Thoughts, and a load of prompts

Even the generation of a page of prompts "does something" if you let it.

You can either be cute and clever and TRY to write clever prompts you think make you look so smart, or you can crib lines of poetry and story-starts, and stuff from letters, be meticulous, really thinking about the choices.

Both methods have a large degree of left-brained, deliberation, determination

Or you can flick through pages, grab something the "PINGS!", then another, always ping-ful, but at the same time be allowing the poems glanced at, the words copied to themselves trigger wild, surprising lines of your own. Instead of slavishly copying exact phrasings you let the sick mind twist, invert or subtly change.

You find yourself on a certain track, realise you are choosing prompts all of a kind, you BREAK, grab a different book, write something very silly, or something mundane yet profound. You're trying to access the unconscious, to disturb the beast, to go where it's dark and manic, so you need a four dimensional map. You have to avoid the expected

I hadn't realised until i began to write notes after-the-fact that many of my "prompts-from-poems" are NOT the original line, but some spin off or bastardisation.

but remember that while this may be fresh, the poem, the original may be working, and 2-3-4 poems may be working together, or having a death-fight in your bowels.

Here are today's first batch. If I get a good story I'll try to write up the process again.


A barn in the day is a small night.
A rubber tongue
But what it is, what I mean is, I ache so
Charming! Fucking charming.
Does the twat in Spandex still bang that fucking drum?
Dull, dull as an old egg
Eight lucky breakaways.
Far off, the sound of blood and drums
For he's a jolly good driver
He though how much girls suffered.
Homicide: Life on the streets.
Hot tea, two days on the trot.
Hundreds of us, a football field of fish and chip lunches.
I have a pain, here, here.
I will not let you go until we are blessed
I woke one day to see you, mother
I would prefer to die with drama
If God forgot to have a man be dead
In porn films, they do what I do, mostly, and the women groan
In the vacant lot behind the old ice plant.
It's a football match for orphans. The referee's a bastard
Joan Edison, imagining her birthday
Murderers hide, and things illicit, mice.
My gums bleed
No, what I mean doctor, is it catches
Officiate. A man got sick because of a fish he ate.
On Sunday we will share the pigeon, and some water
On tip-toe, schoolgirls dance
Penny Packer's recurring bad dream
Probably the oldest case, still open, we'll get him
Running round the red-brick block leaping paths, a stag, a horse
Squeezed down, almost hidden
Straw has been strewn everywhere
That first time, something red in knickers
The fust, it is all organic, breathing
The kid, two, barefoot, walking in the rain, a grandmother now
The thing about bad haircuts. Once I shaved my own.
They have no idea
Too old now, but
Trucks have been unloading something all afternoon
Two dollars, nine cents
We roared, we banked the iron walls, we never stopped.
We were the potato-pickers, collected in dirty lorries, not Poles
We're there. Now what?
What if earth, a foetus, aborted
When they moved to Caerphilly, driving by cart
When they were hairy, not so neat
You have to trust me.
You'll never know, dear, how much I love you.
You're too literal. Be not so precise.