A train’s ample whistle blows away sunset
propelling it into night while sister moon
rolls her holy call over rows of stone—
chiseled out letters trapped in granite.
A montage of markers reflects her arrival
as jasmine’s blooms put on a glow.

Answering Luna’s holy call,
faeries and demons tag their earthly domain
with dust and bedevilment.
Riding the whistles of trains,
they chase circles around granite angels and headstones.
Jostling for position, they scrap amidst jasmine,
and release her sweet sacred scent.
They prune her petals into opalescent piles,
to dive through again and again
adding sugar and spice
and evil and nice
to this resting place for the dead.

Brenda Warren 2012

Visit The Sunday Whirl.

Falling through the middle of the holes inside his head
he wakes up in the morning and forgets the nights he spends
Chasing melancholia, he drinks until he’s skunked
cuz anything is better than a cloudy blue funk.
He knows anything is better than a cloudy blue funk.

Brenda Warren 2012

This piece was prompted by Trifecta and their Monday challenge. It is a piece I’d like to work into a blues ballad. Time is quickly lapsing in the challenge, so I will submit what is complete. When (if) I continue/finish this piece, I’ll link to it in an upcoming challenge(for anyone interested in a read).

Thanks for reading, and for these challenges. It’s a fun ride.

escher, m c puddle 1952

The crack in his boot extracts the world’s dampness
while his footfalls drum incantations
through mud and puddles
shaking up the earth
until, from the moon’s view,
it bounces.

His true love’s heart
beats time to his march
measuring deployments,
eyes meeting on the moon.

His foot comes down in puddles
to spray a sparkling corona of color
that bedazzles her sweet laughing face.

Ignited by her image, he takes another step.

Brenda Warren 2012

Thank you to Tess at The Mag for the prompt. Check it out for more creative responses to the picture.

Heifer eats grass peeping through cracks.
Girl watches world of newfound fancy.
Four compartments digest grass.
Four ants crawling defy gravity on fence.
Heifer pees on road.
Girl crosses legs, rapt in ants.

Brenda Warren 2012

This short piece is 33 words in response to Trifecta’s Trifextra prompt. This week the prompt is the picture.

(It might be magic, and it might be true,
but to this day, snow melts a circle where
Gina and I huddled in that cold black alley
back in Helena circa 1977)

At 15, Gina Lencioni and I crouched in a winter dark alley
two houses down from her backyard,
hunkered by some garbage cans
behind her neighbor’s garage.

Lighting a joint
our hands cupped around each match.
The wind kept taking them and we laughed.
Two matches remained.
Two matches, one joint.
Me and Gina.
Hiding in an alley.
First timers.
Criminals.

Gina reminded me to hold it in.
“Watch,” she said.
The first match blew out before it even lit.
The second one blazed
and Gina drew in,
holding her breath she mustered, “eere…”
and handed me the joint. But,
before I got it to my mouth
the cherry blew off –
I drew in anyway – a waft of smoke
then,
nothing.
A big bomb of disappointment
exploded between us
when a gust of wind sparked the joint’s end
like a beacon in a storm.
Gina hooted
and I pulled in a long hard toke,
handed it back to her,
then blew my smoke in rings.
“It’s freaky magic,” I said.

At that instant cottony flakes started swirling
and our laughter melted dry a globe that circled
where we sat.

Brenda Warren 2012

Shout out to Trifecta!  They bestowed a huge honor upon my work by awarding Third Tim’s a Charm first place in last weekend’s challenge.  Thank you so much for offering these challenges.  Be sure to check out Trifecta‘s site for some excellent reading, and creative prompts.

This prompt asked that we use the word “alley.”  Specifically the definition of alley that means: a narrow street; especially : a thoroughfare through the middle of a block giving access to the rear of lots or buildings.  My hometown had alleys running through every block…this is just one alley story from my youth. Thanks for reading.

Still Life, 1670, detail by Jean François de Le Motte

Ivory crinoline curls round the leather strap
that secures all the words she penned afore dying
The whites of her eyes dry, shriveled, gone.
Her lush red lips, chalky— crumbled to dust.

Ivory crinoline once ran through her hair
gleaming a path through cascading black rivers
tumbling across her bone-white bodice
made lush with a deep crimson corset.

Ivory crinoline curls round the leather strap
pinning her missives, her poetry, her lists
above her relief on his studio wall
where he stains his life with her memory.

He fingers the ivory crinoline ribbon
threading deep currents that run through his soul
then he colors his palette with cadmium yellow,
white lead, and bone black, and alizarin crimson.

Ivory crinoline curls circles on canvas when
he saturates his brush and begins.

Brenda Warren 2012

Visit The Mag.

Willow drinks Corona with lime,
she drinks her Corona with lime.
Every night at the Cock Tail Club,
she brushes her hair in her eyes
and trembles in the shadows—
picturing sticks,
picturing stones,
picturing Braden
breaking all her bones.
Picturing that liar
breaking all her bones.

Willow drinks Corona with lime
it helps her crawl through time.
She drinks it at the Cock Tail Club
in the booth in the back after nine.
He told her that he’d love her right,
a bluff of fetid mud.
Love does not spit thunder.
Love does not spit nails.
Love does not stain faces dark,
while bashing in their bones.

Willow drinks Corona with lime
with her hair hanging over her face.
She drinks it at the Cock Tail Club,
each bottle a vessel of grace.
Beer bestows a brief forgetting
of the dance of Braden’s fear
that trampled and aged his boyish face
when she pulled out a gun, before: Crack!
He fell to the ground with a thud.
Willow bashed him with a baseball bat
then danced on his broken bones.
Oh yeah, she danced on his broken bones.

Willow drinks Corona with lime
she drinks her Corona with lime.
Each bottle is a vessel of grace
that helps her annihilate time.

Brenda Warren 2012

Visit The Sunday Whirl.

Tim One
Stocking the shelves with Yogi’s bagels,
tall muscular boy-man looks up
with these deep brown eyes
where my glance catches him
sweaty in the backroom
of Albertson’s deli,
exploring mouths like caves with tongues.
And later, on the floor of my little blue house in Bozeman,
where edible oils slicked us into
serpents writhing one hot mass
life and limb
lost in the newness of slippery-fleshed lust.

Tim Two
Scholarly Tim
chaser of Zen
lover of Winnie the Pooh
jealous (interfering with Zen aspirations)
of Tim One’s youth and good looks,
tied me to the posts of his bed.
Forgetting the Buddha,
he loved me hard
then left me
lying in the condescending waste
of everything we’d never be.

Tim Three
Tall cowboy.
Crazy artist.
His hand
on the small
of my back
saved me
as we fell into forever,
flying through each other’s dreams
until we floated apart
indelibly changed
by love’s bittersweet breeze.

Brenda Warren 2012

This is my second entry in a Trifecta challenge. My first entry it wasn’t the first time, took second place last week. Thank you for the win, it is an honor. Here is Trifecta’s  challenge for this weekend:

We want a real account of a period in your life that can be clearly identified by (wait for it) the number three. Maybe it’s the three decades you spent flipping burgers. Maybe it’s the three seconds you hesitated justifiably before saying “I do.” We’d like for your story to be true-ish, and we’d like for it to be an artistic creation, not just a play-by-play account. Think less “blog post” and more “creative writing.”

During my college years I dated three men named Tim all in a row. I wrote another piece about Tim Three if you are interested, you can find it here.