Here’s my poem written on the below 20 prompts! Hope you enjoy reading it 🙂 I can’t tell you I enjoyed writing it. It felt like a mental exercise but I like how it turned out in the end. It was great learning. Let me know what you think

“Our (optional) prompt for today is one that we have used in past years, but which I love to come back to, because it so often takes me to new and unusual places, and results in fantastic poems. It’s called the “Twenty Little Poetry Projects,” and was originally developed by Jim Simmerman. The challenge is to use/do all of the following in the same poem. Of course,  if you can’t fit all twenty projects into your poem, or a few of them get your poem going, that is just fine too!”

1. Begin the poem with a metaphor. 
2. Say something specific but utterly preposterous.
3. Use at least one image for each of the five senses, either in succession or scattered randomly throughout the poem.
4. Use one example of synesthesia (mixing the senses).
5. Use the proper name of a person and the proper name of a place.
6. Contradict something you said earlier in the poem.
7. Change direction or digress from the last thing you said.
8. Use a word (slang?) you’ve never seen in a poem.
9. Use an example of false cause-effect logic.
10. Use a piece of talk you’ve actually heard (preferably in dialect and/or which you don’t understand).
11. Create a metaphor using the following construction: “The (adjective) (concrete noun) of (abstract noun) . . .”
12. Use an image in such a way as to reverse its usual associative qualities.
13. Make the persona or character in the poem do something he or she could not do in “real life.”
14. Refer to yourself by nickname and in the third person.
15. Write in the future tense, such that part of the poem seems to be a prediction.
16. Modify a noun with an unlikely adjective.
17. Make a declarative assertion that sounds convincing but that finally makes no sense.
18. Use a phrase from a language other than English.
19. Make a non-human object say or do something human (personification).
20. Close the poem with a vivid image that makes no statement, but that “echoes” an image from earlier in the poem.

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Freedom’s an untethered kite 

La liberté est un cerfvolant sans attaches

A cool breeze that blows, on a hot summer’s day 

a cup of hot chocolate  on a cold winter’s day 

a burbling brook that flows over pebbles and rocks 

Tiny, wild flowers – blooming over walls and roof-tops  

Heidi meandering on the Swiss alps

Feasting with her grandfather on warm bread with goat’s cheese

 

Aladdin on his magic carpet but he is rooted to the ground

He can’t fly for Smiths’ is holding him down

“Yallah Jasmine. Habibti, tell me what’s wrong?”

“I can smell trouble. Wallah, some down,” said Jasmine, scared.

“Freedom’s a kite. Must flutter in the sky; must not fly or we’ll lose sight.”

“The bright kite of freedom, cut it’s string loose-

Or it’ll be the bird with clipped wings, trying to fly

Freedom’s them in the sky

On a Persian carpet  –

Weaved in orange, red and white.

 

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Today’s poetry resource is Entropy’s “Where to Submit” page. If you are thinking about submitting your work for consideration by journals and presses, this is a wonderful resource for learning about which ones are accepting work, what kind of work they’re looking for, and just finding new magazines to read!