by Christine Swint
Yesterday I wrote about the bop, a loose form somewhat reminiscent of the sonnet. The prompt this week will build on the ideas of the bop, but with the intention for us to collaborate.
I’m asking you to donate two lines of poetry (from one of your own poems or two lines written just for this prompt) in the comments section of this post, and then come back tomorrow to choose someone else’s lines to use as the refrain in a bop. Next Thursday we’ll all leave a link to our poems, which will be written in response to our chosen refrains, in the Get Your Poem On post.
If you don’t want to write a bop, you can use the lines from another participant as an epigraph that you would include under the title of your poem.
As a way to acknowledge the original author of the donated lines, please link to that person’s blog in your post. Linking is also a way to build community!
Remember, the form is only a suggestion. You can always feel free to alter it in any way to suit your poem. It is your poem, after all.
This is me, with my rhythm,
I write my own anthem
from my latest poem
http://erinmilana.wordpress.com/2009/02/18/fistful-of-gravity/
Thanks, rmilana,
Here’s mine –
She warns you not to leave the path,
or wander into dark and mossy woods.
where Sometime frets in the wings for its cue,
and Time, that begot us and made us new
Here’s mine:
fantastic nightmares that last
forever and ever, Amen
don’t go love, don’t go, stay,
stay until they take you away.
Once in love, but now we’re friends.
Friendship, the love which never ends.
If I didn’t have rocks in my shoes
I’d run more. To you.
swim with me to the southern sea
far and deep and cold and safe
In my dreams I heard the silent incantation
tumbling through the orange night
I caught my breath when you confessed
that you love vultures too
coalescing particles of randomness
swirl in and out unrolling the soul.
[...] love these words – and indeed the whole book – and in reading the readwritepoem prompt to write a “bop” based on a refrain from another poem, I couldn’t resist making [...]
Why do you flaunt your body to the whip of my stare –
does that make you a star?
The drum keeps on
beating life into the world.
You guys are awesome! Thanks for these amazing lines. We’re going to have some badass poems
If you are lucky,
you will carry one night with you
Halcyon days have past and gone, to where
I know not, I only know that they were there.
The streetlight that never goes out
is flickering as its pole sways in the wind.
It’s amazing what you can get just looking out the window…Now I have to try to write a bop!
Days when birds abandon the trees
I comb the grass for feathers.
I want to fix you
I want to set your wings
I’ve left so many times
I’ve forgotten how to go away
we are only truly lost
when we’ve lost our sense of wonder
I wear you like the thrill
of a lover’s stolen kiss
you needn’t search for me
I will not be where you’re looking
The snow bells have flowered
white against the melting crystals
From a poem I wrote a few hours ago:
Tonight the sky glides softly down
A river without care.
from my last poem
I dreamed of a midget six feet tall
who stomped the poet to the ground
this turns out great! really loved all the stanzas
you guys are rock!
Since I don’t have a blog, I have posted my first bop here. Hope you enjoy it!
Streetlight
Powerline men call lamppoles “standards”
as if this is how we measure and evaluate.
For years the light has poured into our room,
curtainless, we bathed in it, let it caress our bodies,
but it didn’t penetrate the lie you were living, it warped vision,
never showed me your true colours, your dark secrets.
The streetlight that never goes out
is flickering as its pole sways in the wind.
While you were gone, I let it blot out the moon,
fantasized your presence in its glare.
The streetlight that never goes out
is flickering as its pole sways in the wind.
You frolicked under the glare of the natural,
city-bound, I waited for calls that never came.
I dreamed your messages in the beams of high pressure sodium,
bulbs inside metal that never grew or bloomed.
The streetlight that never goes out
is flickering as its pole sways in the wind.
Now I am measuring: there will be curtains,
heavy and thick as woven grief on a loom of needless loss,
the blacked out cracked windows of a lost war.
only stuttering smoking candles will light my room,
There is nothing standard about our love,
perhaps neither light nor dark is normal, only twilight.
The streetlight that never goes out
is flickering as its pole sways in the wind.
These are the things you must do before you bite the pickle
wash your hands and think of your first love
[...] is a bop. A bop! (A draft, but a bop.) Christine gave the Read Write Poem community a great prompt, based on a poem style she picked up at a poetry reading. I had to try it out and borrowed the [...]
[...] one is for readwritepoem « Fistful [...]
[...] wrote this poem collaboratively in response to this week’s Read Write Poem “bop” prompt by Christine [...]
[...] is a bop style poem written for Read Write Poem’s share the bop prompt. Participants were asked to donate two lines of poetry, and then pick someone else’s [...]
Sun filters faintly down, as though heaven
above is just a dim and smoky room.
My two lines
I half expected a lullaby instead she wailed;
a crazy bird its song like women weeping.