poem maths

take a break today and create something

I like to create prompts for my workshops that are simple to do AND trick you into writing poems. People moan about not being able to write poems and I laugh. We all can write. Don’t call it a poem. Call it a “piece” and maybe fall in love with it.
Give it away. Trust yourself.

This one is called poem math.

You take a google lookie for animal facts (or any fact) and then pick an emotion (so many) and then start to push them together somehow. Like you could use some of these random combos:

• Hummingbirds are the only birds that can fly backwards/Regret

• Otters “hold hands” while sleeping, so they don’t float away from each other

  Starfish do not have a brain/Love

• Koalas can sleep for up to 22 hours a day/joy

• Only female mosquitoes bite/trust

• The shortest living animal in the world is the Mayfly. Its entire adult lifespan is just 24hrs/sadness

• The only mammal capable of flight is the bat/fear

Just make a lists of how the fact makes you feel. What connection could it have to your life or an emotion? What would happen if you just let yourself write for ten minutes of your day?

Mine:

a blue whale has a tongue that can weigh more than 4000 lbs./Wistful or Pensive

I ask you to pour me champagne in a teacup and bring it to me. We sit on the back stoop and watch the last of the sun drip down like sticky golden honey and later you remind me that everything is going to be ok and also that you just learned that a blue whale has a tongue that can weigh more than 4000 lbs. It’s wild to think about the way things are in the world. How there are things you can calculate and verify and know. And then there are other things that you just feel. And other things we don’t really have the capacity for understanding. Like how the tongue feels in the mouth. We just notice it there sometimes. We notice it French kissing. Or if we bite it or when we push it against our teeth. The roof of the mouth. We are kind of floating through all this. I forget I have kneecaps sometimes. That I am not heard when I yell or cry about heavy hearts. But 4000 lbs. Wow. But it ain’t heavy to a blue whale I bet.
It ain’t heavy.

-ATS 

Please let us see your piece? Add it to the comments. Remember. Just let go and write what feels good. Don’t let it get too heavy. You are light. And lovely. You got this. ILYSM.

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Also——→random. This was a cool article. About sleep, analog life, history and OMG the writing is lovely.

Vastness, as such, is appealing, and the world is so very vast. Long-wave broadcasts travel far, hugging the planet as they make their way overseas. Like the sea itself, the Shipping Forecast is a reminder of the larger, more elemental forces at play, those things that are much more powerful than any of our individual worries or wants. For eons, there was nothing but the stars and estuaries, the winds, the shore. After making his way out of the mythical cave, man set off to the sea, where the water proffered new realms for exploration. And so, like the ancient mariners before me, I am often awake in the middle of the night, falling asleep to the mysteries of the deep. -Grace Linden