Wednesday March 17th, 2010

The exercise:

I'm going to try something I've done a couple of times in the past: I'll give you the start of your first line and then you take it from there. Poetry and prose welcome, as usual.

Here it is: The blind man said to me...

Feel free to replace man with woman as well.

Mine:

The blind man said to me,
“Treasure all that you see.”
And I, fool that I am,
Told him, “I understand.”

But he saw right through me,
So very easily.
“Don’t be so thick, young man!
I don’t care that you can
See the sky and the land,
Nor the hills, nor the sea,
Nor, for that matter, me.

“What you must learn to see,
What you must learn from me,
Is that you don’t need eyes
So you can realize
That all these precious lives,
From man to bug to dove,
Deserve nothing but love.”

5 comments:

summerfield said...

this particular prompt took me by surprise. a few weeks ago, i started writing in my blog a story about a blind person but i can't quite decide how to continue it. i got the inspiration for the story from a reference book i read that there are so many blind people in my old country, due to malnutrition which of course is a result of destitution, and that often even a whole family suffers from irreversible blindness. using this prompt i am able to write a "middle" for that story, i just have to weave it in to make one coherent (and longer) story.

summerfield said...

:-)) crap, i forgot to post the story. please pardon the old person.

first line prompt:

The blind woman says to me as I stare at her in awe, "Yes, look at me, look at my eyes. Disgusting, aren't they?"

"No," I whisper. She is perfect: the perfectly oval face, framed by the perfectly white curly hair, the perfect nose, the perfectly full red lips. Even her eyes are in complete symmetry to the shape of her face, only they're totally white. She is like an unfinished drawing and the artist forgot to draw the iris. She looks like a white statue. But she isn't. She can talk and she can move. "No," I repeat, a little louder this time.

She turns her face towards the window and for a moment I imagine she was looking at the bright full moon that has risen above the shadows of the distant valley. She smiles.

"Twenty-four hours in this house," she continues, "twenty-four hours will do this to you. There is stil time for you to escape this curse."

"But I come to help. To help you and the others."

"No, you cannot help us anymore."

Tears roll down her cheeks.

"Can you see the door?" she asks.

I looked towards the doorway, it is open, and the wonderful scents of kalachuchi and ylang-ylang waft inside.

"Yes," I reply.

"Then leave. Now. For if you don't, that door will close and you shall never leave. Your eyes will become white. And you shall never see again."

She cups her ivory face in her pale hands and her shoulders tremble.

Greg said...

Hmm, intriguing first line prompt. The obvious springs to mind, but how to continue it? Let's see how I do below :)
Your poem is good, though the word dove in the penultimate line did tell me what the last line would be straight away -- perhaps it's a little too obvious?

Mine:

The blind man said to me,
"I've decorated!"
I looked around frantically,
At a house that just looked wrong.
I found my wife, unconscious,
Wallpapered to a wall,
I found a new exterior door,
On the third floor: that's quite a fall.
The colours that he'd painted with
Were headache blue and bile green,
With a migraine pounding in my head,
I stumbled to where my bed had been.
"I sold the furniture for a steal!"
He cackled, capering on the spot.
That blind man was my father,
And I've just had him shot.

morganna said...

The blind man said to me,
It's been hard, losing my sight.
But my white cane is just to help me out,
Please don't run away.

The blind boy said to me,
I can hear you, please tell me who you are.
I can feel you, please pat my hand,
I want to know where you are.

The blind girl said to me,
I'm just like you, no different.
Please treat me just the same.

Marc said...

Summerfield - I absolutely love that second paragraph.

Greg - yeah, I struggled mightily with how to end that.

Fantastic use of the prompt :) The image of the wife wallpapered to the wall is brilliant.

Morganna - I particularly liked the second stanza, but it's a great package as a whole.