Poetry Prompts

     Poetry Prompt

1. Go to the dump.
2. Sift through the dump & collect all the old computers & floppy discs.
   
3. Search through the old floppy discs & computer drives.
   
4. Collect all the writing from these discs & drives, all the cover letters & queries & todo lists & term papers, all the writing no one thought worthy of saving.
   
5. Assemble the abandoned writings in one file in your computer.
6. Return to the dump.
7. Throw your computer into the dump.
8. Wait until your computer & all its programs are obsolete.
9. Go to the dump & retrieve your computer.
10. Open the file, as you might pull a dead deer from a still living mother deer.
    
    

     Poetry Prompt

1. Swallow a horse.
2. Ride the horse you have swallowed.
3. Ride off a cliff, right into the poem.
4. Unswallow the horse into the poem.
5. Unride off the cliff.
6. Unpoem.
7. Un. 

     Poetry Prompt

1. Go to the graveyard.
2. Let the dead write their poems on your livingness.
3. When a cloud of gnats appears, step into the cloud of gnats.
4. Let the gnats to get all in your eyes & nose & mouth.
5. Let the gnats cover your face completely.
6. Peel the poems the dead have written off of your livingness.
7. Lay the dead’s poems in the sun to dry.
8. Brush the gnats from your face.
9. You will have a different face.
10. You will have a different angel.
11. The hidden trees.
12. The death rates.
13. The gnats.
14. The phosphorescence.
15. It’s enough to make you want a good enough trumpet.
16. It’s enough to make you want a mask of gnats.
17. Good enough to write an epitaph.
18. Good enough to soothe the dead.

     Poetry Prompt

1. Write a poem.
2. Chop the poem into pieces with an ax.
   
3. Wait until the ax falls apart into splinters & rot & the axhead rusts to nothing.
   
4. Collect the splinters & rot & rust & poempieces in a steel bucket.
   
5. Fill the bucket to the rim with good, clean water.
   
6. Mix the contents into pulp.
   
7. Make thick paper out of the pulp.
   
8. I didn’t cry at my dad’s funeral.
   
9. There was a tarpit in the church.
   
10. Ancient bones rose to the tarpit's surface & sank back down.
    
11. The tarpit bubbled & bubbled, each bubble a breath.
    
12. Sit beside that tarpit.
    
13. Sit close enough for the bubbles to splash tar on your dark clothes.
    
14. Wipe the tar off with the fresh pieces of axpaper.