Like a fisherman on the shore,pulling out the deep sea like a brush stroke, a long drag from someone else’s cigarette, and the pitter-patter of ink blots on a worm-eaten pier. I am self-diagnosing problems in the name of poetry. If poetry is, as old men put, the best words in the best order, doesorder […]
Tag: angst
FREEWRITING EXERCISE #49
highway palette plank on plankto a distant star think of yellowdirt-runed dunes of carrot cakesand flowing in infinite hour-glasses off the side of a lonely planet some other side of thislonely galaxy what is the colourof your gratitude can you explainthe middle ground between greenand not-green and who knows what there is to do at […]
FREEWRITING EXERCISE #45
a flat cap, a smushed shoe, the lawn cuttings left out orphaned and buzzcut bleeding steady, a brokendown car by the side of a cruise liner, a ship at the bottom of the sea,a cabin locked and floodingwith all of the world’s answers within it, like a child rubbing their stomach,a pot-bellied pig waiting to […]
FREEWRITING EXERCISE #39
there is something buried at the intersectionof love and hope / for which we have left no tombstone, no marker, no nameplate / some things are best left unnamed / or rather, that we take them away / to name something is to give it power / to speak something is to speakpower / without […]
FREEWRITING EXERCISE #37
hope is this ladder you build for yourself as you’re climbing it into heaven / every rung is a bone pulled from your own spine / so delicate that a strong wind could send you toppling into hell / hope is too much for me / sometimes the moreI climb the more I lose track […]
FREEWRITING EXERCISE #35
Give me a poet who does not know violence like the inside of their mouths, their tongues running across it to smooth the groove. Give me a poet who does not know what it means for injustice to take root and become its own narrative. Give me a poet who is not afraid of the […]
FREEWRITING EXERCISE #33
raise the curtains over this beehive / here is a magic trick / you have to wait for time to tell you the secret / but it’s noisy still / noisy still / noisy still / so much movement in so little space / is also a metaphor for my heart of hearts / there’s […]
FREEWRITING EXERCISE #30
I goose-body tether-walk down garden-pathfind picnic blooming pumpkins on picnic-mat and ten thousand ways to dishat a man my body plump with feathers and natural malice and my beak a car’s horn of notice me notice no geese allowed in the pub no geese allowedI am a walking instability of kinetic energy drawn to pull […]
FREEWRITING EXERCISE #27
Suspended in God’s gelatine, the stars are various unnamed slices of fruit, plucked off the last tree in the world. We are all ark-like on this blessed day, this day of endless rainstorm and wind, the invitation letter of an eternal flood. Or – I might be exaggerating. Some times call for simpler things to […]
FREEWRITING EXERCISE #25
My therapist described the pain as a knot bundled up in the body. Asshe started to try and smooth it out,I couldn’t help but imagine a bundle of yarn veined about my back. Imagineeach string coming loose, one by one, as the minute hand ticks on, the soundits own perverse voyeur. In some aspectsall pain […]
ugly stage 