Thursday, March 13, 2008

Wings 4 You - Challenge Response

Dame Carla Kurt, of my beloved, inspirational, and faithfully followed Anonnyrie blog, has started a NEW blog entitled Wings 4 You Coaching, in which she offers weekly creativity coaching prompts and discussions. I'm doing a Major Snoopy Dance with feverish delight - true story. Below is my response to one of her coaching prompts. For those who don't want to bounce between my blog and hers, the prompt suggests "starting a poem that uses metaphor to express your ideas." The prompts are bolded, below, with my responses following.

In my past, I was ... an inverted tornado, ingesting atmosphere & debris, & claiming it all, demolishing internal foundations with the gusts of misappropriated guilt.

In the mirror, I am ... a sunflower with feather-petals and word-seeds, and I do not droop but undulate through earth, grass, sea, air, and fire, on my fierce Siren's tail. My breasts are perfectly risen & tipped, and my uplifted blueberry chin cocks sassily. My smile flashes teeth of arced moonbeams.

OR

I'm a tired peach, bruised and too long in the shadows of a bustling, over-extended tree, nourishment to others but useless to myself, oh -- but still, but always, seeded.

In my dreams, I am ... a multilingual map of destinations & arrivals, speaking books, art, paint, & pens, and clothed in idea-inked canvas. My rivers are ridged green fluorishes; my mountains are desires, dares, risks taken & paths only going up, towards the moon, or out to the edges of seas glittering with friends, feasts, & fire-lit dances. I am the map and the traveler; the question & the answer(s); the discourse, the adventure, the quiet turning tides shifting internal continents. I inhale ticket stubs & exhale poems & pictures for those to come. I am accessible. I am uncomplicated. I am salted breezes, & I echo the running hoof-&-paw beats, the exalted howls, of the wild, the free. I encompass coasts & villages, plantings & harvests, seasons, flavors, spices, & tornadoes. I bloom consumed pelts; my shoes are wishes overlaying bones. I will hold your hand, Follower, & we shall laugh -- EVERYWHERE.

In my stories, I am ... the vowels forming shapes & visions from loose letters. And I am the journalist, one step (or more) behind, capturing it all so nothing is lost, especially nuance & dimension where imagination abandoned its place. I am the full moon eye illuminating possibility, the coccoon of wind collecting exhalations and reassembling their details to give flight to sparklers, fireflies, & monsoon lightning.

In my fears, I am ... veiled to the point of blindness, muzzled back from speech, & cloistered from any action or change. I'm a column of stone weathering to dust & blown into oblivion by chance & the lives of others. I am unable to distinguish music or language, & all books have fed some mad bonfire. I am actually a serpent, belly-down in the dust of my own erasure, coiling ruthlessly into dark, closed tunnels, alone with my shadows and bloated by my undigestable potential. In my fears, I am errant hail melting in hot sunrays, easily evaporated, surrendering to my short fall. I'm a declawed cat powerless to fight back. Or I'm a mermaid encased in a desert-themed snowglobe.

======================

What I TRULY love is that these are weekly prompts. In a week's time, I actually HAVE time to participate fully, privately, utterly. Lovely. Lovely. Still Snoopy Dancing, I am!

6 comments:

Veronica said...

That shounds so much like somethihng you would do so well in. How cool is that? I love it.

Jane Izumi Matsumoto said...

I'm a tired peach, bruised and too long in the shadows of a bustling, over-extended tree, nourishment to others but useless to myself, oh -- but still, but always, seeded.

You just described me in that mirror, my friend. lol!

Your words are beautiful... expressive, reflective, and inspirational. I really enjoy reading your writing, Toni.

Anonymous said...

Wow!!! Your imagery is so rich and full of passionate emotion. You've revealed several distinct "yous" in each poem, and there is such clarity around the identity of those different versions. I am very interested to see what you will do with the upcoming challenege! Thank you for participating:> - carla

Laurel said...

Wow, I wish I could write like that. That peach tree is me too! You are constantly amazing me with not only your photography but now your writing. Keep going.

As for my creations, you asked if you could scraplift... lift away!

Carla said...

Wow! This sounds like an amazing class/journey/workshop! We'll all be here, ready to read what you write!

T. Kaiser said...

I love open ended prompts, and I love what you've done with them. Your words feel like color to me and communicate at an emotional - heart-to-heart level. I can see why you like Kingsolver so much. She also has that gift of using words that open up the emotions as they speak to the intellect.