Michael Simms: Writing Prompt #7 | Jumping into the Mud
Here’s an exercise which I call Jumping into the Mud although it’s sometimes called by the more prosaic name automatic writing. The exercise helps to loosen my imagination, and sometimes a decent poem results as well.
Video: Michael Simms reads five poems of joy and acceptance
Imagine being so in love
The mistakes you make
Keep you on the ground
Imperfect and happy
Michael Simms: A Conversation with Poet Robert Gibb
‘Having started out as a painter I’ve never lost the sense that I’m working on something that has a tangible existence, separate from my own, and that what matters most isn’t content but the expression of it.’
Michael Simms: Heart of Glass
In Herzog’s great visual opera
The hero stands on a cliff
Above a valley where a river
Of molten glass carries
Light to the sea
Federico García Lorca: New York (Office and Denunciation)
I know there are mountains and eyeglasses
And wisdom. But I didn’t come to see the sky.
I’m here to see the clouded blood,
the blood that sweeps machines over waterfalls
and the soul toward the cobra’s tongue.
Michael Simms: The Four Coups of Joe Medicine Crow
According to the Crow tradition of counting coups, a warrior can earn the title by completing four coups or deeds in battle. The four coups are: lead a war party into battle, sneak into an enemy camp at night and steal a horse, take away an enemy’s weapon, and touch an enemy without being harmed.
Naomi Shihab Nye, Michael Simms & Friends: Poets for the People of Gaza
Naomi Shihab Nye, the current Young People’s Poet Laureate, and poet Michael Simms gather international poets to share works that navigate themes of identity, displacement, and home in Gaza.
Michael Simms: Angela fell in love with her monkeys
Hearing about Angela’s monkeys
And thinking of Winchester
Barking at the bursting sky
Reminded me of Moondog
Michael Simms: Consider the Hummingbird
Consider the hummingbird
How like the mind it is
Michael Simms: American Ash (text and video)
Old warriors rarely
say anything about
people they killed or
horrors they saw
Michael Simms: Coming to Terms
There is no lasting happiness
in this world, only
particles of happiness,
fleeting, unpredictable,
transitory as a fragrance
or a falling leaf
Naomi Shihab Nye & Michael Simms: Writing Prompt # 6 | Dear Vaccine
As we enter our new lives
will we remember
the faster we moved
the sicker we got?
Michael Simms: The Trojan Women
The slaves in the dark hold of the ship cannot climb out or go back to where things went wrong. There’s no light, no voice of comfort, just chaos and darkness where they have to find their own peace without the kindness of others.
Vox Populi 