There's inspiration everywhere you listen. If you're not "inspired", try listening to the conversation around you. No conversation? Turn on the television, tune out the story and just grab a few random lines.

Here's something I've been pondering: why do first lines end up generating so many potent poems? I've been noticing this for years - games like Tag Team Poetry and first line prompts tend to be the ones that most often spark poems that people decide to keep and polish. What is it about taking someone else's first line and running with it that makes people really bring it?

I think the answer is a simple one. It gets you past the first hurdle - the one where you actually have to put something down on paper (or on the screen or in the sand or what have you). It starts you off - and often in a direction you'd never considered. The first line may be enough to suggest an entire poem - or just a second line. In either case, your mind is starting to run and it picks up its own steam as you go along.

Anyway - enough theorizing. On to some randomly overheard lines that just might work their way into being a poem.

she's unloading Barbie dolls

she does this once or twice a year

every building every roof

the neighbors always know the truth

eight pigeons past yesterday's news

you have the right to remain

show me irresistible

use these words in a letter to

I was only looking for a free

The Oldtimer Explains To The New Guy Why Gentrification Is So Difficult

She's unloading Barbie dolls again. She does this
once or twice a year, dumping their limbless, headless bodies
off the edge of the back porch
into an old refrigerator box.

The neighbors watch her, the way we always do. Hell, I watch too.
From every building, from every roof, every window
and stoop, we watch her doing what we wish we could.
The neighbors always know the truth -- that her hours of collecting

the broken toys from sad girls all over the city have led to this
again, and while we can't imagine what drives her, we understand obsessions like hers,
obsessions like how Mary's always calling Dali time to one and all --
"it's eight pigeons past yesterday's news,"

and how the mean ass beat cop is practicing the Miranda warning sotto voce
so he never gets it wrong again..."you have the right to remain
silent, anything you say..." Show me irresistible urges and I'll show you
any down at the heels neighborhood full of mistakes no one will ever forgive.

You ought to join us. Use these words in a letter to yourself: "I was only looking for a free ride
past my own obsessions when I moved here to Anonymous, USA." Prove to me you belong with us. You're new here, but I bet you've got your own urges to deal with --
and if not, maybe you can give Barbie Girl

a hand moving that box to the garage
once it's full which should be some time past the longhorse
vault of heaven, if Mary's got it right today. If you're not crazy like us,
at least prove you can hang with the gang.

wow. I think this deserves the random first lines award or at least admission to the random lines hall of fame. ALL of the lines, and in less than an hour.

not to mention an amazing poem (yes, I do recognize a recurring theme from your poetry in this but wow. just wow.)

For the record, many of those lines came from an episode of Law & Order SVU.

chameleon wrote:

wow. I think this deserves the random first lines award or at least admission to the random lines hall of fame. ALL of the lines, and in less than an hour. not to mention an amazing poem (yes, I do recognize a recurring theme from your poetry in this but wow. just wow.) For the record, many of those lines came from an episode of Law & Order SVU.

Heh heh heh...thanks. Just wanted to make a point about inspiration and its uses...

she does this once or twice a year
pays a spectator or two tribute for a borrowed opinion;
distracted by the colours of her desire
and the reasons that drive her well documented apathy
she sits back and licks her paws: 'secure, am I'
while the men and mice survey their better plans

back in her room,
a gilt-edged mirror is covered up with a tea towel
and yet it still commands her dull eyes through wind and water, to that corner.
to that corner
to that corner of...potential?

what the eye can't now see, the mind still perceives is there;
perhaps the truth would've disappeared, but for its independence from
the kinder words that gyrate her spirit down at the symposium;
inner circle safety, whispering contented nothings;
flames spin on spun strings. pillars stand untouched, unmoved

back in her room, and
headlong into the broken waves of an other unfulfilling night she drifts
the television plods like a resolute tortoise, centre of the race, the cause
yet carries no number on his chest, quite unlike...her?

hare-brained, confused, she arrives at the finish line she chalked, without due care and attention, days earlier, in pyrrhic anticipation; only then realising that she'd been led there by free will, on somebody elses travelator called "..........." - no!
even the word itself had now escaped her.
a rum portent, it would seem

'when walking becomes an effort; take the load off
when thinking becomes an effort, shout at the television
when all you have to count on are the safe seats, read some Machiavelli'

*inspiration strums a lyre*