Prompt Attack

Combining the spirits of the Time Wasters' forum and the Poetry forum, here's a new thread for all of us poets here on YWS! The idea is very simple: post in this thread, mandating a poetry challenge to the user posting before you. That challenge can be about anything (appropriate), and will test our mettle as writers.

Just some guidelines to keep things smooth:

1. Nothing posted in this thread may contain content above an E-rating. The content of works posted in the literary forums, while rated appropriately, is exempt.

2. Challenges may be met either by a reply in this thread, or by an actual posted work.

3. If you dish it out, be ready to take it.

And of course, since the challenge is issued for the person ahead of you, I will be the recipient of the first challenge!

Describe the beginning of the world, without using the words "dawn", "beginning", "start", "birth", or "grow". Or any derivatives of those words.

Describe a moment of disconnection with someone close to you (in other words, a moment when you were not close/you hurt each other/etc) without using "heart," "hurt," "sad," "broken," or similar words. Enough of the broken-heart poetry using the words "broken hearted" already; does everyone agree enough of that exists? (I'll admit, I've done it too!)

~Blue

Write three connecting haikus about winter. (this means each one runs into the next, although they are still separate pieces and should be able to be read as such.)

Edit: For Lumez below:


The roof is caving in and I saw him there.
I saw him there, bow too tight around his neck,
and thought, what is this we have to wear in the warm
glow of multicoloured glass - Saint Patrick stares
down at me as though he knows -
we all have secrets, Pat, we just can't let them
show us up in His sight.
And this dress is too tight against my shoulders,
whoever said this day was mine,
all I have is borrowed or blue and nothing is loved,
even the man waiting there, a crack in his lip that
he licks too often to heal.

Write a free-verse narrative poem about a wedding. Some form of disaster must occur during the wedding, and it must all symbolize religious identity. You may not use the following words: 'wedding' 'groom' 'bride' 'white' 'light' 'God' 'music' 'aisle'.


Edit for Jag:


diary, this

rose smells of a mortuary, of a psalm sung over
a favorite aunt. our garden fluxes with lyrics, each splash
of carmine a reminder of how angry I pretend to be.
but she’s a tease.

out by the bird bath, beneath the weeping willow
is an ocean of violets from that very first year.
the kisses, the touches—it’s all there, all down to
not-a-mother Mary on delivery day when she
walked home and left me with the car.
and beneath those violets is every amorphous
photograph of her darling angel.

and the orchids by the bedroom window
are all click-and-print snapshots of 1998;
that’s when the doctor turned honest and gave her
a purple pamphlet on adoption.

the neighbors think I beat her.
the police drive by every day when I get home,
and she watches me watch them, both of us
so deep in our own anxiety that we forget we’re alive.
but I love her and those tears of hers. every day
at eight a.m. she’ll sit alone on the parkbench and
sing up another patch of daisies and play childish games.

today I loved her.

Mouseover text: "Every petal an accusation, each bumbling bee a pointed finger."

Write a sonnet describing two people who are having a picnic in a park.

This is now horribly intimidating because of all the talented people posting in here. O.O


Write a poem describing a memory without using sight as a sense.

Write a ballad about Cheez-its.

Write a poem about two star-crossed lovers without using the words "star-crossed" or "lovers" or any word synonymous with "feud."

Write a poem about a character you would hate, but write it in a way that at least some personalities would like them.

Write a poem about cooking.


(I finally posted here! *wipes sweat.* )

Write a poem about someone who swims down the East Coast to run away from someone. He can't be running from cops, and you have to describe the outcome of his swim. You cant use words like "water", "run away", "survive", or "ocean". Good luck, I'm sorry that I couldn't think of anything better.

Write a poem comparing love to winter, but in a good way. (i.e., love is always compared to summer when the poet's love life is going well but winter when it's going poorly. Give me a poem in which love is thriving and happy but compared to winter rather than summer.)

Oohers. Write a poem where the narrator is talking about his/her daughter who is contemplating suicide.


^That was completely random