Ooh! What fun I'm having. My aunt recommended a book called The Practice of Poetry: Writing Exercises From Poets Who Teach (edited by Robin Behn and Chase Twichell), and I opened it up to one of the first exercises and went for it.

The Exercise Directions:

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Write a ten-line poem. The poem must include a proverb, adage, or familiar phrase (e.g. she's a brick house, a stitch in time saves nine, someday my prince will come, don't count your chickens before they hatch) that you have changed in some way, as well as five of the following words:
*cliff
*needle
*voice
*whir
*blackberry
*cloud
*mother
*lick

You have ten minutes.

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Well, that last sentence is obviously the shocker, so I immediately got started, and man, it is fun. I love this kind of thing. I wonder if I possibly should start doing one or two attempts of this exercise per day, since the results are sure to vary wildly.

In any case, here are my first two attempts at it. The first one is fairly punny, but the second a lot less so. I also don't really think they need titles. Maybe if I ever write one that uses 7 of the 8 words, I'll title it the 8th one. Enh. Who knows.

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1.
as a cloud floats by overhead
a calf is lost atop the cliff,
a breeder amid scads of meat,
heading accidentally to slaughter.
here comes the rancher though,
and his horse zeroes instantly in,
through the whir of black Angus,
on the soft brown mooing needle
in search of its doomed mother.
it takes dun to know dun.

2.
Cliff's your boss, though not by choice.
God, you hate his grating voice,
and though he's bought a new Blackberry,
He schedules though his secretary
Who is, herself, a single mother
Who brings her kids to work each other
Friday, Tuesday, it makes you sick.
Your officemates care not a lick.
Well, screw them all. It's plain to see:
Lord, what tools these mortals be.

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