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Twitter: A Place to Play with Language Shorts
Facebook Status Statement Rang in National Poetry Month

By Julene Tripp Weaver

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Happy National Poetry Month!!

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Twitter is a new language play land; you can find me there @trippweavepoet. Many use Twitter for wordsmith play. My twitter friend sends out a daily word prompt, @poetwist, and what a perfect place for Haiku!

Here are some of my Tweets from days gone by (I could not help but edit a teeny tiny bit):

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carrot turnip rutabaga parsnip beet/eat roots/cilantro & green onion rich underground mineral perfection for our ingestion.

dual cancellation=free time: Lenin oversees Fremont: exit shoes=earth=calm: Oscar Wilde=feminist-flip-flop verse: precocious time.

we cannot interrogate words on a page, not you, nor Freud, Plato or Socrates, but we talk endless interpretation breathing ourselves to life

slow temple: bone—a long stretch—blues bullet in the brain—stop such pain: blame: bullets sold out: temple pressure point nil: chill

snake a break, eat a tad, take a caffeine/theobromine jag, forget spelling, even if it is compelling, eyes lock forward on text need rest.

I finger knotted birch, the red copper hemming on a basket woven, cross hatched rough skin, an outside life we wish to conceive, breathe.

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Then there is Facebook, where National Month started with a word blast organized by Seattle poet Dana Guthrie Martin. She made up the name, FaBoSteMe, for Facebook Statement Me and posted an event page. She sent out a call to write a series of status statement updates on Facebook, each writer did a half hour improvisational writing sprint. There was words flying from 6:30 a.m. through midnight. Many new friends were made.

Yes, I signed up! Facebook with its additional character capability gives even more word play space.

My tactic for this Facebook challenge? I used quotes from poetry books that are stacked on my floor (a great storage place for books!). I usually check (with a pencil) lines that I resonate with. I spent about an hour prep time flipping through books jotting down lines. When it was my turn, I entered the line in quotes with the name of the poet, then wrote a improvisational response!

It was stressful due to computer worries, but fun! Below are a few samples from my FaBoSteMe posts:

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FaBoSteMe Posts

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“The first few steps are/hard anywhere.” Clarence Major, Waiting for Sweet Betty
Tell me about it, how the earth intrudes in it’s misery undergrowth.

“Subtraction is about take away,/but what is left is never enough…” Jayne Pupek, Forms of Intercession
This game where we lose ground,
mountains blown asunder by our own hand.

“…a new peace,/an egg-blue lease on calm…” Kevin Clark, In the Evening of No Warning
accurate as bronze on pipes
the water inside running silent
in our walls blood cool as a snake.

“…powdered milk of human kindness…” Reginald Shephard, Angel, Interrupted
raining talc on a babies rump the glide of your forgiveness

“Or what peace I thought I’d find there/in the steel-ribbed cage of a captured god.” Michelle Bitting, Good Friday Kiss
in the brazed cavern of some holy
bereft I said a prayer

Try this exercise yourself! Use your favorite books, find some favorite lines, respond in your own words on either Facebook Statement or Twitter.

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Thank you for reading my guest blog!

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Julene Tripp Weaver has a chapbook written from the work I do in the world, “Case Walking: An AIDS Case Manager Wails Her Blues” (Finishing Line Press).  Garrison Keillor featured a poem from it on The Writer’s Almanac: a poet’s dream come true!

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