1. Complete this sentence: I AM NOT….
2. Complete this sentence: MY NAME IS…
My name is mood maker
Today my name is ache filled chocolate centre
Yesterday my name was wind freedom
Tomorrow my name might be rain watching head banger
Inside I know my name really is caramel centred wafer protected heart owner
Secretly I want my name to be lightening seeker
A name is everything and nothing. When someone calls my name they endow it with all the words that stand for me mood maker wind surfer rain hunter teared dancer. And still if my name was erased from my body I would still be me. but how would people call me? how would they talk about me? would it be like being deaf blind invisible, and, at the same time, made more visible by the lack of one single binding word. So that maybe to call me they would have to say you, girl with long black hair shimmering in the sun shade. Or maybe, you with the sun charged laughter and lightening eyes. Or maybe, you thundering cloud, you flooding rain maker, you ocean of feeling.
My parents think my name is hermit blood red rose
I sometimes think my name might have been electric blue lightning rod
My boyfriend thinks my name is sweet baby corn rain fed
My best friend thinks my name is crushed mint flavoured dream maker
My parents want my name to be star fisher
I sometimes wish my name was sky walker
Don’t be afraid to diverge from the topic. If it takes you in a new tangent follow it. Write faster than you can edit. Edit tomorrow. For today, just write.
[this prompt is from susan wooldridge’s ‘poemcrazy’. A fabulous book of ideas and fun.]
3. Complete this sentence: I WANT TO SAY…
I want to say come by in the evening and maybe we can make something happen something magical or something silly something sad and funny at the same time. I want to say, if you leave it up to me I will run every time you get close enough to give me a butterfly kiss racing through the motorcycle traffic of Kathmandu to some place with open space and no cuddles something less scary than a face close enough to see your scars and freckles. I want to say look up a little, there is a sky of support and laughter and rain and sunshine. I want to say run through the mustard fields bare feet with me.
Start with ‘I want to say…’ and keep going. Say ‘I never said…’ or ‘ I wish I said…’ or ‘why didn’t you tell me…’
4. Pick an evocative, layered word: Butterfly Effect, Skyhook, Whiplash.
5. Open your notebook. pick a random phrase. Write from there. Repeat the phrase whenever you get stuck. Go where it takes you. travel with your writing.
Past paragraphs of love letters, house key exchanges and shoe boxes full of relationship ephemera lives the questions: will this survive? Past paragraphs of love letters, house key exchanges and shoe boxes full of relationship ephemera is an opening of self that must happen for any of these to be meaningful. None of these mean anything if inside the face that is smiling at you in that photograph is not a fire that glows at the thought of you. None of it means anything if while you were watching that movie of the ticket you have saved he was thinking of you as much as about the movie. None of this means anything if beyond that photograph there was not a smile in the eyes that a camera cannot capture. Past paragraphs of love letters, house key exchanges and shoe boxes full of relationship ephemera is an open sky under which is endless grass and air that smells of gardenias and there is space between the two of you, open empty space and it is how fully you can exist apart from each other, as individual wholes. If you can smell the gardenias and smile at the sky and spreads your arms out like wings and run free and think of home as each other inside of you, you are truly home; and this will survive. Past paragraphs of love letters, house key exchanges and shoe boxes full of relationship ephemera is a study room, like a library, wooden shelves glowing deeply in the warmth of the fire burning in the heath, a comfortable leather chair in front of an open desk, windows that look out into the green and open space outside; it is a study room that has the cramped cosiness of hajurba’s study and looks out from two windows, like that room and the memories of our study room packed with the lives of each of us in this house; shelves are lines wall to wall and they are the shelves of our lives. each shelf containing small circular photo frames with pressed flowers; report cards; sea shells collected from each place we ever went to together, each one a different memory/story; a life-size model of your hand is in there, skin warm and soft and slightly scarred like yours are, open so I can see all the lines of your palm, each line a story; there is a globe in there too, a globe inside a globe inside a globe, one for each time we said you are my world; there are skulls in here too, skulls the remains of fights and lies; there is the red rose you left for me on the tree in front of daddy’s office in Durbar Marg, a whole shelf to itself, still red and blooming and fragrant as the day you left it there, as if frozen on that tree and on that day forever, made immortal by the depth of feeling, this shelf is its tree now; there is a yellow sign with an exclamation mark that reads ‘caution wet floor’ as though reminding us to tread carefully; on the ceiling is a gold left painting, a fresco of our lives, of the stories of our lives. This fresco will continue long after we have ended as a relationship, continuing to add to your life and mine, linked inseparably by the 5 years of our friendship, and influenced in some way forever by each other so that even when you are no longer here I will think of you and make up a lie to tell you or draw a flower on a tree for you; there are pearls from all the tears we cried when we first were apart, sending love across miles like sms, we have enough there to make a set now, chocker necklace, dangling earrings and wrist bracelet with gold piping;
this is the first 5. there are 95 more. they will arrive slowly, they are friendly and approachable, and they get paid to inspire. respond to them. make a new friend.

by chamki


chamki in my room
by chamki
In the insurance business

















