Pg. 28 Ideas for Writing #3
It’s a 20 minute drive, sometimes 25, often 30.
There’s 2 yield signs, 3 stop signs, and 6 stoplights.
There’s two construction zones, with 20 men each,
4 of them spend all day spinning signs.
The rest try hard to do nothing at all.
When the bus leaves on time it’s ten minutes late.
An early departure means I’m late as well.
The traffic drags as if held by a cursed anchor
If only the tourists would go home.
Pg. 61 Exercise #1
It’s always about a girl
Up on stage, with a sunset for an audience
and the stars to cheer us on, Watching them twirl
with just our claps to keep the pace.
From nervous glances to little talks with matching eyes,
Rose quartz, tulip petal, earthquake shattered lips.
A big finish and the beat comes to an end.
Exciting, beautiful, smiling, and wrong.
Nightmare and daydream tangled into one,
She knew I could dance, so she asked for my hand.
I felt arms on my neck, and hands on her hips,
her eyes as she smiled and laugh as she twirled,
would she trust me if I dipped?
Though with a stutter and cough, the heart had lost,
for there was another I owed all my dances.
Painting Poem
A scattering of herons
And Sailors garbed in wool gowns
Leave the marshes a desert
The channels a ghost town
A second act is unfurling
The grey curtains brought down
upon cerulean firmament
and lapis hills beyond.
Evergreen soldiers begin shaking
As sturdy hulls are dashed with salt
Pg. 92 Writing Ideas #6
I’d like to think I’m good at media analysis, I only went to university to study it, but there’s one image I can’t get out of my head because I just don’t get it. In Jordan Peele’s “Us” there’s this big ending, where the heroes get away but their world is completely changed. These people who are practically zombies rise from below the surface and take the place of their perfectly mirrored counterparts by taking their lives. In the end they mimic Hands Across America, and make a line running from coast to coast. All clad in horrific expressions and red jump suits. I just don’t get it. The helicopter shots above the unbreaking line of zombies is quite striking, but it just doesn’t make any sense to me. Funkadelic’s “Can You Get to That” plays as we fade to black. I know it’s a metaphor for the trauma we get as kids being carried with us, but I just don’t get it. Please someone tell me. It can be explained too many ways.
Was 2112 anything like the album?
How did you celebrate the tricentennial?
Is New Orleans under water?
What Fast & Furious are we on now?
Did you figure everything out?
It’s the year 2021 and all I’ve had to eat
Are three seasons of Frasier, and the
Big Lebowski.
We subside on entertainment more
Nourishing than reality, and we
Fight from our phones on matters
Made of foam.
The disease can’t be burnt out, the
Intellectually barren won’t set us
Free, although the cure is ready to
Set in, as trust in systems have
Been eroded like the beach.
Many feel alone, but I’m alone
With them, peering over the
Edge, waiting for harness to
Snap, carabiners to crumble and
To stay balanced or to fall.
Yet I’ll be okay, as all
Is right in your day.
Pg 102 Writing Ideas #3
Pulled below
To my detriment the strap was secure,
dragged by the line my weight pulled me down
like a lead sinker, I was the lure,
a lighting rod of danger, a magnet of death.
When your lungs have no fuel, and your all
out of breath, your eyes open wide
the bodies reaction to the end of the show.
Free Poem
Scores of prophets are called by the queen,
talk of the future rebounds off of smoke
stained stone faced walls.
Clairvoyance is tested, liars are slain,
each soul another bolt in the queen’s broad quiver
Is it the famine, disease or the war she seeks solution for,
Or the cryptic bindings of fate, that hold them all in line.
Some dreams are doomed to fail, some brides must keep on their veil.
As the trenchers are filled with blood,
and the queue begins to draw short,
do you think she found her answer,
by killing all of the court?
Pg. 149 Ideas for Writing #6
ABBCDDACC Poem
It was only a dream!
Though it felt real enough,
and made my morning rough.
Something about an alarm I didn’t set,
bare-chested in the morning cold,
Out-of-breath like I’m 70 years old.
Though not all is as it may seem
Though waking up in a cold sweat,
I’m not even started just yet.
Free Poem #2
Walking inside the floor feels slanted, or maybe it’ my legs. One has grown and one has shrank. Like tasers igniting burning an electric blue, clacking with the force of a thousand cicadas, I just walked right past and out the door. We drove into town, sat down and ordered two beers, with a bouncing knee and my failing clairvoyance to make seem like all would end up alright. All the good songs are about love and all the great ones about heartbreak, and my ears fluttered dance floor purple in the eyes of all I knew. There was new love standing around and I felt uncomfortable, falling and getting tangled into nettles with no green tea to pour on my thighs. Usually you can hear when things are about to break, the telltale whining and rattling keeping one from finding a steady beat,
but sometimes things just break. And less often it’s your fault. Like Harry Bergeron’s steadfast arms anchored to the ground I could barely hold myself, and sleeps steady metronome pulls my circadian rhythms to a breaking point, our frequencies just don’t match. I’d call on all the king’s men but there isn’t a soul who I’d want to tell, and ask for steady hands and timeless words, I doubt they’d even know what to say, soldiers not mechanics. It would’ve been kind if the surgeon pulling out the part that screams, for you to see me, to know me, to understand me, to be quick about it. I love you.
Dream Poem
Every seven years or so, our sun breathes.
She exhales fire so luminous it sets firmament ablaze,
Coming to a lively crescendo and then fading.
She hibernates in the dark, and awakes twirling,
Through a sea of black no time is marked,
Just Deja-Vu of the last time she woke.
How difficult to see what is real,
Staring headfirst into walls of black.
With pockmarked holes, all white and red,
Like chicken coop target practice or
an abandoned tin roof, neither can
tell you the time.
Free Poem #3
Statue Field
I showed momma my hand and she cried,
Tapped my chrome index finger,
an echo from granite countertop.
She asked how it happened, I was honest.
On a stroll through the terribly cursed part of town,
where the fog hangs like a cobra at your ankles.
The tears I shed for myself ran dry,
and my lead sinker lulled me towards sleep.
Sunshine glinted off my hand the next morning.
Veins that once ran with rapids of blood,
now stuffed completely with polished steel.
If it wasn’t mine it would have been beautiful,
elegant even, like a craft from another world.
Today I start saying goodbye.
When walking to the park I wave my platinum glove.
Swinging it stiffly like I were the queen. Many folks
smile, maybe cry. A widow gave me a hug, with knowing
eyes. Wandering slowly so every tree can get a hug,
every flower can get a sniff, and every squirrel a little talk.
The weight becomes unbearable. The 45 pound plate,
my cursed state. I drag my cadaver home, my mother
cooks dinner, her eyes electric red, a smile below them.
She made my favorite, though it’s no great comfort.
She kisses me goodnight. She figures this will be
the last time for that, her fingers drag across my iron chest.
My neck grew stiff locked in place, so I rose. Whenever I fully
froze I’d be too heavy to carry, maybe I’d even break through the
floor. I couldn’t put that on her. I stepped outside and wandered.
The moon was a great white eye, and shone off the silver figures,
all cursed the same as I. Steel statues of people crying, lying in the dirt,
or standing proud. I choose to sit, and watch the sunrise through metal eyes.
Free Poem #4
Cosmic Peanut
A cosmic peanut broke off from its flaming mother.
It burned a furious red trail through the atmosphere,
Overlooking things it had never seen. The city’s eyes.
Rivers flowing slower than anything. Sneaking by.
Its surface grew black and charred, before the
Outfielder made an error, and it broke twigs off
Of a crabapple tree. Then through a pane of glass.
Then another, and into a ricochet off the frame,
And landing in the garden. At least the peanut
Had the good grace to miss the hydrangeas.
At first that seems an unlikely story, it could just be
A rusted part, kicked up by the mower’s blades, but
One must have something to believe, so this is just
As true as any lost and lonely rebel’s cause.
Suppose: Page 255 exercise
Suppose we don’t have control
perhaps we are creatures of habit
perhaps we are beings of fate
suppose every act, every word,
every kindness, every evil,
was not yours to give, neither
yours to take.
maybe a cosmic dice roll left us here
maybe whoever is in charge is still watching
perhaps even keeping score.
Every act written into a spreadsheet
with excruciating detail and meaningless
worldbuilding. Maybe it’s frozen.
perhaps it’s already chosen.
