whirl. A friend’s voice said, “Don’t censor yourself,” so here is a trilogy of perspective.

*

“Are you okay?”

Like an ashen story,
whispering its scattered urges,
she lifts her blackened eyes
lined with kohl and scalded,
and whimpers her reply,
“I have no knack for charm
my instincts are in shards.”
She sighs and drops her head
into the black pool of taffeta
around her ravaged form,
a faltering white flower
crushed
against the sisterhood of elegance.

*

The Taffeta’d Lady

ashen instincts ferret pathways through the broken shards of my soul
my charms failed me if ever they existed at all
and every urge I ever have again,
will be suspect
faith in my sensibilities crushed
Last night, my knack for blackness
actualized its existence
and now this lady,
this lady asks me
“are you okay?”

(may my sisters’ whisperings scatter my story in the wind)

*

The Perp

whispering voices offer a litany of ashen curses
as scattered urges piss him off and instinct forces the hunt
leaving scalded piles of spiders in his wake
searching for black dresses
searching for his sister
memory pushes shards of steel
through his heart
driving his pursuit
fueling his story

he charms a bitch that thinks she’s got it all
black taffeta
hair mirroring the tangled mass
he keeps in a box
his sister’s hair

this bitch has it coming
he has a knack for leaving them crumpled
and loves to hear them cry
crushed, spent,
deflowered like the little whores they are

Brenda Warren 2012

Forgetting is forgotten
against the breathing loss
of everything we once were,
long ago, before you thatched
your soul’s hearth with psychobabble
and removed me from the fray.

When I wouldn’t rebuild myself
and open gates to uncover
the roles I played each day,
formed and fostered
from the inception
of me,
you said goodbye.

Thousands of people were following
“Life Training.”
A room full of them bobbled their heads
with smiles that welcomed me
to the fold.
My spirit felt groped.

In that room, where you began
to rebuild your life—
my heart began to break
knowing I could not join in the training,
knowing I wanted to be who I was, as I was,
without a bobbling head.

And so, bubbling with sorrow we split the sheets.

Today, flashes of who we were send
stones fluttering up my sternum
reminding me that love never dies;
transmuted it remains, unrealized
from that day when ideas clashed
and the earth tilted on its axis
with the enormity
of our loss.

Brenda Warren 2012

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Visit The Sunday Whirl.

Many of our grandmothers knit sweaters,
but we knit letters into textured yarns,
teasing images free
as we stitch our lives together
shoveling mountains of loss and
bright shining metaphor
into one big alphabet soup
served up at The Sunday Whirl.

This is our virtual quilting bee
our sharing of wine and words.
Stitching together color bright squares,
friends whirl through each Sunday’s wordle.
Comments become an expected and welcome relish
graciously left like generous tips at every stop.

Each week we eat ripe plums
while juice drips from our chins
onto keyboards that drift our stories
through cyberspace intertwining ideas
celebrating words, changing our lives
sharing that place of practice and polish.

Our lyrical flow glows like silvery moonlight
winding through the endless branches
of my neighbor’s ancient cottonwood tree
illuminating what would otherwise remain
eternally shrouded and obscure.

Brenda Warren 2012

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Process Notes:
The words were giving me a hard time this week. Viv often writes her piece discussing the words themselves, or the wordling process. I used her strategy and focused my piece on all of you who write each week at the Whirl. You are a light each week. The prompt site We Write Poems, often says “more participants make richer soup.”  I imagine that is where my soup metaphor found light. This piece feels unfinished, but I’ve polished and placed words so many times it’s becoming a blur. It is time to post and get on with the New Year!

Here are the words from the wordle this week:
loss * shovel * friends * expected
stop * plum * letters * drift
sweaters * wind * stitches * yarn

Angels dance upon points of needles
that poke up through Minerva’s pondered cloth.
They twirl out trajectories of tidings
toward shepherds and bleating beasts
whispering wisps of frozen December air.

Hearts open without decree.

While ewes and rams forsake the manger
to make fallow fields frolic,
shepherds bed beneath the brightest star
their eyes have ever seen.
The star’s white blue illuminates
mounds of sheep undulating across December’s
breeding fields fashioning a river of sheep
that flows into spring’s leaping lambs.

Minerva works without haste
tenaciously seaming stories of joy and peace
while reality unfolds in silvery threads
weaving wonder through winter’s white expanse.

Brenda Warren 2011
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
This piece took three days to come; now that it’s here, I like it. The wordle words over at The Sunday Whirl were provided by Magical Mystical Teacher from the biblical Christmas story in Luke 2. Check out the whirl for more pieces using these 12 words: heart, decree, pondered, joy, tidings, angel, peace, afraid, haste, shepherds, manger, and heard. I used all of the words except heard and afraid. It may have required another three days to get those in there. 😉

“Weightless and alone, an enigma, a wrinkled spasm of time sent tumbling elements,
rapid pulsations, a rare stone heart following sacred spacious paths—wormholes leading to this…” Dappled Ackley paused, and swept his arms in wide arcs across the sky, “this planetary atmosphere.”

“Witness prophetic talons grip glass, melted metal, when released power transforms everything into what it used to be, before the Oil Rationing Riots, when kindness prevailed and fear disappeared shining into a living color labyrinth beneath your very fingertips ushering in a time, once again, of plenty.”

Brenda Warren 2011

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

I used this week’s Sunday Whirl wordle words to write the words of Dappled Ackley’s prophecy.  Dappled Ackley is the blind seer in a short story I’m working on about a superhero named “Thundercaws,”  whose quest is to locate a meteorite that her friend Crazy Dave will use to repower the world, after an energy crisis renders televisions useless.  I’m sharing the story with my students, and they are providing me with feedback.  Dappled Ackley’s words came at the end of the second installment.

Thundercaws was born from a superhero formula.  All of my students created superheroes, too.  Thundercaws will meet at least one super villain JE, a student, created in my classroom.  I’ll post the installments here each week.