There were two prompts for Thursday, giving you a choice of which to do.

Prompt 1: What is the thing in the future that you fear the most.

Prompt 2: Write a homage

I chose prompt 2, though I'll keep prompt 2 in my back pocket for future use. The homage that was read in class, as an example, was dedicated to Walt Whitman. Instead of going for everyone's famous person (Robert Downey Jr. obviously), I chose to do my padre.

PAPA

There are worse things

you could do on a Saturday.

Silly fathers sit in

death's double-wide;

sniffing his laudanum-

laced carpet.

Simple fathers tell

clean lies to

irrelevant wives with

happy pill habits.

Senseless fathers

drink, drag, drug

their way to pretty

nothingness.

Our fort’s lid,

comprised of a

yellow comforter,

dips above our heads,

tickles my ear as

you shuffle the deck.

We sit on the kitchen floor;

legs crossed, deep air

sticking to our lungs,

like honey on toast.

There are worse things

you could do on a Saturday.

More later!

Love from Pullman,

The Blonde and The Bullshit

I know it's been a bit since I have updated but we have been focusing on editing pre-existing work for the past month. We did flash writes today which I will post later, in hopes of making up for my absence. Then again, I think four people are reading this blog, 75% with some blood relation to me, so I think you all will be alright. Here is my most recent:

WHERE THE TILE MET THE WOOD

I was out of place.
There were paisley chintz chairs
and white-teethed wedding albums
and no dusty books.

I stared where the living room
met the foyer
and where the tile
met the wood.

The woman who sat across
was all pointy elbows
and bitter lips.

That woman spat out words,
words that sounded like 
tasting bleach.
Things like, "You are no 
daughter of the Lord and
you are no daughter of mine."

Silence slunk from
the air between us,
cowed,
whimpering in my bones.

And I sat on the 
clinically white sofa and
stared where the tile
met the wood and
hummed to myself
just to make her
mourn.

I'll post the others tomorrow or Thursday!

Love from Pullman,

The Blonde and The Bullshit

This was an in class assignment where we were directed to write a poem from the perspective of a historical (loosely defined) figure who you did not understand. Having recently watched the documentary Blackfish, about the trainer killed at SeaWorld, I took the idea of whalenapping from the ocean. The quotes are not from the movie they are just concepts and ideas that I took from seeing it, with some nonfiction in there as well.

BLACKFISH

I don't even think it
counts as rationalizing
if you have to talk
yourself into it.

"We cornered them
in a bay and did
whatever it took 
to get the babies."

"Whatever it took?"

"Yeah, so we wrangled
nets around the
mamas and the babies
and did 
whatever it took."

And they did.
They killed four mamas
because they were
going to do
whatever it took.

Snatched the babies,
slit open the mamas,
stuffed them with
anchors and pulleys,
like they were the
bird on Thanksgiving.

Then sunk them in
the ocean,
like they were women
who had sinned,
all in the name of
entertainment for the
children of America.

Love from Pullman,

The Blonde and The Bullshit

My poetry class is cancelled tomorrow so I don't have a poem for Thursday. However, we did blitzkrieg poems in class (each given 10 minutes to write) on Tuesday that I am going to post. These prompts came from poems that the prof read in class and took ideas from. I have not edited from the way I wrote them in class as they are quick writes.

The first prompt was to take a color and elaborate on it.
The second prompt was more of a rule: your poem has to start with the line "My love is..." and then from there you could take the poem where ever you wanted it to go.

BLACK

Onyx, that is the
negative of day,
lunges at you
as you turn off
the lights.

Ebony, that gets
close to your throat
and scuttles
across your ribs.

Noir that hugs the
inside of the charred
fireplace, too bare
to burn flame.

You're sweet and cold,
as the bleak black,
dark as death,
dips you in
the fathomless sea
to check if you
can really be
born again.

MY LOVE IS

My Love is broken.
I'm not talking about
a boy or a man.
I'm talking about
a friend.

She's sitting on
our couch, tequila
drunk.
She's crying about
a boy, she calls a man,
who she thinks she
loves.

My Love is broken.
She thinks she's
fixed herself, but
her heart's in her
feet and her
brain's in her
mouth
and she's running on
this thing she
calls love, with
this boy she calls
a man.

And I've tried
to talk, we've tried
to talk to her,
our broken Love.

And she's pushed us
away.

So now,
my broken Love
tries to stand,
thinking she is
whole again,
while we sit,
and we cry,
and we try to
fix.

Love from Pullman,

The Blonde and The Bullshit

The prompt for the assignment due tomorrow is write a poem about your reaction to your favorite piece of art. I chose to do mine based off this piece by Banksy:



BANKSY

Awkward glance at the dirty cup,
next to the broken man,
in the purple sleeping bag.
Loose coins drop,
eyes still on screen.

"Hey, dipshit,"
he said.
"How about looking up
from your internet life
to see the change
you haven't made
in the real one?"

Eyes up,
cheeks pink,
breath dead.

"I don't want to hear
the coins yelp as they
beat the bottom of my
styrofoam bank account."

Maybe it was harsh.
She thought so, as she
cussed out the sleeper,
more awake than she.

But I don't know.
If change was comfortable
and soft,
our generation would
roll it up, breathe it in
and exhale a shift 
in what we see.

"Keep your coins," he said.
"I want change."

Love from Pullman,

The Blonde and The Bullshit

This prompt directed that we take a line or lines from a favorite song or poem and link them into a different poem. I chose lines from Basic Space by The xx and jacked the title. But I used themes from the song Desert Island by Mansions on the Moon.

BASIC SPACE

Basic space, open air,

freckled knuckles

and soft skin.

Decayed bones add

salt to sand

as you grind your teeth

back and forth,

back and forth.

I pull your face up

as you try to drown

your lungs in scar tissue

and cheap bleach

and you roll your head

against the bathtub wall,

back and forth,

back and forth.

The sun cuts out and

your deep sea cold

coils inside, while my

broken bones shake,

back and forth,

back and forth.

Love from Pullman,

The Blonde and The Bullshit

The prompt for February 13 was to write about a turning point in your life.

FEBRUARY 13

"Tell me your turning point,"

he said.

Dammit, I know

what it is, but I 

wish I had to think

about it more.

I wish I had to mull

over my turning point.

I wish I had to debate

whether it was when I

looked in the mirror,

junior year, realizing 

that the ugly duckling

was a little less ugly.

Or maybe, it was

the first day of college;

fresh start and shit.

But it wasn't.

Weird that Whitney was 20.

Maybe it isn't weird;

I'm 20, well, almost.

20, spine cracked,

fragile, coma intensive.

I'm not that kind of 20.

I sit on my bed,

writing about her,

heating pad on high,

peanut pretzels

in a bowl.

I almost want

to ask her

what it was like

on the driver's side.

T-boned, neck split.

Sometimes it hits

me at weird times.

But maybe it's not weird.

Not weird that she left

on the thirteenth

and that this was the assignment

and that I sit here

on hard, black plastic

and tell about her

fucked up death

to people I hardly know.

20, and I haven't done anything.

But maybe she hadn't either.

That's not true,

I know it's not.

She had done things.

But not really, you know?

Not turning point things.

She's my turning point thing.

Whitney sits in a box,

burnt down into a gold urn.

20 years old.

What if she were me?

Maybe it isn't weird.

Love from Pullman,

The Blonde and The Bullshit

Wow. I did not mean to miss four posts. Sophomore year is heating up. I will post each separately with their prompt.
This is from February 11. Because it was close to Valentine's Day, we were prompted to write a love poem. However, (plot twist) it could not be about a person.

LOVE YOU TO THE MOON & BACK

Droplets of dusk
suffocate the last
elderly remains of day,
as they drip, drink, drug
the sun into a Novacaned stupor.

Once all is night,
she appears.
First shyly, peaking out
behind a dense curtain
of straining stars.
Then boldly, praising the
baby fires for beginning
to light her way.

She kisses the tender
clouds and they melt away
at her caress.
She sits up there,
on her thrown of atmosphere
and cries so softly,
I nearly miss it,
for all her loves
that have been taken back.

Love from Pullman,

The Blonde and The Bullshit

The prompt for Thursday's poem was to pick a branch of science of social science and use the jargon. I chose to use Astronomy in mine:

GALACTIC

I want to be born in a 

protoplanetary disk.

Crumbled concrete samples

my battered skull.

Brain knocked forward,

left eye blocked.

Ripped out tail light,

tap, tap, tapping with my breath.

Not dead yet.

I want to be the radiation pressure

of the solar wind that breaks

baby protoplanets.

Raw knuckles scrape up

blown out windscreen,

as I blink, blink, blink.

Generating from my core,

I want to be my own magnetic field.

He stares at me, benign, pitying,

"Are you fucking kidding me?"

My God's kind of an ass, I think,

as a siren crawls into my ear.

Love from Pullman,

The Blonde and The Bullshit

Tuesday's prompt was to take a familiar idiom and write a poem where you take the phrase literally (ex: 'take a hike', 'best of both worlds', 'have your cake and eat it too', etc.).  I chose to do 'killing two birds with one stone.'

TWO BIRDS, ONE STONE

God put his brain in backwards,
dropped it in the cavity of bone,
didn't even check if it was in right.
Papa said not to look at him,
but I met him last November,
asked him what he liked to do.
Like I didn't know.
One eye squinting,
gun, made of hands, cocked.
"Hitting one crow? Pithy.
Like Death deciding whose throat to slit."
His voice soft, drifting, dusty,
like I was just a maple in the wood.

God put his brain in backwards,
brain stem digging into frontal lobe.
"Two crow boom, two crow boom,"
he lamented, like the cow going to slaughter.
Mad as a March, God said.
Bought it off a guy I graduated with,
safety disengaged.
One crow, two crow,
two birds, one stone.

Writing one tonight, I'll put it up later!

Love from Pullman,

The Blonde and The Bullshit

This weeks prompt was to write a different ending to a familiar story. I chose Alice in Wonderland, choosing to focus on a more minor character than Alice herself. 

HATTER

Like the anorexic lion, two doors down,

he sits in the Detroit zoo,

white hair matted and mangled. 

He'll tell you stories, if you listen,

"lean in close, good and close."

He tells of the whiskered, white rabbit,

now patched, dirty. 

Petulant and beautiful he drinks air

feigning tea. 

Grieving eyes fixed,

he stares into your naked mind whimpering,

"how is a raven like a writing desk?"

As day eats itself and the moon appears,

I hear him howl and moan,

like Alice on her first night. 

He sits between the graying penguins

and the sickly antelope,

in his glass pen, muddled and mad. 

More later!

Love from Pullman,

The Blonde and The Bullshit

The prompt for these two poems included the entire class. We went around in a circle (there are about 17 of us) and read our favorite line of one of the poems we have written. We all wrote them down and had to pick two. Those lines had to become the first line of two different poems. I have underlined the first lines that were written by someone else.  This class is dedicated entirely to reading and writing poetry. While in that class, many incredible writers surround me, professor included. Very impressive.

BLANK ME

It was beautiful this morning,

when everything was dead.

Now it’s all fucked up and

you shake my shoulders and

my skull hits my brain

twice too many.

So they lie me in a bed

with bars on the sides and

sheets too white and

say it’s shock.

And I stay that way,

even when I sleep in my

own blue, barless bed.

Everything is still fucked up,

and I think I might be too.

VIRGINIA

It’s an odd compilation

between rustic and electric.

Acres of corn, sweet and shallow

surround the dilapidated barn,

alight with heat and flame.

July, unapologetically hot.

Ash blisters off the incinerating stables,

glittering against scars.

Voice vacant on the air,

her thin lips white.

The wind sidles through

the charred windows,

dripping with heat,

as she walks back,

into the hollow house.

More soon!

Love from Pullman,

The Blonde and The Bullshit

The assignment that is due tomorrow was prompted as such: If x is y then ______.

NEXT-DOOR

If the red stoplight is the sound of
my neighbors skull against plaster,
then she is the junk yard car
with a teenager's brains still
crusted on the windscreen.

If her common law marriage
is the bit in a lame horse's mouth
as it digs into his molars,
then he is to be shot
before Easter.

If my neighbor cries 
as she smokes a menthol,
then she is the fish gasping
in broken glass,
licked clean of fear.

Love from Pullman,

The Blonde and The Bullshit

The second assignment given was to write a poem that is completely a lie.

BLUE WHALE

Gilbert lives in the stream behind our apartment.
We tried to fit him in the bathtub but,
of course, he looked ridiculous.
We found him in the ocean last summer.
He has cool glass skin that shimmers
under water as he glides.
He's grown a couple meters both ways,
he was only a calf when we first met him.
We first fed him peanut butter but now
we just feed him chocolate and tea.
Katie sings him lullabies when
he has nightmares about sharks.
It happens a lot.
But when we go home, he'll go home.
You see, I have a stream behind my house too.

Love from Pullman,

The Blonde and The Bullshit

Second Semester began last week and I have had a few poetry assignments but I have not had time to update until now. I am in a poetry class this semester so the only prose writing will be done on my own time. We have had three poems assigned but they have no common theme. To keep them separate I am going to put the other two in their own blog posts. 

This first one was assigned in the first class. The prompt was to write about the most exciting thing you did over break and I chose to write about the STRFKR concert my friends and I saw.

STRFKR

Pink wool blankets,
Sad-eyed-stuffed-carnival toys
cramp me in childhood.
Get out, night out.
Look up and stare blindly at
stars knit in purple clouds.
Sweat and whiskey tickle my tongue
as we step into the venue;
all black walls, all black floors.
The bass bounces heart against chest,
like the strobe light pulling at my pupils.
Taste the sanctuary
as we find another home
preaching someone else's happy.

Love from Pullman,

The Blonde and The Bullshit 

Today I have created a poem inspired from two segments of my yesterday. Firstly, I read the book 84 Charring Cross Road by Helene Hanff in a single sitting (Google it). Very charming book and definitely brought out the book love in me. Secondly, I saw perfection in a film last night. Saving Mr. Banks was stunning. It has quickly become one of my favorite movies (go see it now!). Anyways, here's one is for the readers:

I refer to it as My Bookshop,
though, of course,
it is not mine.
Nor are the spotty paged
hand-me-down books inside.
Well-worked spines,
worn in characters.
Mine are not the men
who stand, noses crammed
between lines of Ulysses and Yates.
The children who pedal through Poppins
and wander with Winnie,
they too are not mine.
But those, who these books once belonged.
Who caressed the inked pages as I have
and whose fingers urned to turn the pages
when there were none left.
They can be mine.

More later.

Love from home,

The Blonde and the Bullshit