Free Songwriting Without Boundaries by Pat Pattison Page B

face that the parents were now so ashamed to display. No red roses surrounded the casket, no floral arrangements. The family seeping silent resentment.
ANNE HALVORSEN: It was to be an event, a gathering, instead it was a fallen funeral, such a failure as these things go.
She wrapped the bird in layers of Easter-colored tissue and plastic grass, placed him gently in the shoebox from mother’s closet, and walked grandly to the tall oak, the retriever striding softly at her side …
    Ian’s take on the funeral, which could have been a celebration, has descended into something else. Anne gives a fallen bird a funeral. Nice.
    Now, your turn.
    Smooth Moonlight
BONNIE HAYES: The smooth moonlight pours like thick cream through the window.
Spilling across my floor. Silken, undulating—I want to get out of bed and go stand in it, dance in it, let it fall in folds across my skin, feel it on my hair …
BEN ROMANS: The moonlight carved into the landscape, stroking the hills as smooth as a brush.
The smooth moonlight sunk into the desert ahead. The crickets applauded the shadows’ ballet on the sand. The rest of the sky was envious of the feast below …
    Hot spots: “smooth moonlight pours like thick cream” and “stroking the hills as smooth as a brush.”
    Your turn.
    Fevered Carburetor
BLEU: The carburetor was fevered, sputtering the car to life like a half-drowned man coughing up water.
… sputtering to a halt … grinding … sweating … oil—enough fumes to get you high … speed–demon … faster … harder … clutching, the clutch, with bare feet …
pushing the pedal so far beyond (through) the vinyl car-mat the asphalt is giving you a manicure … sick … with smoke … bad emissions …
SUSAN CATTANEO: On the off ramp, halfway between Phoenix and Flagstaff, the fevered carburetor fainted, giving a huge steam-filled sigh.
Tires sag into the blacktop and the heat shimmers on the horizon. The buzz-saw sound of cicadas and the starched feeling in my throat, smell of mesquite and the starched white sun …
    Now, your turn.
    Whew! Quite an introduction to this challenge. The work you’ve done today has put you on a road that will take your writing places it hasn’t likely been too regularly. These metaphor exercises will change the way you look at the world. You’ll see more on the vertical—things stacking on top of each other—rather than horizontally. Things in a line will become only what they are.
    Rest now. Another day is coming.
    DAY #2
    FINDING NOUNS
FROM ADJECTIVES
    Yesterday I gave you the combinations and asked you to explore them. Today, I’ll give you the adjectives, leaving it up to you to find nouns to crunch up against them. Don’t grab just anything; take your time and look for provocative, productive collisions.
    If you need a nudge finding nouns, or any grammatical type for that matter, Roget’s International Thesaurus , the nondictionary-style thesaurus, is a good friend. It’s a great place to hunt, and it corrals nouns, verbs, adjectives, and adverbs into their own separate pens.
    As you did yesterday, write a sentence or short paragraph for each collision. Then do a ninety-second piece of object writing for each collision, using it as the object.
    Angry __________
ANDREA STOLPE
Angry taxes : I drove my pencil through the tangle of unsure numbers and stale questions, trying to make some sense of my angry taxes.
Snap, another graphite stick bites the dust. Numbers blur, questions stare me down like a buffalo on the plains of North Dakota, my eyes slurring words as my nightlight pops and clicks—tiny fruit flies flitting to their death around April 15th.
KEPPIE COUTTS
Angry umbrella : My angry umbrella flails and pops its arms inside out and refuses to budge back into shape.
The brooding clouds quickly take on a violent edge, turning a nasty shade of purple and brown, a big swelling bruise in the sky. Thick hot droplets spit as I pop my umbrella, but the wind carries the rain at impossibly