Listen to The Mustn'ts
Prompt from Wild Women Writer's Workshop Last Night
Remember this? ~ Shel Silverstein.
Prompt: Write a cautionary and/or prophetic manifesto to your inner child in favor of nonconformity…
TOAST
You cannot get to old and wise
if you have not gone through young and … not
Don’t skip around the lessons
or you’ll end up writing junk
There are dark forests with thorns and willow trees with twenty heads
trying to breathe you into their cotton board mouths as you go
don’t worry so much about coloring inside the lines
if everybody draws the same zebra
what fun is the looking
give him feathers
a cozy cave
write him a story
gift it somewhere
stretch yourself
elastic-like
but not so far as your fiber snaps
stretch in favor of expansion
inhalation
life force eruption
volcano love
fight with what doesn’t feel good against your bare skin
there’s a reason
and your body has opinions
and it’s mostly best you heed
get serious about falling in love
but not with otherness
outsides
fluff and sticky stuff they try to make matter
fall in love with yourself first
extend out from there and magnet what you want
like you know you can
don’t let anybody tell you
your map is wrong
that just because you can’t fit your heart in that sized hole
or your brain in that shaped box
that you don’t deserve the love of infinite stardust
blown like kisses from the crater hand of the moon
you will have to forge on,
and i cannot be there forever
to tell you what’s right and wrong
because those aren’t true categories for life things
those are lies attributed to greed
man
concrete
jealousy
heads bruised from the banging
against walls they did not choose
but are bound by
you cannot get to old and wise, my love
if you are afraid to spread
the butter of your stupid glistening self
on warm perfect toast
If you’d like to join the Wild Writer’s Workshop, we’d LOVE to have you!! Just know we’re the kind of gals who happen to have a dogeared copy of Women Who Run With The Wolves accessible on demand if that sounds like the kind of thing you’d be into!!!
^ This is from a couple of weeks ago when I pulled the prompt from my copy. Lo and behold, everyone scattered to grab theirs, and it was kind of an iconic moment for all of us.
Grateful for this motley crew of non-conformists who crack my heart wide open with their writing every week.
So much love
Rosie
It was even better the second time 🖤🖤🖤🖤