Write a six-line poem in which each line compares an object or action to something it in no way resembles (unalike).
Post by Sunday at 6pm so we all have a chance to read each other’s work before class.
Here’s an example of a response to this prompt:
The last tooth fell out of the mouth girl
fell into her hair, tousled like egg water.
Then every step she took was devastating symphony
each drop of stench from her pores a typeset portraiture.
Well before she lost that third and favorite molar, her brows suggested virtuosic fluency.
She was fantastically received, always overheard with aching, arching breath.
They danced like construction workers.
His soft touch was like a cheese grater,
when he caressed her slimy face.
They moved intertwined like two south facing poles,
their dance was like watching static on a screen.
He ended with a bow and she was no where to be found.
-Samantha Aversano
Roses as heavy as boulders,
leaves stiff like boards.
The gnomes guarding this garden are trained with samurai swords.
With frosty dragons breath as the first line of defense,
my false goat’s beard have nothing left to protect.
This colorful and blossoming garden can only photosynthesize passion and strength.
The night was cold like ice
The storm spoke with sounds like growls
The trees tapped on my window
With thoughts of coming in to wake me up
I lie in bed, a lifeless log
I think with dreams about the day to come
The air was sticky as a summer popsicle
The weather was warm like a furnace
The sun beamed down ferociously
Rain droplets had fallen from the sky
They kissed the heads of all humans
Summer’s dew, had finally made its entrance
The rain poured down, moistening her cracked, dry lips
Soaking the bouncy curls out of her hair,
Leaving her bright makeup to run down her face in a cakey, dark mess.
In the gloom of the dark night, she’d never felt better.
Inhaling the cold, wet air, her head filled with warm thoughts
Of freedom and relief, from her sheltered, imprisoned life.
A river is like a wall,
The same way a mind is like a cloud,
And money is like handcuffs,
Which is like a trap that leads to an open door,
Or an alleyway being a place of opportunity,
And a body of water is a means to an end.
Your face is like a fruit, rotten and forgotten,
Your eyes like leaves shriveling up in fall,
Falling slowly from the tip of the branch like the life you choose to live.
Mother cries like broken strings on the violin
You once played like blossoms in spring.
I was the soil you once fed on,
growing and flourishing and yet
here you lay, a life in decay.
My mind is a black hole
Let my heart be a tomb
Stairs acting like rubber bands
As the door introduces my doom
Slip into reality
Let the chain at least extend
They come and go flashing like a shooting star.
They can be obscure and mysterious like the glance of a feline,
or transparent and bright like pure water in a slow running river.
They can make you suffer in the second circle of Dante’s Inferno,
or they can make you gloriously rave in The Starry Night of Van Gogh.
Silence lashes in the darkest circles of their eyes, like a spiral-hole to the galaxy.
Be alert! These cruel hell’s angels will steal your soul until you live dead.
A single voice, soft and desperate
prays with the force of rapid rivers:
it begins where it ends, with death as a guide
this truth, unchanging like stone, please
end my life as if it were nothing.
My hope was frail and weak from birth
He was an Eiffel tower, right there.
Oh! memories, that like of blizzards of Himalayas.
In that moment, lingchi, a death by a thousand cuts
she felt in the core of her chest, the broken Parthenon.
Bullet train was no match to her as she turned,
pretending to be a ship heading towards the Devil’s Triangle.
—Mursal Sediqi
their stares are like latex gloved hands
the lights pitch winter-night
the tunnel fixes a bolt-tight ventricle lock
the car is like the vacuum of space
pre-recorded requests are arguments with an uncle
the opened doors are a loose leash
Remember when mother made you
Stitching together her perfect little doll
Bringing her prize to family show and tell
To be the best little figure in the display case, even if you must pull apart the other’s seams
For what are your friends to her bragging rights
Without you, she would only have her washed out cloth to cover her cracked porcelain soul
She said that love is in the air like a poisonous fog,
And that she rather die like the earth
He said he craved for her like a monster,
And that he would love her like a hearth
She said she didn’t need anyone, she is as lonely as a crow
And he was too stupid to understand, broken as a stone.
Juliette’s Second Poem
The sunrise is a system reset.
Life flows and powers like electricity
Plants, animals, living things: programs that carry out functions.
Death and decay are the malware and viruses of the living world.
Time is ceaseless it moves like a stone but it still progresses.
The moon begins to rise, and the system powers down, only to be rebooted the next day
Stephen’s Second Poem
Restless In Bed
Voices echo off the walls in bed restless.
Submerged in darkness surrounded by silence deafening.
Noises amplified, thoughts drowned out.
Lights peek through the blinds my mind plays tricks.
A glance at the clock and time has gone so slow, perpetually slow.
Try to fall back to sleep, in bed restless I sleep.
You were something rather unexpected
But I already knew you and I were always going to be connected
For Dad and I, we’re Happy you exist
Gender doesn’t matter, we both know you’ll be hard to resist.
The day we see you, don’t worry honey these tears are of joy.
It doesn’t matter if you’re a girl or a boy !
Poem #2 Revised:
Your face, a fetid fruit rotten,
Your eyes shrivels as dead leaves do
In fall, falling and floating about,
Forgotten.
I, the soil you once fed on
To flourish, to grow,
Yet here you lay,
Memories forgotten,
Your life in decay.