Pictures Who Write Themselves (The A-B-C)

I promised the poetry that went with my collages...

Aversions

Feeding the Beast

Restless crowds gather feeding anger’s children

Baron tracks of desert breed striking beasts

The crowds cry for fight. The idle wait

A snake strikes.

Heroes backed into spiked cacti

Crowds heave, binding freedom

with the ropes of disappointment,

stabbing hope with rusted blades

The heroes hold. Faces skyward,

eyes closed to the frustrated masses

Treading sand, treading water 

The heroes hold

Passions & Gifts

Holding

Open hands, full harvest

Weaving blue, gold, and green

Fabric that holds space between

Death and growth

Growth and death

Only the flame of a match

Sets the sun to fire

The grapes to green

Only hands hold the circles

who scrap a shell on the stones

who rustle a cape of night wings

Lay back on the stones

Warmth at your back

The flame in your chest

Seen and almost never heard

What parallels do you see in the collages and the writing?

  

Check out the Writersvibe over the next few weeks for other exercises for un-stucking yourself.

Pictures Who Write Themselves (The 1-2-3)

I've been flirting with Cristine Mason Miller's book Desire to Inspire for several months now. She (and all the book contributors) have some great exercises and thoughts to help you move through your own creative process. Based on one of these exercises, I made some big collages to bring out some of my aversions and passions.

Aversions

This is how I did it:

1) Cut stuff up (I so enjoy this part!)
2) Make a pile of images you are drawn to
3) Make a pile of images that give you the willies or make you want to throw up.
3) Layer it up (I used 20x30 Foam board)
4) Glue it down
5) Put it where you can see it everyday
6) Write a phrase that comes up for you for each image (Don't put a lot of thought into this, just write it down)
7) Contemplate what the words reveal

 
For steps six and seven You might consider what led you to layer one image over another or why you chose to give each image its place in your collage. On step seven my phrases become poetry. I didn't struggle with or plan that, the darn things wrote themselves.

Here are a few passions I was able to put to work with the collages:

• Moving humans from a place of purposelessness to purposefulness 
• Using what already exists in nature (trees, rocks, sun, growth, seasons) to connect humans to gifts
• Connecting us to our gifts gives us space to move to a place of connection and purpose
• Bridging a connection to nature with human-enabled technology

Gifts

Stay tuned for the poems I created with these collages.

What comes up for you when you look at these images? What comes up when you take words out of your writing?

The Night Guards*

   

Armed & Headless

Wiggly across the night lit walls

“We are not silent,” they say

Their dark rustle keeps

creepers and peepers and buzzers away

Snuggle in.

Close your eyes.

Let the giants send you safe away

to dance in shade & day lights

Resting your back
into their sling-shot arms;

they catch the peach juice

dripping down your chin

*Thanks to JB for the prompt. He said the trees at night to Transformers without heads.

What do the trees turn into at night for you?