Write a poem about your life. Discover what went wrong. Remember, don’t censor yourself. The world needs to know what a fuckup you are.
I publish books of prompts-
A writer writing for writers
What a lovely world we’ve built
Still,
A buck’s a buck at the bookstore
A writer’s wallet’s a workman’s wallet
A credit card’s a credit card
A beating heart’s a broken one
Go to the bookstore and hit on every woman you meet. Take any numbers you get and write about how the numbers feel.
She shelved scripts.
I met her, meandering
Between Beckett and Berloff.
I made academic jokes.
Her English degree laughed:
Love. (as close to it as we could get)
Think about how very insignificant you are on a global scale. Write a story where you justify your pretentiousness.
I squeezed her like toothpaste from the tube
Into every story and poem I wrote.
I made her unique:
A beggar in the Forbes Five Hundred,
A queen sold into slavery,
A high-schooler who’s happy.
She contemplates freezing to death in the backyard,
Or drowning in the bathtub,
And prays for a car crash.
Get someone to care about you, and then make him/her feel insignificant. Write about how his/her pet goldfish feels about this. Remember, the memory of a goldfish only lasts a few seconds.
I publish books of prompts.
I suggest that writers write-
And they pay me.
A credit card’s a credit card.
Her English degree still giggles when I alliterate-
Our relationship still falling apart like a Shelly sonnet.
We’re as close to love as we’ll ever get.
What a lovely world we’ve built.
A beating heart’s a broken one.
End a disappointing poem with a pretentious line that pretends to be elegant and deep. Be sure to use parallelism with your first stanza, and remember, although some people will read your poetry, it probably won’t really affect them in any lasting way.
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Originally Posted by Author
Another attempt at character-and-plot-driven poetry for a change. I wonder if this might work better as a short story.
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