A water ball anticipates
a constellation spoke
gravity, the hypocrite,
sinks some as others float.
Waiting for grandma
like heat searching for sky
as universe generations
sketch a wet bullseye.
One powerful word pair/metaphor that motivates me to write better poetry is Joni Mitchell's "feather canyons" phrase used in Both Sides Now.
All of a sudden, something I normally wouldn't think twice about floods my mind and consumes me as I think about how small I would need to be to consider the details in a feather as vast as a canyon.
I use the following process in my my poetry.
I make two word lists sourced from everything I can see in my room, environment, or anything I can think of. Once I have this list, I put together one word from each list and see what happens. That word war that happens will usually (and unpredictably) shoot me into a highway paced inspiration voyage that gives me the energy to write a new poem.
I either write down my metaphors or visualize them and let the word pairs do their work.
While I typed this out in my Notes app, my son was drawing dragons as we both waited for his grandma to come and visit. It turns out she was coming tomorrow.
For this poem, I made these lists:
No. 1 sketch, cup, water, heat, bikes, search, book
No. 2 ball, black, bullseye, star, dragon, grandma, anticipate
Metaphor List water ball, constellation spokes, heat search, bullseye sketch
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