“Give each project at least one line. You should open the poem with the first project, and close it with the last, but otherwise use the projects in whatever order you like. Do all twenty. Let different ones be in different voices. Don’t take things too seriously.

1. Begin the poem with a metaphor.

2. Say something specific but utterly preposterous.

3. Use at least one image for each of the five senses, either in succession or scattered randomly throughout the poem.

4. Use one example of synaesthesia (mixing the senses).

5. Use the proper name of a person and the proper name of a place.

6. Contradict something you said earlier in the poem.

7. Change direction or digress from the last thing you said.

8. Use a word (slang?) you’ve never seen in a poem.

9. Use a piece of false cause-and-effect logic.

10. Use a piece of “talk” you’ve actually heard (preferably in dialect and/or which you don’t understand).

11. Create a metaphor using the following construction: “The (adjective) (concrete noun) of (abstract noun)…”

12. Use an image in such a way as to reverse its usual associative qualities.

13. Make the persona or character in the poem do something he/she could not do in “real life.”

14. Refer to yourself by nickname and in the third person.

15. Write in the future tense, such that part of the poem seems to be a prediction.

16. Modify a noun with an unlikely adjective.

17. Make a declarative assertion that sounds convincing but finally makes no sense.

18. Use a phrase from a language other than English.

19. Make a nonhuman object say or do something human (personification).

20. Close the poem with a vivid image that makes no statement but that “echoes” an image from earlier in the poem.”

They burn like embers awaiting fuel

Forced to wait in stasis, trapped 3000 years and still alive

Deaf to the world and mute to the cries of their supplicants

The unending cacophony a golden splendor

Their worshipers clinging desperate to the promise

Stroking the letters clad upon the dias

Archons of Athens, scions of Stygia

They listen quite carefully to their worshipers

Tasting the tears of Archimedes

They bide their time, an image of patience

They were once living you know,

Rizzing their way through the clergy

Their priesthood not one of chastity at all

Indeed it’s said their godhood proved evolution

For once one had them, one had a bounty of others

“Down bad” and” thirsty” for more, a rizz fountain unending.

The bright flower of desire attracting their followers like moths to flame

But no change was had by this metamorphosis

A caterpillar cocooned and emerged the same

No gorgeous wings on which they’d have dined.

Merely the same creature with a night

Of golden ecstasy

 

Once the scions of Stygia were seen

Upon a hill in Athens

Giving to the poor and needy

Despite their selfish nature

And the goblin watched with mild curiosity

“Why do they behave so out of character?” Tiny Stacks implored.

Should the goblin get an answer, the archons’ll age no longer in this world

The squishy rock beneath them will squeak in much dismay

And winded the godlings, breathless, will certainly moth grabe.

“Como es usted problema” the cat asked them, judging

The scent of bronze and silence, the muted gods await