MeeAugraphie

LunaNiña gives her readers ten words to use for free association each week as a meme, Unconscious Mutterings: a great exercise, and a quick one! Try it, you may be quite surprised at some of your immediate responses. Once you have written yours, you may wish to go back and se what others came up with, we are all so different.

I take it a step farther and turn each set of words into a poem or short story, just because it is great fun and many times takes me places I had never intended to go or even thought I knew well enough to write about. Personally, I think her meme is a good tool in the arsenal of a writer or poet. I highly recommend it!

If you choose to use her words, whether as part of the meme, or just as a writer’s exercise, please be sure to link back to her site! Give her the credit she deserves for challenging us with such a variety of words. I am playing catchup and have posted two weeks together, I have one more I still have to write the poem for, but no time right now.

November 10th words followed by my immediate responses were:

1. Treadmill :: work
2. Stroke :: victim
3. Exclusively :: yours
4. Lash :: mascara
5. Red carpet :: treatment
6. Credit card:: debt
7. Points :: of entry
8. Domestic :: violence
9. 21 :: years
10. Inject :: fun

With these words, in order, tenses the same, I wrote:

Conversation with a Treadmill

Treadmill,
don’t let me down,
work my legs,
stroke my psyche.
take victim from my vocabulary.

Exclusively yours,
I am for now,
though lash coated with mascara,
red carpet treatment,
no credit card debt,
could allow themselves
points of entry into my heart,
now closed by my witness
of domestic violence

for 21 years,
21 long years.

Treadmill,
don’t let me down
work my legs,
stroke my psyche,
take victim from my vocabulary,

inject some fun into this man’s life.

MeeAugraphie
11/17/07

~~~~~

Words she offered for 11/18/07  and my immediate responses were:

1. Toasty :: warm
2. Allegations :: of innocence
3. Herb :: urban
4. Bacon :: bits
5. Neck to neck :: race
6. Simon :: Cowell
7. Heels :: step
8. Fundamentals :: of learning
9. Middle :: aged
10. Seasonings :: spices

From those, I wrote this:

Her life at Middle Age

Toasty, warm.
Allegations of innocence,
threats of guilt
all in past.
Life, filled with one herb
after another until flavor
became pungent –
much like an urban loft
with no ventilation
or a salad made by a child,
bacon bits piled high, when
only a few would have sufficed.

Neck to neck, life was a race
to beat the Simon Cowell’s
at their own game
or walk in heels too high
to balance gracefully on while
reciting the fundamentals of learning
you had long since forgotten.

You were meant to be
only middle aged,
not tossed salad, nor lumpy potates
overcooked and water logged
that no amount of seasonings or spices
would salvage.

When did toasty, warm become
burnt, but cold?

MeeAugraphie
11/18/07