Creative Friday

I had fully intended to take part in the Fiction Friday challenge that's part of the Write Anything site, but I had too much other stuff on the go. In fact, in just a few minutes I have an Economics exam that despite copious amounts of note taking I’m totally unprepared for.

Anyway, I mentioned earlier in the week about struggling with a poem for my poetry group’s monthly challenge (I believe I whined about it on both Monday and Tuesday). It’s been a while since I’ve posted poetry here, so I thought I’d give you a change of pace.

I ended up with two different versions. I started one that rhymed, got about halfway through it and got so frustrated that I whipped up a non-rhyming version. Then I went back and finished the rhyming one. Neither of them have a title, but I’m open to suggestions . . .

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The Challenge: Take any 3-5 consecutive lines from the index of Bartlett's Famous Quotations. Filling in the gaps with your imagination, expand on the thoughts and feelings you glimpse between the lines to compose your poem.

My lines:
Imagination, cold and barren
Imaginations are as foul
Imagine why or whence
Imagining fear in the night
Imagining the grave



Imagination, cold and barren,
a bleak landscape stretching forth
into a wasteland of empty dreams.

Imaginations are as foul creatures,
intentionally misleading,
inspiring hope that has no place here.

Imagine why or whence we came
into this space between realities,
the great void that enshrouds us.

Imagining fear in the night
surpassed only by
the waking dream.

Imagining the grave that awaits
Reality shatters, fragmenting,
a downward spiral into madness.

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And now the rhyming version:


Imagination,
cold and barren as the grave,
like a demon
darkly filled with things I crave;
proliferation,
thoughts and feelings of despair
like an omen,
a vivid fantasy to ensnare.

Imaginations
are as foul as phantom screaming,
sounds of terror
within your darkest dreaming.
Abomination
raids the landscape of your mind,
a standard-bearer
of future curses intertwined.

Imagine why
or whence this inner madness springs.
What wrong committed?
What spiteful spirit to you clings?
Nightmare outcry,
sticky web of madness daunting;
a dread submitted
to a darkened inward haunting.

Imagining fear
in the night, time of darkest sin.
Fractured sanity,
your thoughts have let the chaos in.
You persevere
and hope to end this nightmare soon.
Begone humanity,
you’re dancing to the devil’s tune.

Imagining
the grave in which your conscience lies,
dark illusion
holds you fast before it dies.
A fragile thing
this life you cling to valiantly;
while dark delusion
transmits your uncertainty.