all_unwritten writing prompt: "the reason"

The Reason

The Reason I'm going to Kalamazoo
Is for a medieval conference*, why don't you
Pack up your Augustine and St. Thomas More
And come with me to Michigan for
Seminars, drinkfests, and Medieval Total War.

The simple reason I'm heading to Leeds
Is for a medieval conference*, and I think you need
To present a paper on St. Bernard,
That crusty old Cistercian, or on Abelard.
There'll be seminars, drinkfests, and Medieval Total War.

There's a reason I'm heading down to D.C.
They have medieval policies and I hope you'll see
That the Iraqis have been decimated; it's on American heads;
There's the desperate, the dying, and the already dead.
Weeping, wailing, and Medieval Total War.

-A.F.  03/30/08
 

 

*There are annual conferences for medieval scholars in Kalamazoo, Michigan, and in Leeds, Yorkshire.

all_unwritten prompt: watching the sky

Watching the sky is something I've done since I was very small. When I was growing up, I'd lay on the front grass and watch the puffy clouds take shape after shape and sometimes I'd write poems in my head about the forms they took. I used to wish that I had a long enough string to make the cloud shapes into balloons and keep them for myself. When grass stains started to matter I stopped watching the clouds drift by and only watched the sky when there were thunderstorms, and then only from the shelter of my front porch. When I was fourteen, we went to the Rocky Mountains, and after a steep climb into a foggy mist, my parents told me that I was walking in the clouds. There were no shapes. No puppies, bunnies, rainbows, no strings to hold them with. There weren't even storms, just insubstantial mist gently circling my body. Now, like all the commuters in the city where I live, I walk head down, not looking at the sky, or in anyone's eyes, unwilling to see the sky reflected there.

all_unwritten prompt: "our song"

At first our song was from Disney's 'Beauty and the Beast' until he found out that Walt Disney was an anti-Semite; then, his Jewishness outraged, we changed our song. A favourite of ours was by the Barenaked Ladies, the lead singer of whom was Jewish, and approved; we danced to it for a year before he announced that Steven Page had ongoing weight issues and that he needed to provide a better role model for American teenagers whom, statistics showed, were more overweight than any time in history, so we changed our song again. This time, admitting that although Elton John was still sexy even though a bit on the plump side, and gay, but that was okay in today's society, we chose 'Your Song', and danced to it for three years until Elton John married David Furnish. Outraged by the twisted use of God's word: "they cannot go forth and multiply!", we changed our song again. The tune is the rustling of divorce papers at the local family court and the jukebox at the western bar where I hang out and shimmy with the handsome cowboy named Joe.