Writing 12: USING THE IMAGINATION

Today, we read our bedroom poems aloud, read poetry during USSR and started a "Lines I Love" page. We wrote a couple of pages from prompts and turned them into a found poem. Homework, using as many specific details as possible,
 fill up a page (in prose form) to complete this prompt . . .
He or She watches the dancers through the window.

Thanks for those brave students who stood up at the front today to read their poems aloud. You are paving the way for all of us to be brave. For those of you who missed today's opportunity, have no fear, there will be many many more opportunities for you to share. 

Before the rain was born

Barbara Colebrook Peace

Before the rain was born,

did you turn and stare

at the glimmer of a double helix form

caught in a web of sun? Or when

you closed the dark fastenings

of the moon, and flung the first

quark in a backwards

silver curve—was it then

you found a spiral shape in the dust,

scrabbling like a bird limed

in a net? While angels

swooped round the logic of the sun –

you pitched a stone deep into the dark,

so that you could dream

the orbit of a human breath

Halfway World

by Eve Joseph in The Secret Signature of Things

In the halfway world of the Pantanal,

aquatic and terrestrial

ghosts, stars and fireflies

everywhere.

Night smelling of ripe fruit,

lilies, dirt roads.

Breathing it all in,

visitors,

the two of you

like moss green birds,

exotic and endangered.

The indigenous people

gone,

the children stolen.

Prepare to listen to

the Truth and Reconciliation Commission

at home –

the stories of unmarked graves

waiting to be told.

Not knowing what’s ahead.

how will the dead speak?

Not knowing what’s ahead,

waiting to be told

the stories of unmarked graves

at home.

The Truth and Reconciliation Commission

prepares to listen to

the stolen children –

gone

the indigenous people,

exotic and endangered

like moss green birds.

The two of you

visitors,

breathing it all in –

lilies, dirt roads

night smelling of ripe fruit.

Everywhere

ghosts, stars and fireflies

aquatic and terrestrial

in the halfway world of the Pantanal.

Favourite Iraqi Soldier

Stephen Dobyns

Into his kit when sent to the front he had tucked

his black three-piece suit and through night

after night of the frightful bombing, which

not only wiped out but pragmatically entombed

his luckless comrades in a marvel of technological

decadence, he had kept the suit protected

so that at the surrender he had stripped naked

and slipped it on. This is when the photographer

caught him, that among the thousands of defeated

there walked one Iraqi in a three-piece suit

who tried to express by his general indifference

that he had stumbled into all this carnage simply

by accident and was now intent on strolling away.

I am a modest banker tossed on the wrong bus.

I am a humble stockbroker who took a wrong turn.

And he passed through the American lines

and began hitchhiking south. Did he elect

to relocate in Kuwait? Fat chance! Did he

want the loveable Saudis as new neighbours?

Quite unlikely! What about the opportunities

offered by the Libyans, Tunisians, Egyptians?

Truly hilarious! Was there any place in Africa

where he hoped to lay his head/ Decidedly

not! What about Europe where he could start

as a servant or chop vegetables in the back

of a restaurant but work his way up? Completely

crazy! Or North America where he could dig

a ditch but with the right breaks might buy

a used car? Too ludicrous! What about South

America where he could pick fruit or Asia where

he could toil in a sweatshop? You must be nuts!

In his black suit he is already dressed for the part

and hopes to hitchhike to one of those Antarctic

islands and stroll around with the penguins.

Good evening Mr. White, good evening Mrs. Black,

your children swim quite nicely, they look

so hardy and fit. No one to give him orders

but the weather. No one to terrify him

but the occasional shark. No one to be mean to

but the little fish, who were put into this ocean

to serve him and whom he praises with each bite.

Thank you , gray brother  for the honour you have bestowed

on my belly. May you have the opportunity

to devour me when my days on earth are done.

What I love about this poem is its absurdity. Absurdity or comedy works because we end up laughing our way to a truth. Create a narrative poem like this one where a character in a terrible situation such as war, famine, unemployment, natural disaster etc. does something absurd to try to escape it unscathed. Let the actions speak for themselves so the horror of the situation is revealed by the absurdity.

Ocean Shores by Evelyn Lau

This is once in a lifetime, you said,

so we had to go back again in the rain

to see the whale, so serene there

in the sand we thought it was a sculpture

on the first pass, a stone or marble creature

rising like a rock on the poured mirror

of the beach. The whale was dead,

cracked open by putrefaction,

thick blubber skin split down the middle

and guts spilled onto the sand,

blue-gray masses like wave-washed stones,

purses of stinking fluid and the slur

of the omentum. You trailed a finger

along its divided tail, and into its blind eye

no more than a slit in its side.

Once in a lifetime, so we went back

three or four times, circling the whale

until we were frozen and fought

our way back to the car through the wind

and sidestepping seagulls and bits of whale

carcass scattered around the tires.

You said it came only three or four times

in a lifetime, this thing of falling in love,

if you were lucky that is, only if you were lucky,

and that night at the Lucky Dragon Restaurant

the slip of fortune cookie read,

“Stop searching forever. Happiness

is right there in front of you.”

You were in front of me, and then I knew

leaving you was something I couldn’t do

only once in a lifetime, that I would be pulled back

always to this lifeless thing between us,

the tug of its exposed body and somewhere

inside the weight of its heavy heart.