Try some of these out, they may result in some interesting writings. Post some for your friends to see if you dare. I challenge everyone to try this with at least one subject, perhaps your friends will appreciate your openness and getting to know you better!
Day 01 → Something you hate about yourself.
Day 02 → Something you love about yourself.
Day 03 → Something you have to forgive yourself for.
Day 04 → Something you have to forgive someone for.
Day 05 → Something you hope to do in your life.
Day 06 → Something you hope you never have to do.
Day 07 → Someone who has made your life worth living for.
Day 08 → Someone who made your life hell, or treated you like shit.
Day 09 → Someone you didn’t want to let go, but just drifted.
Day 10 → Someone you need to let go, or wish you didn’t know.
Day 11 → Something people seem to compliment you the most on.
Day 12 → Something you never get compliments on.
Day 13 → A band or artist that has gotten you through some tough ass days. (write a letter.)
Day 14 → A hero that has let you down. (letter)
Day 15 → Something or someone you couldn’t live without, because you’ve tried living without it.
Day 16 → Someone or something you definitely could live without.
Day 17 → A book you’ve read that changed your views on something.
Day 18 → Your views on gay marriage.
Day 19 → What do you think of religion? Or what do you think of politics?
Day 20 → Your views on drugs and alcohol.
Day 21 → (scenario) Your best friend is in a car accident and you two got into a fight an hour before. What do you do?
Day 22 → Something you wish you hadn’t done in your life.
Day 23 → Something you wish you had done in your life.
Day 24 → Make a playlist to someone, and explain why you chose all the songs. (Just post the titles and artists and letter)
Day 25 → The reason you believe you’re still alive today.
Day 26 → Have you ever thought about giving up on life? If so, when and why?
Day 27 → What’s the best thing going for you right now?
Day 28 → What if you were pregnant or got someone pregnant, what would you do?
Day 29 → Something you hope to change about yourself. And why.
Day 30 → A letter to yourself, tell yourself EVERYTHING you love about yourself.
Thursday, June 24, 2010
Saturday, May 8, 2010
Ground Zero
Yes, this is a one-lined poem. Let me know how it works for you, as the reader. I'm trying my hand at different styles of poetry these days.
Ground Zero
all that's left are embers..
Ground Zero
all that's left are embers..
Wednesday, April 28, 2010
Steps to Hiroshima
Steps to Hiroshima
The man's maniacal cackle
echoes through the streets,
an imprint of an old woman
left on the bank step from the blast.
The man shuffles past
gasmask in hand, useless
a prop of comfort
for nothing will save him
from the radiation-
it will sink deep into his bones.
Monday, April 26, 2010
..and there was no wall
A collaborative poem written by myself and Eric Rudko on 4/26/10.
...and there was no wall
"It's the kind of happiness that can only come in a vial,”
she said, her eyes dulled over by years of wear,
black mascara on her hand where she tried to erase
the tears, hand shaking a jack and coke with ice clink on glass
he had never noticed the paint on the wall,
before that moment, nor how the bags she wore chronicled a month
of disgust and neglect, decrepitude. Stagnation.
The walls became unfamiliar over time, the curtains tattered,
"Likewise", he muttered to none but he,
and fixated on the ragged tatters, crimson against daylight
that passed as she sat, staring outside through the holes
that was the only daylight she had seen for a month.
Sweat hung about her glass, following the ice as it fell
with each sip, the room heavy with ash and almond
colored wallpaper. The ripples swimming, undulating.
She would reach out her hand but it met with no solid surface.
The floor was cool, but inviting, her soft cheek
against dust, her warmth creeping away like a thief, and all he could do was watch.
Sunday, April 25, 2010
Untitled
Written as a class exercise on 4/22/10. The exercise was to write about a surreal dream without mentioning it as a dream. Currently untitled. Help with a title would be great.
Perforations permeate through narrow stairs around blinding corners. Dusk white chalked shadow recesses leave traces etched on walls, plaster crumbles behind weathered wallpaper. Blackened with ashes of age.
Our tired lives are weary, read from cover to cover. Worn. Letters rubbed through. Smudges on pages. Penciled in then erased again in margins. Our marginal lives whited out and corrected; our mistakes still present beneath the perfection.
Perforations permeate through narrow stairs around blinding corners. Dusk white chalked shadow recesses leave traces etched on walls, plaster crumbles behind weathered wallpaper. Blackened with ashes of age.
Our tired lives are weary, read from cover to cover. Worn. Letters rubbed through. Smudges on pages. Penciled in then erased again in margins. Our marginal lives whited out and corrected; our mistakes still present beneath the perfection.
Thursday, April 15, 2010
"The Raccoon" by Michael Collier
The Raccoon
by Michael Collier
Outside our window we hear it licking
its paws on the fire-escape landing.
If we drew back the curtains, we'd see
its night eyes and the way it presides
over the hollow bones of a pigeon,
and how the air shaft is a vertical tunnel,
a passageway to the roof where it lives
among tar buckets and discarded mops.
Nightly we hear it praying the prayer
of paws passed over muzzle, the cleaning
and washing before it eats. We see its
shadow descending outside, beyond the opaque glass
of the bathroom window, hear the click of its nails
on the metal stairs. And what does it mean
to always see your passion embodied
in some other life, to stand near the one
who has prayed over your body and listen
together to what's beyond, what's outside,
and to know that what's missing is not something
the future will bring or time complete?
by Michael Collier
Outside our window we hear it licking
its paws on the fire-escape landing.
If we drew back the curtains, we'd see
its night eyes and the way it presides
over the hollow bones of a pigeon,
and how the air shaft is a vertical tunnel,
a passageway to the roof where it lives
among tar buckets and discarded mops.
Nightly we hear it praying the prayer
of paws passed over muzzle, the cleaning
and washing before it eats. We see its
shadow descending outside, beyond the opaque glass
of the bathroom window, hear the click of its nails
on the metal stairs. And what does it mean
to always see your passion embodied
in some other life, to stand near the one
who has prayed over your body and listen
together to what's beyond, what's outside,
and to know that what's missing is not something
the future will bring or time complete?
"2212 West Flower Street" by Michael Collier
2212 West Flower Street
by Michael Collier
When I think of the man who lived in the house
behind ours and how he killed his wife
and then went into his own back yard,
a few short feet from my bedroom window,
and put the blue-black barrel of his 30.06
inside his mouth and pulled the trigger,
I do not think about how much of the barrel
he had to swallow before his fingers reached the trigger,
nor the bullet that passed out the back of his neck,
nor the wild orbit of blood that followed
his crazy dance before he collapsed in a clatter
over the trash cans, which woke me.
Instead I think of how quickly his neighbors restored
his humanity, remembering his passion
for stars which brought him into his yard
on clear nights, with a telescope and a tripod,
or the way he stood in the alley in his rubber boots
and emptied the red slurry from his rock tumblers
before he washed the glassy chunks of agate
and petrified wood. And we remembered, too,
the goose-neck lamp on the kitchen table
that burned after dinner and how he worked
in its bright circle to fashion flied and lures.
The hook held firmly in a jeweler's vise,
while he wound the nylon thread around the haft
and feathers. And bending closer to the light,
he concentrated on typing the knots, pulling them tight
against the coiled threads. And bending closer still,
turning his head slightly toward the window,
his eyes lost in the dark yard, he took the thread ends
in his teeth and chewed them free. Perhaps he saw us
standing on the sidewalk watching him, perhaps he didn't.
He was a man so much involved with what he did,
and what he did was so much of his loneliness,
our presence didn't matter. No one's did.
So careful and precise were all his passions,
he must have felt the hook with its tiny barbs
against his lip, sharp and trigger-shaped.
It must have been a common danger for him-
the wet clear membrane of his mouth threatened
by the flies and lures, the beautiful enticements
he made with his own hands and the small loose
thread ends which clung to the roof of his mouth
and which he tried to spit out like an annoyance
that would choke him.
by Michael Collier
When I think of the man who lived in the house
behind ours and how he killed his wife
and then went into his own back yard,
a few short feet from my bedroom window,
and put the blue-black barrel of his 30.06
inside his mouth and pulled the trigger,
I do not think about how much of the barrel
he had to swallow before his fingers reached the trigger,
nor the bullet that passed out the back of his neck,
nor the wild orbit of blood that followed
his crazy dance before he collapsed in a clatter
over the trash cans, which woke me.
Instead I think of how quickly his neighbors restored
his humanity, remembering his passion
for stars which brought him into his yard
on clear nights, with a telescope and a tripod,
or the way he stood in the alley in his rubber boots
and emptied the red slurry from his rock tumblers
before he washed the glassy chunks of agate
and petrified wood. And we remembered, too,
the goose-neck lamp on the kitchen table
that burned after dinner and how he worked
in its bright circle to fashion flied and lures.
The hook held firmly in a jeweler's vise,
while he wound the nylon thread around the haft
and feathers. And bending closer to the light,
he concentrated on typing the knots, pulling them tight
against the coiled threads. And bending closer still,
turning his head slightly toward the window,
his eyes lost in the dark yard, he took the thread ends
in his teeth and chewed them free. Perhaps he saw us
standing on the sidewalk watching him, perhaps he didn't.
He was a man so much involved with what he did,
and what he did was so much of his loneliness,
our presence didn't matter. No one's did.
So careful and precise were all his passions,
he must have felt the hook with its tiny barbs
against his lip, sharp and trigger-shaped.
It must have been a common danger for him-
the wet clear membrane of his mouth threatened
by the flies and lures, the beautiful enticements
he made with his own hands and the small loose
thread ends which clung to the roof of his mouth
and which he tried to spit out like an annoyance
that would choke him.
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