Friday, October 28, 2016

Fall Session Writing Lab - Week #6 - Departure

Engaging the Active Imagination: Writing as Activism (Fall Session)

Writing prompt
  • Describe the view from your point of departure

Departure (Poem draft)

You walk the cliff's edge
to the place where what you've gained
you no longer hold and what you've lost
you cannot mourn because your journey
was meant to travel beyond acquisition

From this point you survey the vastness
and yearn for the calls from the unknown
when you realize you can't turn around when
the glares and shouts threaten to nail down
the canned heat long hidden in your heels

The outstretched arch of memory and the scope
of the contours of your soaring experience
have carved out the framework of lifetimes to come
and all you have to do is step forward.

Friday, October 21, 2016

Fall Session Writing Lab - Week #5 - Democracy

Engaging the Active Imagination: Writing as Activism (Fall Session)

Writing prompt
  • Voice your ideas for democracy


The citizens storm city hall wielding justice, accountability and action.
The administration shouts them down with allegations of disrespect, disruption and apathy.
To which the citizens reply, Do you know what apathy means?
A staunch indifference to the unimportant.

If the majority rules, it's the majority of dissent.

Friday, October 7, 2016

Fall Session Writing Lab - Week #4 - Displacement

Engaging the Active Imagination: Writing as Activism (Fall Session)

Writing prompt
  • Describe your own feelings of displacement

Displacement (Poem: draft)

Mother, father, sister, brother.
Brothers, the two of them. Slowly,
all begin to drift, fingers slip,
hands once clasped in time now drag
along the weeds.

The field hollers fade and
the night fire camp songs
are sung to the burning oak bark
and no one else.

Foot steps crush the crumpled bed of leaves
but the faint echoes repel against no living thing.
(to be cont'd...)