Lift up your feet and put them on the ground
The trees were taller (when you were young)

Roxy Music

You know it is true: everything,

sound, smell and color were more intense.

The music of every sunset meant

life imagined in future tense.

Furtive fun with the neighbor girl:

getting naked in her closet.

Animal life held fascination—

experience was not yet composite.

Childhood was made easy for us;

grown-ups could do everything.

Friends and cousins joined the chorus

Singing winter into spring—

until it turned to dry routine:

money, taxes, the hours restless . . .

times arrived where dreams were absent;

sleep eludes, and food is tasteless.

Over-analysis tends to destroy

what childhood was able to enjoy.

PROMPT # 29:

compare your everyday present life with your past self,
use specific details to conjure your past and present in the reader’s mind.

PROMPT 28:

Victoria Chang’s poem, “The Lovers,” is short and somewhat shocking, bringing us quickly from a near-hallucinatory descriptive statement to a strange sort of question, before ending on the very direct statement of a “truth.” Six lines, three sentences, and to top it off, a title that I think works for the poem but is only obliquely related to its text. Today, try writing a poem that follows the same beats: three sentences, six lines: statement, question, conclusion.

Rupi Cowers

The silly poem
asks a non-question:

Is contemporary verse vapid,
or have we been dumbed-down?

The proof is in the poem,
so the answer is yes.

Gong Show: ¡CHANGggg!

Modern verse
is known for glibness, superficiality.

Must mannered obfuscation
override any/every message?

Truth is: one could
crank these out all day long.

V. Chang OBIT

beginning your poem plainly:
present no imagery vainly
confusing things for your reader.

Be clear. Don’t be a misleader.
Don’t write some stunningly brave
quirky and cryptic thing that they’ve

been bored by many times before.
Try to make your poem a door
to transcendental reflection.

Critique, mock, offer connection—
And please, please do not mention pies
Or eating them naked. (Not wise . . .)

PROMPT 27: Start by reading Robert Fillman’s poem, There should always be two:

There should always be two

ripe grapefruits in a glass
bowl in the fridge beside

a small note: Darling, you
can always count on me.

Scribble that to yourself
if you have to. Then spend

the morning in the tub
holding yourself beneath

the water. Listen for
the cello’s womb bleeding

into your wrinkled skin.
Eyes half-opened, like rough

moss lining a clay pot.
Don’t get up to answer

any calls. When you fly
downstairs, there will be bags

of groceries already
unpacked, a bright kitchen

that you won’t remember
tidying and a fresh

pie warm on the counter.
Eat it naked and wet.

Then write a poem in which all the verses contain the same number of lines
and in which you give the reader instructions of some kind.