writing promptsFebruary 5, 2008 4:41 am

juxtaposed poetry

Use the title of a book as an acrostic key phrase. That is, write the title vertically. For each letter of the key phrase , find the page number in the book that corresponds to the letter (a=1, b-2, etc.). Scan the page until you find a word that begins with that letter. For the poem line, copy from that word to the end of the line or to the end of the sentence.

For the first one, I took the first word I found and made them into a poem. It sort of made sense:

 


Reassurance?
eye up, nodded I.
other new?
It’s nothing.
Dressed expensive and trim handkerchief

 

 


Then I tried it for real:

 


She zoomed onto the man
Either she decided so
Display, she ordered and the dial of the bed
Uncloaked
Cold
The man’s jacket.
I decided I’d go up.
On the left
No toys or aids here.
I turned, took another step towards the door.
Nail that down with the disks
Dripped from it.
Entrance.
A child who was not
The elevator
House calls?

 

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UncategorizedJanuary 30, 2008 4:08 am

Barroom sunrise

Prompt: The sun shone though the beer bottles on the table. Word Count: 224 Time: 5 minutes The sun shone through the beer bottles on the table. Maggie might have even been able to appreciate the sort of barroom beauty of the moment had she not found herself on the undeniably filthy floor looking up into a that fiery orb. It had never been that bright before, she thought, pushing herself to her feet. Someone must have turned it up. Her head swirled and pounded while her stomach did aerobatic leaps and flips trying to compete for the prize of which could make her vomit first. Fortunately for the moment, her stomach was void of contents but the dry heaving did nothing for the ringing in her ears or the vice grip that threatened to slit her head like a ripe melon. It turned out that the barroom sunrise looked prettier with its shades of brown and green from the floor. Up close, stale half drunk beer and extinguished cigarettes greeted her making her gorge rise once again. Maggie truly hated this feeling. It was impossible to fathom how something so beautiful could turn so ugly in a moment. Of course that could be said for some many things in her life. All the same, she knew this was hardly her last beer bottle sun beam.

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writing promptsJanuary 28, 2008 4:18 am

Mountain Man

Writing Prompt: Static electricity crackled in the sleeves of his coat.
Word Count: 267
Writing Time: 5 Minutes

Static electricity crackled in the sleeves of his coat, reminding him of how long it had been since the last big chill. He slipped his gloves on next knowing the aging leather wouldn’t really keep the cold out. The snow had yet to fall but the temperature had dipped to a painful range he didn’t want to dignify with giving the exact digit. It was cold and that was he needed to know and it would be colder still when he opened the door and faced it.

Winter was an unstoppable menace, a foe he didn’t have a chance against. He closed his eyes, imagining what it might be like to be warm right now. Perhaps on a black sand beach with warm waves crashing and tropical birds giving out their call. But it reminded him of the fact that it was too cold for the birds, almost too cold for any sound aside from the occasional creak and groan of the wind through the seemingly dead trees. They weren’t really dead he knew. Nothing here was really dead but it wasn’t far from.

Hibernating or migrating, that was what nature did in the winter and what he should probably have done. No, he was proving that he was a manly man and was going to rough it. There was something nice about it but it wasn’t the biting cold or the fact that he had to go out into its cloying embrace. The man pulled the cap down over his head and reached for the door, bracing himself knowing that he needed to chop wood or else the cold would decided what he did next.

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writing promptsJanuary 26, 2008 2:17 am

Writing Prompt- I tried to imagine him naked

I tried to imagine him naked. It was impossible. Perhaps it was because it was a picture from a textbook that didn’t lend itself to such pursuits. But there had to be some humanity there. Everyone called him a monster and maybe he was. So, I tried to picture him at his most human, most real and most exposed. Was it even possible to boil someone down to their nature, to the nature of humanity if all you knew was the monster, the facts, the legends, the tales? Certainly there were biographies and books and stories to fill shelf after shelf but none of them even touched on who he really was, at least not when I looked at him. I tried to read his eyes but they were flat and glossy, whether or not that was due to the picture, I couldn’t say. It made me think that it’s easier it people say that he’s good or he’s evil. No one ever called him ‘the man who did bad things for what he considered a good reason.’ And maybe he didn’t have a good reason. But as I tried to imagine him naked, it was just too depressing to imagine that anyone could be completely evil. So I turned the page and tried to imagine her naked.

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