Wednesday October 17th, 2012

The exercise:

I'd sort of forgotten about this prompt, which you'd probably realize both by the fact that the last time I used it was last October, and by the fact that was the only time I ever used it.

So, let us make amends. Today we go back to: the last line prompt.

Take the first line of a song, as randomly as you wish, and use it as the last line of your poetry or prose. It's like the Random CD prompt, only backwards. Kinda.

Today I planted much garlic. There is still more to be planted, which will hopefully happen tomorrow.

Mine:

Sleep Through The Static - Jack Johnson

He relaxed for a moment,
It seemed innocent enough;
The sky was a perfect blue,
The ocean was not rough.

His stealthy eyes betrayed him,
Escorting him to dreams;
There he found serenity,
A heaven - or so it seemed.

A clap of thunder woke him,
Followed by a lightning flash;
He swore it came from nowhere,
But then, trouble travels fast.

2 comments:

Greg said...

No more walnut harvesting? Still, garlic is great stuff, so I can definitely get behind the planting of it.
That's an ethereal little poem today, I think it leads up nicely to your chosen lyric. I really like the last verse, though they're all good.

Miss Atomic Bomb by The Killers

The gerbil had been suffocated when I found it. You knitted a tiny little cloth about the size of its head, folded it neatly into quarters, and pressed it over its tiny little face until it died. I nearly threw up then. I did throw up when I unfolded that little cloth of horror and found that you'd monogramed it with a J for Jeannie. Jeannie the gerbil.
I walked out of the playroom at that point, determined to find you and ask you what was wrong. Surely something had to be for you to do something like that? But you weren't in the living room, where you'd cut thousands of tiny holes in the leaves of the rubber plant; so much so that they looked like fragile green lace. You weren't in the study, where you'd taken all the books off the shelves and stacked them into balancing piles, larger books balanced on smaller ones all the way up to the ceiling. You weren't in your sewing room, where you'd taken your mobile phone apart and arranged all the little components in order of size and colour across the carpet.
I could hear a hissing as I went into the kitchen, but it was dark in there. As my hand went automatically to the light-switch, and I felt it depressing, sparking, I realised that I could smell gas. The last thing I thought was that I'd found you; I could see you through the window.
You were standing with your girlfriends in the street.

Marc said...

Greg - I'm letting Kat's mom take care of the walnuts for now. Maybe after I'm done in the garden I'll get back to it.

Thanks for the kind comments on mine :)

That's a hell of a lead up to that final line. Lots of great details and imagery, very effective.

Fascinating what that one opening line was able to inspire.