[Newspoetry] Twenty Little Newspoetry Projects

[William Gillespie]

Twenty Lines for Jim Simmerman

.....

A metaphor:

High ranking elements of the US government had foreknowledge of the
crimes of September 11th and chose not to act to prevent them in order
that the killing of Americans be spun to generate popular support for a
premeditated military invasion of Afghanistan to fulfill the economic
agenda of control of remaining global oil reserves (given that the oil
rich regions of the former Soviet republic could be most easily
exploited by means of a pipeline running through Afghanistan thereby
circumventing Russia and China)

It all smells like a fishy red white and blue guitar solo but tastes
like blood oozing from the wound of a freshly extracted tooth by which I
mean the long-suffering citizens of Afghanistan and Iraq

It is a guitar solo, compelling only in its inevitability, etched
against the night sky like an unabashedly garish Independence Day
firework display

It is conveniently, though perhaps not entirely accurately, personified
by President Bush in Washington D.C.

Well maybe not a guitar solo but a brassy march

Mail bombs are bad for postal workers and for mail artists

Buzzkill, literally

Terrorism causes SUVs

Work it

The shattered steel reinforced concrete of peace

The towers in flames are surrounded by firemen wielding high-pressure
hoses to douse the inferno in crude oil

President Bush has just read every word of a very large and difficult
book about the world and all its cultures and now has a plan for peace

Bill, you asshole

We will rewrite the entire world

The pizza me and Mike ordered back around line 6 is so far entirely
unsubstantiated

The terrorists are evil and you are either with them or with President
Bush and the network of financial interests dictating foreign and
domestic policy his persona stands in for in this poem

Sieg Heil

The oil is lying awake tonight, weeping over the precious blood that has
been wasted on its behalf

The oil is weeping.









......


Twenty Little Poetry Projects
            Jim Simmerman

 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 synesthesia (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?) youUve never seen in a poem.
 9. Use an example of false cause-effect logic.
 10. Use a piece of talk youUve actually heard (preferably in dialect
and/or which you donUt 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 or 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 that
finally
makes no sense.
 18. Use a phrase from a language other than English.
 19. Make a non-human 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.