This year I wanted to do something a little different. I’ll still be exploring great words, but instead of new words I decided to concentrate on specific terminology. Every skill, concentration, study or craft has its own terminology. I thought I would add some music to my poetry by looking at the terminology of music from A to Z.
For my “A” words I’ll start with some words that express tempo (relative rapidity or rate of movement):
adagio – in a leisurely manner, slowly
allegro – brisk or rapid
andante – moderately slow and even, a walking tempo
Prompt: “write a self-portrait poem in which you make a specific action a metaphor for your life – one that typically isn’t done all that often, or only in specific circumstances.”
My action ideas: downhill skiing, water skiing, synchronized swimming, encountering a bear in the wild.
Today’s resource is the Synaesthetic Metaphor Generator. It wasn’t what I expected. Most of the responses I received were neither metaphors nor similes, but after many tries I got a few that I liked:
as lime-green as incandescence
her nerves are ebony lava tubes
my cells are amber nebulae
Prompt: a new world
The poem
Shaky Legs
Dragged slowly behind
The push and pull threatens
as I try to control my wobbly knees
and coax my feet with their unwieldy extensions
into position against the current
At my signal
–when I believe I am ready–
I am yanked from buoyancy
only to flail and twist in the cold
losing my legs in every direction
to be slapped hard on the way down
The rope circles back around
I grab for it
Again I fight into the correct coil
then call on the power
to break through the surface tension
and skitter across the waves
all for that one moment of glassy calm
that feels like soaring
Experience Writing 