Prompts for Adelaide

Boys on red motorbikes, racing with news

Brutal as a three a.m. call

Does nothing cast a shadow, does death weigh?

Graffiti, however you spell it

Hilltop after hilltop

Is the room empty or full of invisible people?

Keyhole

Lie in darkness, consider your ignorance

Make me up a highball with round ice cubes

My cheat is tight with remembrance, crawling with guilt

My wife eats a Chinese meal

Now and Then

Now death comes with a jingle

Once the police rang and a huge black telephone jangled

Perhaps something comic, and no tears of the clown to follow

SMILE

Take your passport, in case

The earth still spins

The shell-skin of a long-gone snake

These are not cheerful enough

This is a story I really have to tell

Tussle for a minute then give in

We could take turns screaming

Who lives in a house like this?

Without a history, what kind of story?

You may have the first word or the last, but share

Australian Prompt-Drought Relief

Australian Prompt Drought Relief


AKA BC Flash Blast 40

22:43 June 18th


"When fishes flew and forests walked"
Give me a dirty woman or a filthy one
A path long grown over
I am older now and stumbling some
There was a fire in my head
A woman wailing for her lost love as if it made a difference
Are you willing to sell, for a shilling, your soul?
Imagine midnight in a forest
"Big fleas have little fleas, upon their bike to bite 'em"
From the scrotum of the yak
When a rainbow sighs and the heart leaps
Repeat after me...
Hundreds of fucking daffodils
Flowers will grow in lovely gardens and in shit
Sting!
The train stopped at a place I can't remember
In the shade of an ancient tree
No God, probably
Sympathy is in the dictionary, between shit and syphillis
Choose left or right and get on with it
Already said: the moon's a balloon.
under the shade of a coolish tree or something
"Firewood, iron-ware, and cheap tin trays"
He baffles fat detectives
"She was poor but she was honest" and didn't know to sue

June Blast 41

June Flash Blast, 41

June 18th 14:11


A story of great distances and hardship
Drunk, drunk, drunk, and it's not lunch-time yet
The flash of white thigh, a lift of musk
I am lonely
I need to hear something happy, a joke or three
Candle
A stream swollen as spring unfurls winter
Behind the facts, the shadows
We have made it to the Pacific
TINKLE!
Everything echoes something, and is echoed in its turn
It's a terrible month in a very bad year
I am running ahead of myself and trying to catch me up
PEAR
When the lung and the gullet gasps white
Think of me as a trellis, elastic
The mountains hate the sea, the desert envies snow
KNIFE
We could swallow each other and disappear
They will occupy somewhere or other
Davy Crockett, Jim Bowie
CODE
All night, a shutter banging
Are they people left who can mend things?
I pause at the bottom of your street

June Blast 40

June Flash Blast. 40

June 18th 11:03

Drab, heat-glazed barracks, roads going nowhere
The spin and random drop of circumstance
I will stay in bed
The clanking of dusty tanks
The corpses floating
Sun on high windows
The rabble glummers and shuffles forward
Steel Cathedrals
White ships on open seas
Marseilles and other dangerous ports
Tattered letters, crushed parcels
A bucket of dubious bones
A low, filthy, moon
I do not sleep, but weep for the dying
Wild Horses
Hacked
Line up with your questions
A crumb of comfort
Dawdling past the Gates of Hell
A river, red with death
On the other hand, choose a happy life
A beach of iron filings, seas of molten steel
The doctor is coming down the stairs
A shadow on the pillow
Flowers
The false pomp of the town hall clock

And, more...

More Prompts

Give Prompts to the Australian Prompt Famine



My God, what a bunch of dung.
It is God's error that I am a woman
Give me living that explodes and fizzes
I would have been an astonishing man
I cannot tolerate dullness
I do not want to be good
I prefer a dangerous, dizzy unhappiness to boredom
It is time to embark on an orgy of drunkenness
I will be elegant and decent shortly before I succumb
It can rain here for seven days straight
Very few here are worth getting drunk with
Perhaps a quiet night with Brahms
I try not to think, it is always bad
Or write like a lady from a polite place
The fire of a happy whore
I hate almost everything like Holy Hell
Still curious, angry, anxious
We are enchanted by the book
It is very handsome here
Not all stories are uplifting
Ducks overhead like bombers heading for the Rhine
I would rather be a writer than anything else
I am troubled, head and heart
Have the guts to write
Just say clearly what you see
Shiny, impressive, technical and dead
Read a bad novel and learn about restaurants

37

37


An accident waiting to happen

A waste of fresh air

He moistened his thumb and started counting

A clip-on earring

I need you like coming home in winter

Amoeba

I've been on six-till-two and then four overs

I have fallen in love with a stick

An air-raid shelter or two

The view over the lake

Two perfect poached eggs

We'll never get there and it's always raining

A twilight shapeless and desultory

This is an objective of sorts: survive

Ruler

He climbed in darkness looking for sweet air

I'm late, but for what?

Dear-Sweet-Jesus-God-in-Heaven I am done

90 Degrees

It's not that we are old, but we are weary

I am not quite a Catholic

I am a compass, you a circle drawn

No, this is tired

I am a pencil; you erase

40 Years or so ago, give or take a war

I can't stay awake

My fat brother in law

Rose of white prefabs above a dirty brook

It was a hopeful time,  we all leaned with the wind

White Hot Steel

June Blast Prompt Set 36

I suspect we should be enemies but I would rather love you

We were made heroes

The women wait somewhere, then give up

TREE

My father, hiding toffees, fearful

MINT

Let us make loud noises and jiggle

Bandage

Chocolate, wine, various dried plants

ACORN

I was a seal, then a sea-lion. Now I am a Walrus

Out catching girls in nets

Open the box!

I can't remember what it was like

WATER

Sucking the life from strangers

This finger, that finger, occasional thumb

Hey dad, I wroted a poem!

Back then, when who people slept with...

I am disremembering

This is all clay, dried, crumbling

Give me your hand, touch it to my face

CIGAR

Huddling like troops under mud

It was half-past midnight, January

Your loving Willie Thomas

A little rum and tea and one last fag

The enemy sleeps in feather beds, listening to warm songs

BC Flash Blast. Prompt Set 35

BC Flash Blast. Prompt Set 35

11:45 Tuesday 17th June

My eyes would not focus


I must have heard questions. I must have answered


On the bus to the airport I began to be ill


I should sign my letter "Always."


He feels he should suffer all the time


The wallpaper must go!


James has a new school and is very happy


The best people are outsiders, not loners


It's over; Decree nisi!


I have no sacrificial genes in me


David tires easily


I am as happy as six kittens in a wool factory


I am so lucky to be out of it


Questions you would never normally answer


I adore my flat, my tiny, tiny flat


Piccadilly


I am healthy, busy, committed


The maids are terrified of snakes and spiders


I worry about my troops


He plays tennis a lot


I hack for money and tend my brood


My life has been positively riddled with mistakes


But that time was a solid, deadly waste of time


There is a penalty for cowardice


I am just three pounds over my best and positively beaming


I am teaching myself to cook now I have a stove


Some day I will tell you about Mombassa


Wild Almond trees, hundreds of monkeys!


The sea is inches away, blue as love

BC June Prompts 34

BC Prompts 34

16:38 June 16th






Notes for my brother

Fuk Yew, Taiwanese Waiter

Considering his reflection and the emptiness in the world
The way sometimes rain is soft
Broad as tall, but gentle
The greats, the chancers, the frauds
Down corridors of coloured light
Sun on snow
I need a cruise to somewhere hot
Tonight, and every night
Half a dozen loaves and a fish or three
Mockingbird
Let's turn round and try something different
OWL
Right in the muffle of things
33-45-78
A million butterflies, suddenly ominous
LASER
He sits and waits his sister's scissors
Boarded Up
The time when we needed to sing
Otter, snake, bird
This is why I live in Wales
The twisted trees and fallen walls
TIGER
A girl's face like a spell in the air

Prompt Set 33. June 16th, 11:12

Boot Camp June Flash Blast.

Prompt Set 33. June 16th, 11:12

Tick - Nothing Happens, Nothing Happens, Nothing Happens -  Tock.
A plane, a sliver of silver, dropping through clouds
Underfoot and the smell of pine so strong
A spinster in Leamington Spa
Someone comes in, pushing a trolley
Running into the sea
No one disappears in July
A khaki nation full of muffled drums
I am collecting sexual misdemeanours of all kinds
Lie still and be overcome by snails
Trains with strapped windows, small found bulbs
the delirious smell of old, old dust, and blinds against the corridor
Sleep in your cellars
Dancing on the greenhouse roof
I only know small sad songs
When she is thinking of him she twirls her hair and fancies a cigarette
I knew a woman once, but not her name
Do you have any spare wives?
The moments between gaggle and skein
I think of those who strive to be invisible
A red indian, a black-mama, a Sikh with a sword
Face-Paint
The dirtiest garage in the world
What the camera catches, who
I would like whiter teeth, a straighter back and more time
Winning is easier. The skill is losing well.

More Prompts

Everything catches fire

The colour, weight, the way words move

Who, when she loves, takes time to worry?

You were born here, without fanfare

The moon is high and round and yellow

Horses, swans, a skulking fox

Memory, a bracelet, shining, false

Climbing, into a filthy wind

His blood undone and proud

Under rain, in places made of stone

You said, kiss me then

The dead seem not to worry so

Stars fixed, moving at a million miles an hour

The train runs on through darkened fields

A girl prepared to die for her man

We build our own ambush

A bottle goes in sips or gulps

Reach between my legs and wake me

Women in aprons and scarves

Attend me to the world and slowing winds

I am blind, but not quite weak

We could pretend to fight and grow an audience

You and I, two old and ragged men

Hold to this truth and ignore argument

The sea one night took the house we slept in

Prompt Set 29

Prompt Set 29

June Blast.
Friday 13th 06:37

Plans or poems, it's up to you
I am planning a party in my garrett, please bring bread
Riding round in Daimlers
I have been neglecting the flowers
FRANCE
I have an eternal secret police
So cold, the frozen troughs and sea
02:30
Happier when his friends have four legs
Would make a bishop turn to booze
Here is Peter. Here is Paul.
BEES
Aunty has a bun in the oven
I have a very large gun and good eyesight
THORNS
I slept once to find my life's a dream
Small boulders, under water
I have nothing against clockwise, but I am anti-clockwise
Pink Icing
My favourite impayler, Sad, Vlad and dangerous to know
Barbecue
In the not too distant future
If all my dreams come true
I'm going to find the kind of girl
Who will love me more than you
I'm a Libran Librarian from Hull

More BC Flash Blast Prompts

More BC Flash Blast Prompts

10:25 June 12th

The awkwardness of sunlight
When all the telephones ring at once
He disappeared at the end of winter, spring rising
Upgrade to 128Gig
The road was a slash of moonlight over the darkening moor
Stop all the clocks
The river pauses, the flows on south
When he cried, children died
Milk?
Our cleverest hopes have faded into dust
The unquestionable smell of death
Now, if I concentrate, I can see
I have made my penis a little jumper
We should, perhaps, show a little more enterprise
The Head of Animal Management
Remind me tomorrow
I get back just before midnight
I took a book, three pencils and some blotting paper
Clearing my emails
Girls waving like drunken sailors
No time to wait, no time just to look
Ah, here comes death again, dressed badly as usual
The Lord is my sheep-minder
Be gentle with me day, wind be quiet

Toot!

Not that I'm bragging...

OK, I'm bragging.

OK I'm shouting it from the fucking hilltops.

OK, I've hired a plane to drag an advert across the sky.



My June Blast Target was 35 pieces, by midnight 30 June. I expected to miss by a few, maybe make the high 20's


It is 11 AM on June 11th, and I've done it!

07 Poems
01 Articles
03 Stories
24 Flashes.

35 Items = target reached with 19+ days to go.

Average score 116 (dragged down by poetry scores)

Best Score 135


I fully expect at least 25 of these to publish

(if I remember to send them out)

Prompt Set 26

Boot Camp Blast


Prompt Set 26



I am thinking of you like a cow, ruminating, chewing over the things we did.

I shall send you to Finland.

Summer nights, naked under sheets, listening to the radio

I love you very much; that is why I throw things

A woman lives inside me

Come to New York, wine me, dine me, love me

I love where history occurs, where I will be killed

People get hurt even when you don't mean to hurt them

Things can be complicated

I feel like I should spend some time in the desert

My head is bashed out from inside

He is lonely and feels abandoned

I have a horror of matrimony

Let us sin decently and be proud

Paid off in stocks when love flies

When love ends just hold tight for a while and try not to drink too much

I want to see how the world works

The West coast is very lovely

Are you still thin and quite brown?

Do you still run two miles before breakfast?

Are you still mean when you play tennis?

Will you pummel me and then kiss me?

I am in the pink now, after my illness.

The hills have a fine toupee of snow

Boot Camp June Blast 025

Boot Camp June Blast 025

08:38 June 11th


Three "blocks" today


Play Geoff Buckley's "Hallelujah" on repeat, sit and listen at least six times, THEN, write your opening sentence, wait, listen some more. Now, with hallelujah still playing, either turn off your screen or set the font to white so your words are invisible. Write your story WITHOUT CHECKING WHAT YOU HAVE WRITTEN.

If you get lost, simply press carriage return a few times, then continue. Don't worry about errors, just write from the gut.



ROMPTS (2 lots)



Questions to my dead mother
A for Orses
A man I knew, a lumberjack
47
I went to buy a car
Henry V
Five or Six Days in June
Coyotes, Gabby Hayes
Why I work at night
Point three-three
The Interior Decorator
Postcard From Orlando
How rainbows Appear in the Sky





Swords, pens; the sword is harder to wield
You praise your village and I will mine
Your fear and my fear, shall we meet where they cross?
I will be your Chief of Staff
Grey, half asleep, our shoes undone
Places we have already been, our shadow in grass
The bark of a dog who knows he was Aristotle
Wheat ripens but soon enough rots
The women have lined up, ready on the hill
This is not about birthdays
Singing as the plane goes down
I am a landscape; my memories fetid swamps

There is little more glorious than a child's first steps
and what could depress us more?

Boot Camp June Flash Blast. 24

Boot Camp June Flash Blast.

Prompt Set 024

Tuesday June 10th, 15:39



The prick, the foot, the ear, which the silliest?

POODLE

I suspect you will begin without me

PUDDLE

We are taller now, older

Laugh lightly, lick your red lips and smile

STUNTED

Blame others, confess to nothing!

It was easter Monday. I went for a walk

Aisle 16

Kids playing on ice, listening for the exultant crack

Sail calmly away

The streets are bright, the homeless up on spikes

The woman who pissed herself in Tescos

DING!

We stay together like tangled earphones, string

So this is your idea of "safe"?

We are too tired to despair; we sleep through protests

BALLOON

Our enemies have poisoned the well of bright ideas

Perhaps we are happier

There are yellow windows, glowing in the hills

Who we remember, why, is not a hierarchy of the good

Leave now, stranger

What will endure is accident

The banished beggars made to glue

I arrive within your pregnant conversation

Before this one there was another one

Between infatuation and dissatisfaction are our moments

Love's a Bitch and then you die.

We are surrounded, and running out of epithets

Prompt Set for June Flash Blast.

Prompt Set for June Flash Blast.

23


Monday 9th June 10:25

A certain delicious depravity and unpleasantness
A man should get drunk now and then out of principle
A voice whooping down an ancient chimney
American mutterings
But I am not that fond of bears
But whom do you address?
Dead is dead
Do not acquire knowledge through spilled blood
Dumas, Dickens
Hemlock
Horse Sense
I have momentarily mislaid my muse
I may waste my twilight or kill a president
I need the harsh smell of sage, the dry air
I should take a job with the Chamber of Commerce
It feels like a long and tedious concatenation of circumstance
It is a little dear here but the climate is impeccable
It's a tough racket
Knocking over gravestones
Not archaic, but not slangy or vernacular either
Or, of course a cabin by a lake
Some flowery dame in a hilltop house, wasn't it?
Talk technique when you run out of ideas!
That is a poor man's town full of nervous sisters
The dark smoothness of an old pistol
There is far too much talk about the dead.
Those of us here, by life defeated
You didn't sound that happy
You need to FUCK with the language

June Blast 22

Prompt Set

June Flash-Blast 022
June 8th 15:10




More fizz than a sackful of cats
Perhaps we drank too much wine
To meet dark Frenchmen who would tell me of tomorrow
The atom bomb!
Picasso was very quiet
A few withered like plucked birds
I like the feel of things when the French are closing in on an idea
Superficial types hate Beethoven
Books, books, books, words, words, words, I love it so!
They know art too well, until it is eaten
There is knowledge and there is an awareness of opinions
Not likeness please, insight!
I may take up sheep-shearing and wrestle crocodiles
Postcards
Not enough grip or momentum, I feel
Violins ticking like grasshoppers
A terrible falling
Always eat goof food and wash one's face with cold water
I imagine Colombo is unbearably hot
Do not mirror, produce
I must pop into town for my new flannels
I may learn to shoot arrows, or go to Nigeria
I am enjoying your holiday
Clarity, precision, as if Swift is on our shoulders

Prompt Set 021

Prompt Set 021

Saturday Jun 07. 05:33



I'm sending this message in a bottle

I have been in an excellent new job for a week or two

Our hut is excellent

The rain is full of strange beasts

Like a tank in a Burmese war film

Grappling irons, strong arms and Jesus!

There is a small herd of bulls

When John and Peter threw one in the pond

We try to ride our bykes

It's a kind of impending death by water

rallying a kind of peace

And so I fancy forth a letter to you

Collecting pretty pebbles in the rain

I hope to try it out with an enthusiastic partner

I heard a commotion in a ditch
out trotted a merry hedgehog

A noise like the distant sobbing of a child

My comrade in a pool of tears

He wouldn't even roll up he was so sad

His car is electrified against thieves

With a merry oath he threw himself behind the wheel

Blasted by a voltage to Heaven

I hear the bullocks conspiring

Charging behind me, utterly invisible

Ted wrapped it in his jumper and carried it home

A hedgehog wrapped in a towel in front of the gas

Cambridge is wonderful today

Not a ditch full of cold, dead frogs

Not a bird without feathers

Not a purse without pennies

June Blast 019

June Blast 019 

Jun 05 14:53

We have lived like this for years, unthinking

Specials Day

Eight Weeks Notice

Why the tree aches for sun

A man planning mayhem in the name of his God

I may be off-line for a while

Dragon Cuff-Links

The drapes are pulled across, the toilets smell

You can quote Hitchens all day

There are four hundred days left

When I die you may all agree about my character

Lottery

A man in a distant room tidying his desk

Days go by: weeks. I let them gather dust

Send me roses, and when I die send thorns to priests

It was summer and I was so happy

Perception comes late; to a few

In an instant my house is cold and resentful

Shall I tell you how I spend my time?

There are Egyptians on the beach

And Greeks and Turks in the restaurants

My eyes are shaking

If I keep moving the painter will not finish

You remind me of someone's child

WIRES

June Flash Blast Latest

June Flash Blast Latest

We have passed the fifty mark, now 54

PROMPTS



Victoria & Albert

Two black labs, red collars

Hiding in the spare room

Becoming Ernest Hemingway

THROWS

I must get up and go

Out of seven billion one or two may be OK

A late breakfast or an early lunch?

How to scrape away plaque

The Shower

Consider me, in all my sins, a man

Doctor Who

I have often walked down this street before

Zambesi, Zambesi

The Graveyard

I am simple and I have no soul

The dogs are coming

I wish I had had a mis-spent youth player snooker and dreaming of girls

Bus

Cast off the bounds of earth

The polka-dot teapot

Mother, tell your children, not to do what I have done

Beard

The illusion of violence

Life is a one-way street

There are no side entrances

Prompt Set 15

June Flash Blast.

Prompt Set 15
June 1st 13:24

It was late September.
I had just not-poured a nice glass of wine.
I was trying to ignore the screams of pain from the garden
The chairs were moving again; the books were talking
Q & A, C&A
Would you kill a beetle to save a rose?
I want to learn to play the blues
My sister's face.
Once we were all shiny as apples
I suggest you listen; slow down.
The faint sound of a certain kind of dying
Peter has stolen something; Paul is pissed.
The people here are shrinking
I would like to be an old rich lady playing bridge
My sister, her husband, my father, all dead.
GIN
Last night the lawn was bored and mowed itself
Please hold this ice-cube for me. I'll be back tomorrow.
Crushed Hazlenuts, Raspberry coulis
And there is a longing, a terrible longing
The sky was lower than I remembered
Rain is coming in
I would like the love of a fat black lady who laughs
I am as mindless as a diamond
Seventy-six or so trombones

Day One: June Blast 014

June Blast 014

01 June 10:19 (Sunday)


Just a man standing at a bus stop
Lighting flameless candles
A rabid dog, a child
It is shallow at the centre, deep here
Hostage
I am trying to release my inner squirrel
Queen
The weeping of trees, the darkness of rivers
The smell of close mortality
How long does a foreskin burn?
Imagining each other, not speaking
I need to clean for inspection
No one is safe, not even those who come for us
We try to live at night
The dead cheat us by moving out
Dregs
I am worried by this cough
Let's stay awake, drinking in the dark
Today a man exploded at a bus stop
Carbolic does the trick
Tomorrow a woman will give birth to sixteen
What are the night signs of love?
And oily tablecloths, stale bread
Running to your father for his wages