Twenty Little Poetry Projects
Your words are candy apple
on dainty fairy wings pinned
on a board for all to see, tasting
of sweetness like jelly beans rolling
on your tongue, and touching
the hooded lady in the most
intimate parts of her soul, chiming
in the cajoling wind as the scent
of roses lures the senses in your trap.
And I falter under your potent gaze,
coition as eminent as spring rains
creaking in the New England night
where Nephthys keeps her bed. Nothing
sweet about your honeyed words, sucking
nectar from my flower while fanning
it dry with your paper wings blowing
in the air between us, a nettling show
of poppycock where your inattention
erects spires on my chest and you beg
for labial facials upon my neck. The
wanton trollop of temptation walks
beside me, though not without a limp
in her sexy gait, and my halo breaks
as pure as lightning in a storm while you,
floating on a cloud with your head upon
moon's shoulder, haughtily call her
by name, kismet rising to meet you
head-on, a warning of our demise,
as the dancing springs warm
my clenching body in honeyed dew.
Two are better than one sinking
into Dante's peak, sin blooming
in plumes of ash, el que por su gusto
muere su agonia le sabe a gloria.
But your fingers beg me to keep them
warm in my embrace as wetness
dribbles from your lips.
-----------------------------------------------------------------PROMPT:
1. Begin the poem with a metaphor.
2. Say something specific but utterly preposterous.
3. Use at least one image for each of the five senses, either in succession or scattered randomly throughout the poem.
4. Use one example of synesthesia (mixing the senses).
5. Use the proper name of a person and the proper name of a place.
6. Contradict something you said earlier in the poem.
7. Change direction or digress from the last thing you said.
8. Use a word (slang?) you’ve never seen in a poem.
9. Use an example of false cause-effect logic.
10. Use a piece of talk you’ve actually heard (preferably in dialect and/or which you don’t understand).
11. Create a metaphor using the following construction: “The (adjective) (concrete noun) of (abstract noun) . . .”
12. Use an image in such a way as to reverse its usual associative qualities.
13. Make the persona or character in the poem do something he or she could not do in “real life.”
14. Refer to yourself by nickname and in the third person.
15. Write in the future tense, such that part of the poem seems to be a prediction.
16. Modify a noun with an unlikely adjective.
17. Make a declarative assertion that sounds convincing but that finally makes no sense.
18. Use a phrase from a language other than English.
19. Make a non-human object say or do something human (personification).
20. Close the poem with a vivid image that makes no statement, but that “echoes” an image from earlier in the poem.