Tuesday, November 9, 2010

November 9: slowing down

For today's prompts, write one of the following poems (or both--if you're feeling ambitious):
1. Write a slow down poem. Could be about reducing actual traveling speed or speed of living or some other interpretation.
2. Write a never slow down poem. Some people love living in the fast lane and believe it's better to burn out than fade away. If you're one of these people or want to write about one of these people, then this is the prompt for you.
Whether you write a slow down or never slow down poem, avoid letting this prompt slow you down too much. After all, there will be another prompt tomorrow morning.

2 comments:

Beverly Writer said...

powering DOWN
I have turned off the computer monitor to take things down a touch around here.
My eyes are tired. My eyes are tired
and my heart is full and I can feast on information,
but I confess hardly any of it interests me.
I want that breathless consumption to end &
I want to earn your ugly arms and frosty teeth,
I want to tell the spirits of America that there is nothing else
for the short man in the hallway to do with us but tell us about the problems
inherent in our new technology. Our new technology has failed us.
The quarterly report will go un-filed. I will speak of our disproportionate burden
and you will concur but we will all agree that we don’t really know what can be done about it.
What can be done about it?
We can all agree that we feel weak and helpless in the face of our machines.
So I turn off the monitor and type screenless for a moment,
for a moment I feel more alive and less machine.

T-bone said...

When you say, let's go forward,
do you mean in a bike basket?
Do you mean to stand up
and slowly flap your arms
to get out of this muddy puddle?
Sometimes you can be
walking along and pass someone
eating a banana that was the cause of a man
going sterile in Columbia. Do goats
think about this when they are being milked?
You can think about goats
and bananas and still be in the office
fending for yourself as though you could be
offered a new job in January. Sometimes
it's just difficult to keep your fingers
out of your mouth. Sometimes, it's just a slow road
to owning goats in Greece.