Zelda's Inferno exercise: write a poem from the following word list, on the theme, "things that make you happy": sunsets, Lego blocks, Star Wars, laughing, blowjobs, puppies, cheese, compliments, smiling face, summer, music, ice cream, water slides, books, roller coasters, dill pickles, concerts, fire, poetry, happy
somewhere in my house I think I still have a cassette tape of the Beach
Boys album Endless Summer
a gift from my parents, one of the first tapes I owned
I remember playing it on the way to the beach, music up loud, car
windows down
that's a place in my heart, a state of being, music and motion and sunlight
sometimes I can get there when I'm writing poetry or playing guitar or
dancing around a bonfire late into the night
a fierce sort of happy
different than when I was a child
that was laughing waterslides down the hill
or playing with Lego blocks or Star Wars
or even the quiet joy of being alone somewhere with a book
but this place in my heart
is louder
is faster
is triumphant
and then riffing off the bits I like from that:
there's this place in my heart that is music and motion and sunlight
it's love and drunkenness and triumph
it's summer nights and dancing and fire
it's my hands on a guitar (sometimes), my lips on the lips of a lover
(sometimes), my mind weaving words as fast as they come, into patterns
never before seen (sometimes)
it's a fierce sort of happy
and I can't always find it
for this is one of those magic realms and
the portal to it is oft hidden or closed
waiting on a magic word, or
the light of the first full moon of spring, or
the touch of some enchantress princess
for magic realms are hidden realms
an inviolate rule of the faerie story
(perhaps the only way to keep the fey realms from becoming a parking lot)
and so we visitors must keep working to earn our way in