Prompt: Write at least one full page of prose or a poem. It can be a made-up tale, a scene, a thing you’ve just done or seen. It can be a dream. But the one thing you can’t do is use a word that’s more than one syllable.
Huh? Wait? What! No way! Come on, it’s fun. Trust me, it is. And, sure, it is tough. At least when you start. But your voice will jazz in new ways. The beats of the words will pop in new ways. You will have to walk this way and that and bend and stretch to find your way to say the thing you need to say. Which means you will write in new ways. Which is cool. It will not sound as odd as it seems. (Just look… the one word in this whole long prompt that is not one syllable… is the word “syllable.”)
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Here we go. This won't hurt a bit. Let's probe the depths, said the shrink. Yet it's hard to speak of things we feel, how we think, with jaws clamped shut.
It's just not right.
My tongue fenced in,
like pants too short or a bra too tight.
Side boob pokes out left and right.
There we go, there's the beat.
Clap your hands, stomp your feet.
That's dumb, this does not have to rhyme.
This feels forced.
I'm out of time.
When I was small I used to be the butt of jokes for using big words the kids had not yet learned. Look at me now as I flop and flail and fail to find the words to say. What the hell have I done?
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