Claiming Insurance When Your Car is Written Off through the Carelessness of Aliens
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Nike Sulway posted about an online MOOC she and Boo are ambling their way through: How Writers Write Poetry The course is free and fabulous and presented by Christopher Merrill and Camille Rankine, via the University of Iowa.
Lesson 2 is about where you put stuff on the page. And why. I’m still very stuck in poems that tell a story.
I was driving home from the pub
I heard a weird humming noise
Lights stabbed down from above
I swerved to avoid the green man
I crashed into the tree
I was driving home from the pub
I’d only had a few
I obey the rules
I’m a good person I really am
Think before you drink before you drive was my childhood mantra
So why did this happen to me?
I was driving well
As well as I usually do
I heard a weird humming noise
I thought it was the car
I knew something was wrong
Bone deep and dizzying
I get that at work sometimes when the underground carpark doors activate and I can feel the vibration right through the whole building
The world seems to tilt
It was like that
Like bass notes too low to hear properly
Like when dinosaurs growl softly
Or like being on a ferry and you can feel the engine note through you
Or the resonance of the water against the side of the boat tells you how deep and cold and dead you’ll be if you fall in there
Lights stabbed down from above
Sci-fi lights
Too bright and making stark shadows
I’ve only seen lights like that when I used to take acid in my teens
Shadows that are unforgiving and don’t have soft edges at all
I’m a good person, really I am, I experimented like all of us
The light was everywhere and I didn’t want it to touch me
See my skin is still raw and red on my hands
Where the light came in through the windscreen I could see through my skin to the bones
I threw my head back and see here
It got me on the top of my chest here
I was screaming and crying – I didn’t know I could react so fast
And in the middle of all that brightness
There was someone in the middle of the road
Little, green, like a child dressed up for Hallowe’en
I yelled, “Moron!”
I yelled, “Mother!”
I yelled, “No!”
I didn’t know I could react so fast
And I hit the tree.
At first I thought I’d hit him
When I opened my eyes it was dark
It was gone and I felt safe and leaned my head on the steering wheel
A car pulled up
The police came
Then an ambulance
I couldn’t let go of the steering wheel
I couldn’t stop remembering seeing the bones in my hands
Yes, I threw up
Yes, I shit myself
No, I hadn’t taken anything or drunk too much or hit my head
The airbags deployed
I don’t know who or what
I just know that if I hadn’t swerved he would have died.
You’re not going to pay out the insurance are you?
He
She
It
Wow great story/poem. Don’t know about the tennis match structure tho…. 😉 xo
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Yeah, it was an exercise…trying to get two lines of thought happening…I usually don’t like poetry that’s all over the page – too much hard work to read 🙂
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