Innocence Vs. Experience

For this one, we drew slips of paper with two opposite terms written on them. Here's mine:



Innocence Vs Experience



“Are you experienced?” he asked.
“Yeah.”
“Cause we don’t want no last minute fuck ups out there.”
“No, it’s cool.”
“Look this is where you get to walk away from this. Once you in this, you in this. Get me?”
“What do I look like, some kind of pussy. Cause I could walk. You asked me to do this, remember?”
He put up his hands,”Sorry. Sheesh- got some chispa, ey.”
I took the pistol from him.

“That’s why they call me spark.”

All the way to the spot I let my hand fly out the passenger window. The wind in the gaps between each finger were like water. We slowed down as we entered a residential neighborhood. All the houses looked the same, spongey stuccoed exterior with hollow walls. The same __ palm tree in every yard.

“Had a be a rich kid,” I muttered.
“Sorry?” said the drivers.
“Nothing.”

A rich kid. Not even from our neighborhood. Some preppy who got my homegirl fucked up at a house party just so he could do her. That’s my homegirl. You don’t do that shit and not have karma coming at you from the barrel of a gun.
We passed the houses, but I knew we were getting close. Parking was getting shittier and you could here a deejay.
The sound of a synthesizer imitating a trumpet and a repetitive crashing beat got louder.

“Fucking paisa shit,” said the driver.
“Yeah,” I said quickly and then turned away. Dude and I got nothing to do with each other. But he had wanted to get this kid for a while too for cheating him out of some dope cash or some stupid shit, so we’re setting two wrongs right with one stone. Or bullet. Whatever.

He kept the car running. It was like I was just going to pick somebody up, so whatever. Through the driveway and into the backyard. Groups of people standing around talking to each other, not even seeing me. It was so easy. Don’t ever let nobody tell you it’s hard. It’s real easy.
And I spotted the asshole right away too, by the speaker. Nobody would even hear the pop.

“You angel?”
He checked me out. “Yeah?”
“This is for my homegirl, Mari.”

And I did it so fast, so fast that I can’t even believe it happened. I pulled the small pistol out of my hoodie, put it in his stomach and fired. Nobody even heard. I ran out of there and didn’t look back.

I yelled Go Go Go Go to the car, but shit. It wasn’t there anymore. Fuck. I’d been duped.

I kept running, I kept running, I kept running.

And they found me, huddled in the orange groves. Big flashlight eyes peering down at me.
“I’m innocent,” I screamed, “I’m innocent.”

AlegriaDolores

For this one, you choose two opposing aspects of your personalities and make them separate characters. (Violet and Claire, anyone?). Give them gender, age, name. I made them into a mother and daughter, reminiscent of my own mom and me.



Dolores. Middle aged. Main character. My mom.


I am Dolores.
I am Diabetic.
I am Fat.
I am Tired.
Nobody loves me.
I give I give I give
And for what?
Look at my daughter,
She throws her life
Away. She
Doesn’t listen to my
Advice.
Once I saw a picture of the Virgin Mary
With Seven Swords piercing her heart.
Mother of Sorrows, it was called.
That’s me,
Madre Dolorosa.



Alegria


Daughter in her thirties. Impact character. Me.


I am Alegria. Joy.
I am young and strong.
My lungs were born weak
But I have learned to make them work.
I think my mother used to be happy.
She gave that name to me
And I am that thing,
A glow in the dark,
A low hum in the silence.
She also gave me thick veins
That strangle my legs
But I make my legs run.
I love I love I love
And look,
There she is, despite her best efforts
To stay angry,
A lip curling into a smile.

Lady Day Shocked

For this one, I had a picture of a surprised looking victorian kitten who looks exactly like my Lady Day. So I wrote this:



The Fairies



Lady Day is nearly two years old. Her favorite expression is “shocked”. She is surprised and delighted by everything: a stray thread on the Mamas’ garment, a bottle cap o the linoleum floor. Her way of talking is in chirps and purrs and she loves to roll about on the floor. Her favorite pastime is making muffins. Since she is inside all day long she doesn’t get to play in the grass or the flowers, she is always in trouble for eating the flowers that the blue mama brings home because that makes her tummy hurt and she makes a mess from her throat which her brother eats.
When the mamas make the prayer magic, lady always sits like a little hen o her leopard-print stool, paws tucked under. The red mama is shaking her finger at Lady.
“They won’t come because the little Lady will hunt them.”
Lady is a very good hunter. She likes to hunt dust freckles in the rays of lights that come through the window, and her brothers tail. The red mama sounded sad.
“Oh well, I guess they won’t come to this house.”
As they extinguished the lights of the room, Lady curled in tighter.
She thought “Yes, it’s better this way.”

Lady woke with a start. She looked over at her brother sprawled out on the rug, fat blob of tiger fur rising up and falling with congested breath. And then the tiny lights came, far from her and then next to her, glowing dust freckles that got bigger and bigger until they sprouted little limbs and wings.
Lady, for one, was Shocked.

The Francesca Lia Block Writings: The Watch Maker

So, since January, I've been so blessed to attend my idol FLB's workshops (IN HER HOUSE!!!) Big deal for the kind of person I am. I mean, I believe in mermaids and shit. Anyway, we do all kinds of awesome writing exercises. This one is very simple and can be replicated anywhere, by anyone: We just picked out a picture from the pile. Mine was that artist that paints all the Christina Ricci looking dolls in macabre settings. For this one, a surreal Madonna and Child, I wrote a creation myth:


Inception
At the beginning of the world were the stars. And the stones, which used to be stars. The maker of things came into view, she sprouted from the black a huge fleshy pod that became inverted. There she was, holding in the folds of her skirts the seas and oceans. It was the first thing she brought us. She had a lumbering step because of this weight. When she dropped her skirts, the water crashed down and swallowed the planet. The maker gave a loud bellow then, and dropped too a daughter, who would be the mother of all people, and put on her tongue the thing called language, and in her breast the thing called fear, and in her gut the thing called hope. And then the maker opened her throat and SONG came out, which made the soil pregnant. The earth sprouted children then, tall and green; and walking on legs; and swimming in the waters.
The maker brought forth from her own bowels a clock of a yellow kind of metal, sinewy with things called BLOOD and TISSUE. She wound it and it began it’s own sort of song. The maker, who was bleeding now, took in the thing called AIR. She was dying. The daughter that she made she put down and immediately a thousand tiny beings swarmed her, clicking and humming. The maker became a bright sort of thing now, her body wavering in a color called WHITE. And then she was gone. She was a star, with the stars.