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