week 1

part of my very short list of "resolutions" this year is to have fun with poetry exercises.

exercises.

the word itself makes you think of heavy lifting, doesn't it?

so the idea is to make them into challenges, or better yet--games. poetry games are what i'm playing, not sweating and lifting heavy words and bending them into strange shapes.

i'll be taking old exercises that i know and (hopefully) inventing new ones to stir the creative pot. it's part of this new working theory i have about the craft of writing. that, to be a writer you have to write. i know... so obvious, right? but then why is it that every time i sit down to write a new piece, i think of it as having to be divine inspiration? some mystical beam from some other place that delivers something to me, fully formed?

to hell with that. (unless it happens... then i'll be very happy and humble and thank the poetry gods and goddesses and live on the royalties... *cough, cough*)

this week, two examples of a game (see? using the new terminology already) stolen from Terrance Hayes, called a gram of &s. take a word, make a bunch of words from the letters in that word and then use them as the end of each line in the piece you're writing. simple, right?



entity

she stretches to fill his shadow--tiny,
almost shrunken, like a tent
swallowed by the canyon of his size. There are ten
years of apologies lost on his tongue; fish caught in the net
of his mouth (not spoken, not yet).


languid

ding!
isn't a word you can nail
to a cross. you can't close it like the lid
on a coffin, or shoot it from a gun.
it lacks the sting of a bottle of gin,
but late at night it will nag
at you with it's hollow din,
an empty elevator, painted by dali.

how my mind works

new year's eve, driving to a party. the wind was gusting.

first thought through my mind as i'm hopping in the car: "this would be horrible weather to fly in."

did i mention a) i'm not a pilot and b) it's been at least two year's since i've flown?