Prompt 22: Reduce

 “The urge to destroy is also a creative urge.”

- Pablo Picasso

Now, this one I believe is going to be fun – at least was for me and can really help you in you writer’s block. Try to find a poem that you dislike, that you feel negative about and simply wreck it! That’s right: tear it apart! I don’t mean tearing the physical paper, but omit, reduce, erase, everything from the poem you don’t like and use it as the basis for writing a new one – in a way that feels and sounds right to you. This little, simple exercise can be really helpful later in your own writing.

Belonging not to winter but to another
I face the face that made me

And lie all my hours
Upon your reckless hands

Make myself a prisoner
Of the sky

The sweet vermouth
Of your teeth

Shaping me
Like a spectre

In the attic of my flowering heart

Janaka Stucky