an apple
with poisonous seeds
it carries temptation
bittersweet
a serpent
a slither to hiss
through low hanging branches
writhes round vines
arouses your soul
an apple hangs low
so some stories go
beat a drum
Brenda Warren 2014
Tag Archives: apple
exposed
The details are in diamonds
flowing from your eyes,
zip-stripped fumes from a life exhumed
to the depths of its apple seed soul.
Barriers peel back in pleats
and bleating lambs go to school.
Suspended serpents swing from trees
then hiss to secure your dis ease.
Burning through layers of living
powerful waterfalls force
glistening diamonds through your eyes
that slowly de-story your lies.
Brenda Warren 2014
Visit The Sunday Whirl.
Grief’s (surreal) Dream
His whispers first caress
her body’s field
like apple blossoms
covered in bees.
And then,
she sees flames come,
come licking scarlet vines
across his back,
commemorating sleep’s inevitability,
vicious and unforgiving.
A severed pair expects
no spare moments,
no moments to share
behind a smoke
-strewn
sky.
Until . . .
Save me in bits, she prays.
His screams strike might
like irons against time’s silent crescendo,
while her heated flesh whispers
and wakes her
to the dizzying scent
of apple blossoms buzzing.
Brenda Warren 2014
This one came rather quickly. It is not autobiographical, but grief imagined. There is a lot left unsaid. My imagination fills it with story, and I hope yours hooks into the piece, too.
I used “strike” instead of “struck.”
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Eden’s Promises
Apples hold secrets like forests hold trees
deep in the husks of their seeds.
Secrets like cyanide can become lethal
and exile desires to breathe.
Screaming for freedom, secrets are stories,
peering up from beneath our dis-
ease.
Three blind spiders spinneret nests
and cosset enigmas in spirit,
piles of promises (cradled arachnids),
clues to secrets’ deep web,
like cyanide in apple seeds
buried in flesh
through stories wrapped round in red.
Brenda Warren 2013
Process Notes: The first two lines are from The Soul’s Arsonist, a poem I wrote in June. After writing about three blind spiders, the piece stopped. Clicking on the apple tag in the sidebar I found apples and secrets in two lines of a piece, and started over using them for this week’s Whirl. It was nice to see the spiders spin in again. Little pieces can form bigger pieces. Eden’s Promise is best served aloud. I like it. I didn’t use the words rash or claws from the wordle.
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The Soul’s Arsonist
Prevaricating bushes lie low,
singeing an edge round his soul.
Apples hold secrets like forests hold trees
deep in the husk of their seeds.
Tracks in the cracks
of his memory’s files—
a mess too complex
to unravel.
Serpents still tempt him
and steal his intention,
splitting his answers
down forks in his tongue.
They snake through branches in bushes
as he douses the branches in gas.
He thinks about playing with matches
and laughs, losing his pale to the glow—
to the flickering trail of lies that writhes
at the edge of his deep apple soul.
Damming its freedom to flow,
oh yeah,
he damns its freedom to flow.
Brenda Warren 2013
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Note: The word “class” from the wordle, did not make an appearance in my piece this week.
What is the basic primal metaphor?
Is it the spiraling nautilus,
empty with yearning,
beneath my solar plexus?
Is it the fertile serpent
that hisses up from my belly’s shell,
releasing its coiled umbilicus,
tempting and rattling my humanity?
Is it fishing with grandpa
out on the lapping waters of Lake Vermilion,
early, before the stars fade, and the edges
of the sky are barely beginning to blue?
Madam in Eden I’m Adam.
Offering up apples and palindromes.
Opening Pandora’s box.
Wallowing in temptation.
Quivering in its wake.
Slithering sustenance.
I sigh,
then curl inside that spiraling nautilus,
allowing its opalescent walls
to generate my breath
and soothe my solar plexus
while grandpa pulls a long worm
from the apple and threads it on my hook
then sends it bobbing through the waters
of my mostly settled soul.
Brenda Warren 2012
Process Notes:
A big thank you to fellow poet Marianne who provided this link to Watermark: a poet’s notebook yesterday, from which I took the title prompt. The sentence, “Madam in Eden, I’m Adam,” reads the same backwards as frontwards. It is the first palindrome I learned, and it seems to fit. My grandpa’s arrival in this piece brings me great joy. It is day 16 of NaPoWriMo. It astounds me that my river still flows.
Your work and ideas feed my own. Thank you.
Falling Angel
You plaster your dreads with the skin of serpents
enmeshing a Medusa, compelling society
to look the other way. A seditious struggle
pierces flesh with iron and ink,
rendering the sacred lost
beneath its pledge.
A stigma.
A falling away.
Wingless limbs falter while
sporadic sparks of truth
flint off your soul’s tufted feathers
and fall like tread from your feet
through this nether world
appled in sin’s black veil.
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Process Notes:
“Dreads” are dreadlocks. When I was in Ohio we dreaded my daughter Julie’s hair. People treated her differently. One woman actually pulled her children closer to her in a protective effort as we passed. It was disconcerting. Now I think Jules is an amazing young woman, not a falling angel, but obviously this poem contains a bit of her dreadlocked experience.
Visit The Sunday Whirl for more poems constructed around the wordle words below. I used all of the words except hinder. I had it in there as “hindering the sacred lost” – rendering made more sense.
The Resurrection of Eve
Restrictive imagination envisions stories of lust run amok. Fueled with late night cocktails, Eve chases comfortable fantasies down familiar avenues that always end in bed alone staring at the ceiling wishing it were anything but beige. Until Play posits its challenging proposal and
intuiting illuminated spirit, lilies tilt toward her. Eve dances out a current that calls upon her blood. Gyrating, she spins and whirls— pulling spirit threads from her beginnings, from long before she ever took a breath.
Waking, Eve rocks teetering her totter in her birth’s very bed. Night’s nourishing thread fills her emptiness. Restriction lifts and Play laughs aloud, as Eve strokes its appled cheek.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
The Prompt at We Write Poems came from poet Richard Walker. First, the prompt, then I’ll tell you what I did with it. “One, select a prompt from a site like Poetic Asides, Writer’s Island, Sunday Scribblings, or One Single Impression. (Maybe even select two, letting them modify the other in some way!) This will be the topic or theme of your poem. Two, select some words from a site like Three Word Wednesday or A wordling whirl of Sundays.
Now consider the intermix of your theme/topic and your words. How might those words help you explore, expand or define your theme? Or does your topic further open, leading down unexpected avenues as you play with your set of words?
Trust your poetic intuition and imagination! Please don’t feel restricted to the “current” theme/word postings for these sites referenced. Use prior postings if that’s what most serves the new poem you’re beginning to envision. Make your poetic cocktail something comfortable, or something challenging – all your choice.”
That was the prompt. After reading Irene’s post, I shot off from her idea and selected twelve words from the above prompt to create a wordle. If you use the wordle for a poem of your own, let me know! My only other prompt to myself was to write a prose poem. So there you have it, The Resurrection of Eve.
(I did not use the word “prior.”)
undercaws 