Poetry Thursday: Tell Me Lies, Tell Me Sweet Little Lies

This week at Poetry Thursday, the prompt is to lie your ass off. Well, ok, there's a little more to it than that. You can read about the idea in more detail on the PT blog, but basically the suggestion is to do a creative writing exercise where you list any 10 everyday objects and then make up a lie about each of them, and try to turn those lies into a poem. The instructions go on to say: "The point: to help flex your creative muscles. Creative writing is all about lying — making up stories that never existed or representing something in such a way as to make it like it never was. Of course actually, the sideways look — or lie — is often made to try to extract something essential, too. In Mark's words, telling lies to get at the truth. But making stuff up is also fun. The more outrageous the better." I thought what the hell, I'd give it a shot. So I started writing down objects one day and this is the list of 10 I came up with: window, tangerine, clock, fork, book, shoe, telephone, needle, lantern, and comb. As I started jotting down ideas for lies to tell about those objects, it all started to turn into this surreal little story in my mind - a story that reminded me of the sort of dreams I've had on the rare occasions when I've had an extremely high fever. It's one of the more bizarre things I've ever written, to say the least and I almost can't believe I'm even sharing it. But anyway, here it is - a poem of sorts about things that never really happened, except maybe in the mind of someone who was delirious, or doing some really good drugs, or...um...me. :-) Fever Dream The window draped softly over my shoulders, while the tangerine sat warm in my hand and hummed a lullaby. A clock erupted through the floor to shatter the fork's stately dance with bitter, swirling rage. "Hush," said the book, as a sliver shoe swept through its pages, untangling tightly braided words. "Be glad you aren't the telephone, crippled and alone, grieving for the wings it never had." The needle nodded in sympathy, or perhaps in smug agreement. No one ever quite knows what the needle is thinking, not even the lantern, who is in the autumn of her thirteenth life. As all became quiet once more, a comb crept in on blue velvet feet and crawled into my hand to curl around the tangerine. The fork began to dance again to the sounds of a lullaby, while the window draped softly over my shoulders. If you want to read more lies (or maybe even some poems where people opted to tell the truth!) then check out the links on Poetry Thursday. Today's DAT: "Tangerine Dreams" (clickable if you want to see it larger in a new window)