On the last day of Ethical ELA’s Open Write, host Denise Hill offered this invitation:

“Take a metaphor or idiom and reverse it or twist it up in any which way you choose – mumbo jumbo jam it!

Then write from the ‘sense’ the new phrase makes. It may be total nonsense. That’s perfectly fine! It may provide a ‘feeling’ or strike a memory chord or a fantasy chord with you in some way that inspires your poem today. Just go with it!”

Here is what came of my scrambling the writing on the wall…

The Wall on the Writing

In prehistory
cave-dwellers
dipped their fingers
into animal fat
charcoal
their own earwax

then dirt and ash

to paint their stories
on the walls
by flickering torchlight

over time
many caves
collapsed

to be reabsorbed
by the earth

In the course 
of human migration
the region of the caves
became a fortified city
with iron gates
and great stone walls

one of which
was constructed
over the buried caves

It is said that at this wall
the great orators
gave their mighty speeches
humble petitioners
made their prayers
poets composed their epics
chroniclers penned histories
and storytellers
found their words

I do not know
if the wall 
or the legends
are real

but I do know
that when I
hit a writing block
that I cannot
go over
around
or through
if I dig
deep
deeper
deeper still
within

I will find
the words

just human DNA
finding its way
with story
waiting 
deep
deeper
deeper still
beneath the wall
on the writing

Stone Wall. jcubic. CC BY-SA 2.0.

with thanks to Denise Hill and the Ethical ELA Open Write community

and Two Writing Teachers for the monthlong Slice of Life Story Challenge

for story really is

in our DNA