Games Poets Play

Sometimes a poem comes and finds you. Sometimes you go looking.

For a long time I wrote a poem only when a specific idea for one occurred to me … which meant I produced clusters of poems with looooong gaps in between. It took me ‘way longer than necessary to discover writing prompts. Hey, something to play with during those looooong gaps! And sometimes you end up with a new poem that you didn’t expect to write. Like these two.

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Why I'm Afraid to Write

Because there are gremlins in the pen
who squeeze out when I press tip to paper
run chattering up my arm
and smear their inky fingers across my lips.

Because the words might twist into a rope
that pulls me into a chasm and coils down in after me.

Because we're in a drought
and writing is something like wasting water
when it's not something like playing with matches.

Because I have nothing true to say
and it's a sin to tell a lie.

Because a raven flies through my window every morning
turns the pages of my notebook with its beak
and yells "Ha! "

Because I have no colored chalks
to make the words all pretty.

Because I am a mouse
nervous and noticing and creeping and nose-twitching
driven by hunger and never by courage.

Because I'm only interesting in Sanskrit
and I don't know any Sanskrit.

Because for every sentence I write
I have to take off a piece of clothing
and it's not a warm day
and I have to go out later.

Because I live near a fault line
and you can't be too careful.

Because Henry the Eighth
wrote an entire Defense of the Catholic Faith
and it didn't stop him getting syphilis
and beheading two of his wives.

Because someone could ask me to read my writing aloud
and I've misplaced my voice.

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"The whole sky is yours to write on"


[The words used here as title and refrain are borrowed gratefully from the poem "Dawn Revisited," by Rita Dove.]


The whole sky is yours to write on --  
clouds and birds,
vapor trails and fog,
the wildfire's choking haze,
and all that blue.

The whole sky is yours to write on -- 
nouns lifting in layers like mist,
verbs plunging through like raindrops and sparrows.
Careful writing too close to the sun,
or all the words go up in flames.

The whole sky is yours to write on.
Connect the stars like dots to trace each letter.
Fill that blackboard with galaxies of story.
Watch your words swoop like bats through the dark
and change shape with the moon.

The whole sky is yours to write on!
Paint your memories up there for all to see
like sunsets, constellations, thunderstorms.
Some may choose to look down, look away -- 
the sky will still be there.

Take all the space you need, love. Fill all
the space you fill. The whole sky
is yours to write on. The whole sky is yours.

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The first poem was written in 2020 and began life as a journal entry that I didn’t want to start because, well, I was afraid to write. So I wrote that down, and then started writing down all the reasons I was afraid, and once I ran out of the girl-tell-it-to-your-therapist reasons I just … kept going. By the time I’d scribbled three pages of nonsense I was feeling too goofy to be afraid any longer. And the poem practically jumped up out of the scribbles and arranged itself on a clean page.

I started the second poem during a virtual writing workshop that I took a couple of months ago, presented by Community Building Art Works. The instructor gave us a handful of poems to scan and asked us to make a collection of our favorite lines and phrases, and eventually to pick one and use it as a “refrain” in a new poem. And, well, here we are. I hope Ms. Dove wouldn’t mind. (Please read “Dawn Revisited,” if you haven’t. It’s a real one.)

Here’s the thing: when I run low on my own ideas for poems, it gets easy to believe that there won’t ever be any more ideas for poems … and if I believe that, then I get afraid to write, and if I get afraid and stop writing, then sure enough, no new poems get written. I’m learning what a lot of you probably learned long since: that I need to be writing on the daily, even on days when I’m afraid, even on days when I’m morally certain there’s not a poem anywhere inside me. On days like that, a writing prompt may simply be an exercise, like a sprinter doing stretches or a pianist running through the scales — and that’s not a day wasted. That’s a day that keeps me limber for when a new poem does show up asking to be written … sometimes while I’m fiddling with a writing prompt.