Sisyphus Merriam Webster Definition

EXERCISE: WRITE A HAIKU IN WHICH A SISYPHIAN EFFORT IS PERFORMED.

____________
King Sisyphus's Last Trick (Haiku String)

Rock who had never
run away for boyish games
or adventure, now

could be measured by
his ever thinning waistline;
gone, a boy's corners.

Mother, a black sea
boulder, hated the king who
turned boy to pebble.

How quick kings forget
a mother's vengeance on fleets
of gold and soldiers,

on tricksters who turn
the effort of love to sand,
feet laughing at gods.


JEA

_____________________

Seven line story

Jane sent me a set of guidelines for a contest from an online magazine called Opium. I reproduce it here as a game: "The rules? Write a story or prose poem that is seven lines or less (8.5" x 11" paper with 1" margins)." Below I posted a great little story as an example. Also taken from Opium:

Postcard from Mykonos
by Thomas Cooper
Estimated reading time: 30 seconds

When H and J were on vacations they wrote postcards to the Mortimers, a couple they never knew or met. They imagined the Mortimers at home, captivated, when they received postcards from San Tropez, Tokyo, Madrid. “Maybe we’ll visit this thanksgiving,” he wrote. “Why didn’t you meet us in Bangkok?” she wrote. It went on for years. But this morning,alone in Mykonos for Christmas, at a desk window overlooking the Aegean sea, he writes on the back of a hotel postcard that he has news he must share in person, and that he’ll soon be on his way.


At Home with the Mortimers

In the face of Buena's utter disappointment, Raul tossed the extravagant postcards out; where Buena saw friends in a secret new world, Raul saw the reflections of escape and excess: would his wife wear Lamborghini-red lipstick like the mouth of that postcard's Amsterdam whore? Would other men see the horizon of her bikini line from a yacht skimming the postcard's Baltic? Would she shame him, traipsing the card's naked edge of 42nd Street? All led to Buena's ultimate deception, he later thought, her hair in his hands. Buena watched the man she had once thought to love

suck in all his breath and loosen a ball of phlegm into the trash can. She said nothing because above all she knew that though Raul could control her, he could not control the mail. She let him mock her. "You're the sucker born every minute". Before the fire of his doubt could consume him, Buena secreted those minute love letters that beckoned her to sit in Parisienne cafe chairs lined like eggs in cartons; to touch Lady Liberty's prickly crown; to bathe in the yellow curry of a Nepalese hillside; to follow a gaggle of Geishas walking in a grove of

cherry blossoms. She never thought to believe the postcards were images of a life spent in dreams, that her reality existed in the garbage pail. A somnambulist, Buena mined, then rescued the pieces out from under the finger of Raul's suspicion. She cut her hands with the shark lids of bean cans and inhaled the stench of 50 cent half-smoked cigars. None of that mattered because she had never known the depth of her discontent until the mysterious arrival of postcards from a couple she'd never known nor met.

JEA

Dreams

Megan walks into what seems to be a hospital, light beams shine brightly, so brightly she squints and shades her eyes with her hand. If she could only find a bed to rest her weary body. “You can use the one reserved for the homeless,” someone whispers in her ear. And there in front of her are six gurneys each covered in sheets of the most vivid hues: Tuareg blue, azalea pink, Flaming June orange. Although she yearns to lay down on the alluring field of colors, and rest her head she shivers at the thought that someone will come to reprimand her, and demand she give up her bed to one more needy. Finally, she sees a row of black chairs in a dark corner. And while she walks toward them thinking of how she’ll need to arrange her body to fit in, she hears what she thinks is an ambulance siren’s wail approaching quickly and loudly.

elf

El horóscopo/ the horoscope

Juego: Usando el lenguaje de los horóscopos, crear un poema. Puede ser tan corto como un haiku, o tan largo como un soneto. Game, anyone?

#1
El amor ronda
tu puerta entreabierta.
Atrápalo ya.

#2
In the year of the tiger
the mice scramble about quietly and oh so discreetly.
But beware,
the steady nibbling can even one so fearful and ferocious defeat
oh so completely.

Elf

_________________________________________


Found (Horoscope borrowed from DailyHoroscopes.com, Aug. 18, 2010)

Slip onto the lips of the information you receive
today, where you will find that some avenues,
previously blocked, are now opening:
however, be wary of the mouths of rapids and avatars,
jelly jars, and automatic garage doors.

Put yourself inside everything.
listen to streetlights, wake to witness storms,
a bitch's worry skulk into night, an iguana's
orange breath, mufflers and long winding kilometers.
The more information you get

to help you understand
the years of an imagined kiss, the tomato stain
on the kitchen floor, the knot at the nape
of your neck, the vengeance of an ingrown
hair, the more success you will have
with your endeavors, though acidic and mildly cellular.

You probably already have grand tenuous ideals
and visions: a box tied around what the past
would not give you. But now you must put everything
aside together. You may have to find yourself,

a minister to your pale hungers, helping each
learn patience, understanding, acceptance, only till
the lull is done, till the itch is gone, till the time
has .... An odd flavor, this psychology.

But by now, you already know
that what passes for love is not easy.
Remember: this is a time for prudence, a time to tend
to details: listen for when your body loosens,
unravels; be a titan, unabashed. Be okay
with princes in 18-wheelers, the metallic smile of youth,
the fantasia of body shop mechanics and all their boyhood
looks; most importantly, let yourself
be a tomtom for the heart.

But never drive while lonely.

Juego: Myth-making

Ekphrastic writing is a fantastic way of re-envisioning an artwork. Choose a mythological or literary figure from a piece of art (literary work, painting, sculpture, etc) and re-tell the story in your own way, using your own perceptions, prejudices, dreams, visions, whatever speaks to you in the work. I've pasted mine below "Oberon Takes Wing". If you want to see other examples of ekphrastic writing, here's a link:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6l-nj9MeTNo&feature=related


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6l-nj9MeTNo&feature=related

Oberon Takes Wing

He should have known he knew not the new wings. look how disproportionate, laced in iron. if he could make it, he thought, to the lamppost, the bench, the score of grass waiting like an unmade bed; but there was so much he didn't know. and so much of the little he knew: the light in a hostas leaf unfolding itself; romance in the red red brick seeking for him a new path; song trees waving him in. closer, they sang in lyrics made of rustle and whoosh. but it was the girl in green he could hear through all the mess. the girl who spoke to him best, spoke to him last, held him by a flimsy but tactile faith: the ephemera of her fingerprint on the border of his instep, the long shadow he made on her face. he followed her in his mind, heard the bells ringing in her flight and spanned what little he had of wing.

JEA

Artwork: VCCA Sculpture: information pending

El sueño de Ícaro

Sueño con la brisa acariciando mi rostro,
con pasajes de luz,
con alas blancas
agitadas al viento.

Sueño con el sol descansando sobre mi cabeza.
con el sabor de la libertad,
con el olor del vuelo
de colegas bípedas.

Sueño.
Y en el remanso de esa quimera
ni el sol ni el mar me son letales.

Despierto.
El desigual y caótico descenso al precipicio
Me recuerda lo fugaz de la felicidad.

elf

New game: Ode to a Body Part

Write a short ode to a part of your body, any part of your body. I've pasted below Lucille Clifton's "Homage to My Hips" as an example:

"these hips are big hips
they need space to
move around in.
they don't fit into little
petty places. these hips
are free hips.
they don't like to be held back.
these hips have never been enslaved,
they go where they want to go
they do what they want to do.
these hips are mighty hips.
these hips are magic hips.
i have known them
to put a spell on a man and
spin him like a top!"

Game/Juego

Write a ten line poem in which you play with a proverb or adage. (Adapted from Behn & Twichell, The Practice of Poetry) Here's my attempt:

I find myself
between the devil
and a hard place,
between a rock
and the deep blue sea
a place, a rock, the sea.
To find, to be, to see.
I, myself, the devil
and between,
a deep blue.

elf

Not really a poem, but a smattering of ideas that were inspired by Elf's wonderful rendering above. This was fun!

some one threw a mossy stone
in my glass house
that was yours. It was
a stone's throw
away from everything
good and plenty, needles in haystacks.
bad apples, and seeds
gone to pot.
someone saved their nickel,
but threw a penny for my thoughts,
a wishing well, deep
as the devil's blue jeans.

Conjugaciones

Para Luis que pide un juego de conjugaciones verbales

El amor a la deriva

La quise
La quiero
La querré

Me quiso
Me quiere
Me querrá

Mas juntos
olvidamos,
olvidé,
olvidó.

Y el amor se pierde
se perdió
se perderá
entre el hastío y la apatía.

Entonces querer y olvidar,
serán siempre subjuntivos
si te hubiese querido más
si hubiera luchado,
si no te olvidara...

elf

#2
Si estuviera donde estás
no estaría como estoy
no sería lo que soy
si fuera donde tú vas
si me dieras lo que das
a quien le diste lo mío
ya no sentiría más frío
sólo sentiría que siento
pensaría en lo que pienso
y si pienso, luego existo
pues nadie vería lo que ven
mis ojos que ya te han visto

Evelyn

___________

Tense

loved, she not. so she loved back
and loves forward, and side and sidled
back to love, try again and tried, fit to be tied. because fit, she not
to that love. that one so broken. that love so broke.
breaking on the edge of love she gave, gives in,
she, given to a Loved
waiting, as he loving another speaks of love unspoken,
while the loves of his love
tease then teased and wait waited, then fade
to not a love.

loved, she not. still, she loves
back. stilled and till and under and drowned
and drown and downed
and down.

JaneA