What I wrote - twenty years ago...

...for a creative writing class at Southwest Texas State University

Sublet line: What I wrote

(The prof. gave us 30 minutes to compose...whatever we wanted.  I was at a loss...don't like writing in class like that, but....here's what happened.)

Sit down, relax, stretch your fingers, stretch your mind.  Reach out with a fearless heart, reach and feel bravado rush through your veins like gold on fire.  See through eyes of crystal clarity, see your many visions of dreams now dead; see them once alive, built upon the purity and innocence that lives but briefly in a child.

Ramble in, ramblin' woman.  Run with the words, run along with the words like a good shepherd.  Watch your thoughts of black and white and prisms of color take shape and form sentences too sacred to share with anyone but your subconscious self.  Watch as your mind grabs your thoughts and snatches them and hides them back in a corner so dark even God's light would be dimmed.

Run to, not away from,  your clever imaginings of structure and meaning.  Give life to the romance in your mind. Fear not the snickers and smirks of those who can't see the shape of a heart rising from a wisp of smoke.  

Take your time, at any time, to imagine, to feel, to express on paper what you fear to express aloud because you have to think and dig for the simplest words that will express the complex way you feel; and while digging, the moment to speak passes and you scurry back into your mind-cave, licking your ego wounds, eyes closed, like a cat contentedly licks between it's outstretched toes.

Open, don't shut the gate behind which words lurk and wait for the freedom of your beautiful, creative, twisted, confused, clever, sexual mind to call forth, to whistle for attention.

Hold your hand out and let your higher power gently but firmly take hold of your hand, your mind and guide you, stand beside you while you grace the moments of your days, while you sleep and wake and talk and love and hate and smile and laugh and cry.