One of the things that I have been very interested in lately is animation. The amount of work, planning, and talent involved in animation is just mind boggling. I came across this wonderful “amateur” stop-animation video and just had to share. If I ever get even half as good as this guy, I could die happy. I’m putting this one in my “Poetry” category because it is literally, animated poetry. Check it out.

A SHORT LOVE STORY IN STOP MOTION from Carlos Lascano on Vimeo.

photo credit: jchessma

I’ve been taking a creative writing course in order to help me broaden my writing skills and to move beyond writing only non-fiction. One of our assignments was to create a “Personal Universe Deck”. We were to make a list of 100 words - 80 words of sight, sound, touch, smell, and taste (16 of each), 10 words of motion, 3 words of abstractions, and 7 miscellaneous words such as parts of the body, times of the day, places in the universe, hero &/or heroine, animals, birds, colors, invented words, and foreign words. We then took 100 blank index cards, and wrote each word on one index card. We were to shuffle the cards and randomly select 10 cards from the deck. Using those ten words, we were to write a poem. It was a fun exercise, and I was quite pleased with what I came up with, as silly as it may be.

The ten words I pulled from my deck were: sigh, buzz, hawk, flavor, sour, dark, shove, siesta, shake, and whisper. Here are the results:

Far, far up in the dark blue sky,

I see a hawk, then let out a sigh.

In my mouth, a sour taste.

The flavor of my life, oh what a waste.

My ears are ringing, I hear a buzz.

Yet I lay here, just because.

First a shake, then a shove -

A looming face appears above.

Then a whisper, I know that voice.

You need to move now, you have no choice.

The siesta is over, time to go.

How much I drank, I don’t want to know.

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