This blog is devoted to a select group of poets. We're starting with poets from the Ann Arbor area, but, hey, if you're from Detroit, Grand Rapids, Saginaw or the Upper Peninsula, then that is okay, too.
Our goal is to provide you with a prompt every day from which you are to garner inspiration and submit a poem. How to submit will be very easy. Just put your poem or short story in the comments section and hit post. You may not immediately see your post, but it is there under the "Comments" section. You may need to click on "Comments" to see your poem. It is there on another page.
You may need to have a Gmail account to post in the comments section. Most of you do have Gmail, but for those of you that don't it's extremely worthwhile to open up one now! That way you've got a chance to get your work out there in the world.
Today's poem or short story prompt is the word "justice"
When love is gone, there's always justice.
ReplyDeleteWhen justice is gone, there's always force.
When force is gone, there's always Mom.
Hi Mom!
-Laurie Anderson
Day 2 of 7": JUSTICE
ReplyDelete[I've decided that I will use this week's prompts to create a string of short pieces. Wish me luck!]
When I opened my eyes this time, I saw that I was inside a small quiet room. I forewent screaming at the Fates and sat up without a sound. I crossed my legs -- it felt appropriate.
I recognized the architecture immediately from too many kung-fu movies: I was in "the Orient". Now, I say "the Orient" because I am NOT knowledgable enough to say "I am in Japan" or "I am in Northern China" and I do NOT want to do anything to get myself into even deeper water with whoever or whatever is moving me around in time and space. Also, I don't want to offend the reader by pretending to know more than I actually do.
What I can do is describe the room. The room was almost square. The walls were nine or ten feet high and about twenty feet wide. The wall to my left consisted of three plain dark wood panels, accentuated by lighter wood strips about ten inches wide that ran floor to ceiling. To my right, the wall was two floor-to-ceiling panels of white paper with a mountain scape drawn in the style of shui-mo hua or sumi-e. The wall behind me was four panels that I guessed were sliding doors. Each was divided into four columns and 7 rows and covered with white paper (rice paper?). The wall directly in front of me must have faced outdoors. The light coming through the the four panels (similar to the others) was bright and looked natural.
I was sitting on a black cushion. My shoes and socks were directly in front of me, centered perfectly where the two center panels met. Aside from those five things, the room was empty of material objects, of any evidence anyone had ever been here before me.
I stared at my shoes and socks. I don't remember taking them off. It should have puzzled me but it didn't. I was calm. It was not expected but not unexpected. My socks were folded in half and lay across the backs of my shoes. The symmetry was fascinating, two toes of the socks seemed to be looking at each other. Was one a reflection of the other or was each its own distinct 'self'?
An idea crossed my mind: "get up and open the doors, see the outside." Where did it come from? Another followed it, then another. They came en masse then, an endless stream of chattering monkeys, overwhelming me until there was room for no more.
Something whacked me across the back of the shoulders. I knew (somehow) not to turn around. It didn't matter who or what had hit me. Because it had cleared my mind. For a few seconds. Then, the thought again "I want to open the doors and see the outside." Did I? More precisely, did "I"? The monkeys peeked out from the corners but didn't advance.
The doors and the outside beckoned. It was no longer a whisper. I actively wanted to get up but my legs were frozen. My body knew something my mind did not understand. I tried to think it through but he monkeys came and soon the question was washed away in a sea of screeching primates.
"Whack!"
The monkeys were gone and I was calm again. This time, when the idea come up, I let it go and just looked at my shoes and socks. But it came back. The idea, but not the monkeys.
The monkeys were wiser than me. They understood the idea. Their action produced a reaction, a response. Cause and effect. They'd learned. I learned from them. tanha->karma->whack! No punishment, just cause and effect. The perfect justice of a system maintaining equilibrium.
The monkeys stopped looking at me and looked at my shoes and socks. I thought, "ah, now I understand!"
"Whack!"