This is the place where clouds are born and I am floating. This describes the earliest experiences of our species.

This describes the earliest experiences of our species:  there are women who marry princes and those who marry frogs.  The frogs never become princes but it is an acknowledged fact that a prince may very well, gradually, at first almost imperceptibly, turn into a frog.

A some point in the distant past, men rose in rebellion against women.  They wanted children to be theirs  instead of women’s.

Last night the earth was bleeding.  The red light that began at the edge of earth moved upward until all the sky was red.  Mama calls it stormlight and it looks like she is right; a storm is coming.  The clouds are high above me, heavy and dark, and they are fast, traveling across the sky.

When I was little I would think of ways to kill my daddy.  The way I liked best was letting go a poisonous spider in his bed.

Entropy is the name that our scientists give to the irreversible downward slide of events:  life becomes death, order becomes disorder, princes become frogs.

When I was little I would think of ways to kill my daddy.  But I did not kill my daddy.  He drank his own self to death.  I heard how they found him shut up in the house dead and everything.  Next thing I know he’s in the ground and the house is rented out to a family of four.

The Prince may very well,  gradually, at first almost imperceptibly, turn into a frog.

You’d think the clouds would make a sound, but it quiet and the sky is nearly green now.  The land, too, is sea-green and even the water, with seeds floating across it in search of other worlds, is green.

The earliest experiences of our species, insofar as we know them,  the way the hominids – humanlike creatures – probably lived, the customs and social arrangements that the species followed for roughly 3.5 million years:  at some point the men rose in rebellion.  They felt dominated by women.  Men felt marginal or left out, they wanted children to be theirs instead of women’s.

This is the place where clouds are born.  You’d think the clouds would make a sound.

The sky is nearly green.  The land, too.  Insects walk on it.  Spiders drift about it on threads of silk.

Ways to kill my daddy:  the best – letting go a poisonous spider in his bed.  It would bite him and he’d be dead and swollen up and I would shudder to find him so.  But he drank his own self to death.

There are no exceptions to the rules of physics, whereas the rules of the soul consist of nothing but exceptions.

I am curled inside an opening leaf in this boat covered with algae, as if I am just beginning to live.  This is the place where clouds are born and I am floating.

Entropy is the irreversible downward slide of events.  That is the way of the world, scientists say.  But the rules of physics do not at all correspond to the rules of the human soul.  There are no exceptions to the rules of physics, whereas the rules of the soul consist of nothing but exceptions.

The earth was bleeding, a storm coming in.

This describes the earliest experiences of our species.

The sky is nearly green now letting go a poisonous spider.

The rules of the soul consist of nothing but exceptions.

That is why I tell you a different kind of story.

I am floating.

I am just beginning to live.

Prompt – pick 3 books (of course I picked 4), using only the words on their first pages, create a poem.  I chose to create a collage prose poem.   I used words from the first pages of the books listed below, with some words in sentences left out to make the story flow better.  No words of my own.

first pages of

“Power”  Linda Hogan

“Ellen Foster” Kaye Gibbons

“From Eve to Dawn:  A History of Women in the World” (book 1 of 4)  Marilyn French

The back cover of:  “The Frog Prince: A Fairy Tale for Consenting Adults”  Stephen Mitchell