Hello darkness my old friend. We’re talking about our fears again.Â
When I look outside, trees are shedding down to their bony form. Pumpkins sit on the porch ready to be carved. The other day, on Instagram, I saw a farmer letting her chicken gouge the eyes, nose, and mouth of her pumpkin. Leaves litter my yard, and I am not ready to rake.Â
Remember the last post? All the talk about maggots and moth-eaten garments is sparking a poem for this week's Craft & Play. We want you to face your fears on the page, letting them all get cozy next to each other as you expertly stitch them together to create a harrowing poem.Â
The process goes like this:
Brainstorm a list of terrifying, creepy, strange images on a piece of paper. Write them all over the page, upside down, sideways, or in whatever way seems therapeutic to you.
Create couplets or tercets with the images you wrote down, adding more sensory detail or drawing comparisons between themÂ
Weave through your poem this way, crossing out your fears in that brainstorming paper as you get them into the poem. You are conquering them.Â
Once you have the imagery into couplets or tercets, go back and add or enhance any imagery that will hold the whole piece together.Â
Stand back and behold your scary poem, and show your friends (with the proper trigger warnings of course).
Our poem is a combination of things that unnerved or unsettled both of us. We are pretty happy with the final result:
Fear Factor
The horned lizard shoots out blood from its eyes
to repel coyotes, horned toads, and other natural enemies,
mirroring the miracle of the bleeding Virgin statue.
Would you eat your toast if it was soaked with Mary’s
blood red tears instead of a blackened silhouette?
The appearance on the breakfast plate would be jarring
to a simple farmer, having witnessed another man
claiming to be Jesus. I cannot think of farmland
without worrying about crop circles, aliens appearing
in the night like wordless thieves, stealing into the bodies
of my loved ones, replacing them while I sleep in the moonlight.
Sometimes the sky is so dark with no moon or stars.
Only dampness that bleeds through the clouds.
But there are worse things. Tumors can grow eyelashes.
The way they naturally fall off my face
peeling away like layers of skin off a birch tree.
A praying mantis tears off her husband’s head after sex.
No need for alimony. No need for child support.
Black widows crush their mates in solidarity.
We think because they are bugs, the horror of it is justified.
No one loses sleep over the murder of a spider’s lover.
No one called in the decapitation.
The real horror is the kind we cannot speak of,
flesh and blood and anger, spite and vengeance, knives and twisting. We hope you will try this week’s Craft and Play, and if you do, be sure to share your work with us so we can celebrate your poetry!Â
Go in peace this week!Â
I think one of the creepiest poems I've written was a response to a Game of Thrones episode. Ha! Not my usual subject. But I was so disturbed by a specific act of violence in the episode (eye gouging... I'll leave it there) that I had to write about it to get it out of my head. I'm more likely to stick to darkness and decay found in nature, and I'm okay with that. 😂 But I do love this challenge!
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