Blackout Exercise

Another NYWM post and exercise. You get a newspaper or magazine and texta. Choose an article and start to cross out the things you don't want, until you are left with something new, whether its a different news article, a poem, a story. This first one I think will have to be a poem as I crossed out so much.

Awake
We can break
It can be
Hard to be awake.
We get up at the same time,
Go to bed at the same time.
Same old, same ole, same ole week.
A terrible waste of a life.
Every day, every day, this sameness.
Today may be the day
Inside the door
I reach inside the door
For what I was looking for.
A bit more awake
Its a new day, a new day, stay awake.
Early morning quiet time
Early morning walk
Pausing for a moment, pausing for a moment,
Awake,
Awake.

Hmmm... not bad. Not as bad as it seemed when I was crossing things out. I'm going to try another, as its fun and easy and apparently gets results (that should be a diet advertisement!!!!)

Ok, not sure this one will work as well.

Keep feeding the people.
Many of us forget the brain, the body.
We think, move, feel, see, hear, taste, smell.
The brain is split
Movements, memory and reason for balance,
The size of a pea.
Sweat when you're hot
Shiver when you're cold.
The brain consume the body, food and our mood.
Powerful fish,
Fish oils, fish oil
Are other things to bear in mind.

Weird.

I found this exercise very difficult as I find I am so influenced by other people's writing anyway, that to have it in front of me, I can't seem to stop thinking about it. So, I look at an article about fish oils feeding the brain, and it ends up being a poem about fish oil. I keep looking at the article going, 'What else could this be, what could I take out or change?' And it just ends up being the article transformed into Twitter language.