Tag Archives: exercises

Making Your Own Road

Two roads converged in a yellow wood
(and neither of them looked too good),
one leading off to some small town,
and the other wandering all around
like a less-beaten path I think should.

This forced duality for life struck me
with the limits of its possibility;
if only two ways seem to lead
from each new spot, then ’tis indeed
not much a choice, it seemed to me.

For why an old path, not a new one
blazed through underbrush, for fun,
to see what else is in the world;
beyond the map-edge, torn and curled,
the journey’s often just begun.

And so I stepped off the concrete,
finding just grass under my feet,
and made a path from where I stood,
leaving both roads for that wood;
and the journey so far has been sweet.

19 FEB 2003

Exercise: take a line from an existing poem and write a new poem based on that line. The line I chose was from Robert Frost’s The Road Not Taken.

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The Wind in the Willows

This week’s assignment at the LJ community “Writing 101” was to use at least 7 of the following 10 words (alphabetical, chaos, tool belt, bloviate, crux, sinner, marshmallow, dramatic, tissue, sympathetic) in a piece of writing. Seems like a very strange set of words, but here’s what I came up with:

I can bloviate with the best of them,
strike a sympathetic chord now and then
by appealing to the soul’s great chaos
with dramatic gusts of clever wordplay;

but the poet’s tool belt also includes
a set of pruning shears, for brevity
often leads much more quickly to the crux,
cutting through the soft marshmallow tissue

of the sinner’s world (burnt and hard outside,
but jellied and spineless on the inside)
with the turn of an alphabetical
blade; and this small incision can make all

the difference. Sometimes, even a small fragment
is the most dangerous part of a storm.

18 FEB 2003

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The Doors of Perception

This is journal entry based on a prompt from Random Acts of Journaling.

The Doors of Perception

There is a door of aged and splintered oak,
its paint is faded, old and worn by rain;
the battered lock still grips, but shows the signs
of many a crowbar tried against it.

It stands against the elements and time,
a portal to a sacred, hidden place –
and there beyond its green and peeling frame
exists a world unseen from the outside.

Upon its surface, many carve their names
or failing entry, simply scratch a sign;
For though it seems a frail and rotted shell,
its core is solid wood too strong to force.

The key? A test of mettle and of will,
a silver shard cut from the seeker’s heart;
To find it is to sacrifice one’s hold
on old perceptions of reality.

There is a door of aged and splintered oak,
its paint is faded, old and worn by time;
and those who dare to open it may find
a place to live, a room to call their own.

16 DEC 2002

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