Category Archives: Poems

‘I am words’: Exquisite Corpse lines, Spring 2023

Exquisite Corpse poems by M. Hagelmann and his creative writing students.

Happiness can be very subjective like a cold threat of death phases.

I never knew just what year is it, buddy.

Blue sky filled with rain is a soothing sound.

Bored out of my mind games.

See, that’s how it’s done. 

Putting up with it is a movie. 

Bread and butter is good is being quickly repeated and repeated and repeated over and over again and again. 

The future me will be happy places. 

Flower gardens need water quick is how I run. 

Stupid little shapes make up the world wonders.

Desire a lot of money is some people’s love. 

The periodic table stands in the corner.

Much-needed vacation is arranged marriage.

Please go to the store memory.

You will bargain with idiots if you’re not the brightest person. 

Words are hard to match the numbers. 

A noun is useless in sentences with no words. 

Sentences with no words rhyme.

Please don’t walk the fish in the sea. 

Season tickets to the fight or flight response is not really my problem solving.

Mom is a birthgiver that creates and creates. 

Delicacy is a fragile word of the night.

Wheat bread, for the birds fly in different directions to the laundromat.

“I don’t know” is better than “no dogs are allowed at midnight.”

Thunder is very loud and it came fast like a plane with no stop. 

Freedom is a wish for a kiss.

Poorly drawn characters usually die. I don’t want to.

You are punished for saving the innocent. The criminal was not.

Not a game, but a lie of truth that won’t take it for granted.

Sweet fruit juices seep into leather.

I love to dress up and down and around.

Snickerdoodles, and sometimes people, mess up. 

A crazy concept is my memory; it’s glamourous, shiny, bright beautiful flowers like the followers on Youtube. 

Birds are nerds of the sky.

The pepper had salt and pepper.

I hate running in sports; I’m the goat, like LeBron, a basketball player who had the recent clue on the board for the love of God. 

Camera takes beautiful memories like a bike or sky was gray with clouds. 

Clouds are like cotton candy stolen from the baby Yoda. 

You are so pretty colors.

I am words. 

Crows can fly so high to feel something other than pain.

You won’t be laughing soon as I finish the end of the end is near. 

Part of philosophy is the study: “‘Of’ is a strange word.”

Rochelle is a town where are my shoes.

Old man smells like stinky fish are able to play Guitar Hero with a Communist.

Today is an amazing day like the Monday when I was very little.

Men are people who can’t do it today, whatever.

I was meant to be a long day.

Say my name. Say something to her face and claim she’s kind.

Lungs can hurt when running from a gruesome past.

The walls are caving in the bathroom stall, crying yourself to sleep, because the sky is blue is the sky is as blue as long as you’re safe.

When I laugh, you laugh about the dog today.

I am wearing warm air.

Store the guns safely in a magical place far from okay but smiling widely at the girl. 

The girl is so nice to me for nothing at all. 

I wait to eat a whole cow with an annoying cricket.

You surely will keep surviving a terrible, ugly storm.

2023 is my year. 2023 is cold as a snowflake in the snow drops over.

Crazy girl is wild birds fly in skies.

A sleeping bag of many screws were all left behind the wall, staring creepily. 

Rhyme a word with the dead no longer.

The sky is blue whales on the television.

Time is on a clock of twelve numbers with frogs and lizards. 

Man-kind will suffer the consequences of radical and extreme candy flavors.

I am very bored but I can’t think about your life.

Red Chevy Bel Air / 

old people scare me/ 

time is much needed / 

to help a cat in the striped hat rhyme.

Slime is the reincarnation of is.

I can’t read what you are doing. 

Rochelle is a town of the living, gone but not forgotten, lore. 

The body will never be mine to claim and take away.

Soon the sun will set out of the sky full of night stars. 

It is snowing out of a bird.

I am stuck in the past with a sense of humor. 

Border Collie-graphy means to write on the line.

Feetsies need to be as kind as song.

Restaurant was empty in morning light, glowing in sorrow.

Wants are not needs not to be.

Power-stop using weird language, et al.

 Exquisite Corpse poems by M. Hagelmann and his creative writing students.

Looking out at the snow is like very cold hearts can always ignite.

Looking out at the snow is like very cold hearts can always ignite.

An Exquisite Corpse poem by M. Hagelmann and his creative writing students.

The dog can run to the very end of the word.

The dog can run to the very end of the word.

An Exquisite Corpse poem by M. Hagelmann and his creative writing students.

 

Poetry Bingo instructions

I’ve referred to the Poetry Bingo creative writing activity before, and I’ve published some poems that resulted from it, but I wanted here to post the directions I’ve been using lately, along with a couple filled-in examples (Day 1 empty form here; Days 2-3 empty form here; Day 1 filled in here; Days 2-3 here — I space this activity out over 3 class days, but that wouldn’t be necessary. Before I assign students the Step 3 part, I model it by leading a class through the process by asking several students what is their least favorite line of the current poem, and then replacing that line’s words by using other words from the original poems or chart, randomly looking up new words in books, finding synonyms or antonyms, or sometimes just writing a new line from my mind). What I love about this method is that it allows writers to put together essentially random words so that we can write things beyond the ideas we already have. Readers’ brains (and writers’, too) can’t help but find meanings out of even randomly associated words, and I love thinking things that I’ve never thought before. 

Here’s the poem I wrote (as copied from Days 2-3 above):

Notice lies of
disgraced iodine 
that carpet the memory 
of a cardboard lament. 
The soaring harvest 
of tall bells 
includes image expense.
Sinuous buds want 
convincing tells. 

‘Little chants today’: Poem

Little chants today: his positive diamond

puppy says vibration friendly warms, pleases.

He juiced rainbow’s purplest world ‘til 

laughter cried sunshine. Said Good: “Stop.”

Was our picture’s wonder alive to

give her moon no peach shadow?

Than today, over these, blood could – 

would – will dew through my feet.

— created by your humble genius, via magpo.com

‘A heart must have the right’: Poems


Poems by M. Hagelmann, Nov. 2022.

My rice pot bubbles. I hear a frequent cricket.

And, yeah — here I am. My rice pot bubbles. I hear a frequent cricket. It was a sliver moon I saw in east sky this morning. I have a house — I need to keep working to pay for it, but that’s OK. It’s OK because my job is OK. I didn’t wear my new glasses last day. I wonder if — I feel like waiting another day ’til I’ve gotten a better sleep and my eyes aren’t already tired. I don’t think I’d want a literary reputation like Joyce Carol Oates has — but presumably she likes what she’s written. Why else do it (unless one is merely careerist)? I wrote some magpo poems alongside my English 2 students yesterday (during picture-day interruptions and while some kids finished Monday’s pre-test/pre-quiz).

[From journal of Weds., 24 Aug. 2022, Journal 366, page 32. See magpo poems from 24 Aug. below.]

Ancient winter beneath verdant bug: 
Lonely, thriving frost uses every dark shade.
Shine rustles, or earth was too blue.
Then seeds wandered with our sanctuary
but never beheld my sky. ...

Mornings do haunt eternity.
Dark liquid, my, those 
bellies throb sacred, good.
Her brilliant lie: poetry. 
My delicious crap. So then, embrace, boy;
content could download and planet, too.

Dragons crash linear joy to you.
Play her evil protection action.
From dark summer sanctuary, eat
soft moon, then seed fruit. 
Only squirrels ate blossom root.
Soft nachos world, how through

Pearls cheat, almost buy upgrades.
Here, relax. Must night dawn me?
This complete, intelligent want: 
how some follow insects, give seasons 
when moss-dusk strolls. 


‘Work is like play except they run at wall’: Exquisite Corpse poems, Spring 2022

Here are this semester’s Creative Writing classes’ poems written in the Exquisite Corpse method.  What I love about these lines is how they were created almost randomly but have a kind of weird logic. I like how some of these seem almost brilliant, in an obtuse way. See here for previous semesters’ poems. Punctuation was added, but the words below appear in the order they were written in the Exquisite Corpse poems made in class recently.

I want to leave me alone now.

Today will not be fun times for all.

Motor in car is bad, rough, cruel, thunderous squirrels in the ocean.

I have to go shopping with a peach and an astronaut screaming help, help me, I am dying in the dark cave where the animal lives in the den.

Listen closely or else you’ll see the future.

The dinosaur trampled through the mouse.

Who doesn’t go to go to a game?

Now she yeets it over the river and through thick and thin Cheez-its.

Life can be annoying people.

Oops, I did it again. I ran a red by Taylor Swift.

The worst thing is, I don’t love Bad Bunny all day.

Kids over all just suck at being so cringe.

Quitting is so easy, but what about her, though?

Kim Kardashian – her name wasn’t Kim – will have another drink.

Life, it’s short, sad, to my heart’s content creators.

Work is like play except they run at wall.

Good night, my darling. Love cheese and ham donuts.

Today I turned 19 years ago.

‘I never knew you could leave someone out of the two of us’: Exquisite Corpse poems, Fall 2021

Here are this semester’s Creative Writing classes’ poems written in the Exquisite Corpse method.  What I love about these lines is how they were created almost randomly but have a kind of weird logic. I like how some of these seem almost brilliant, in an obtuse way. See here for previous semesters’ poems. Punctuation was added, but the words below appear in the order they were written in the Exquisite Corpse poems made in class recently.

I never knew you could leave someone out of the two of us.

For the first time in time, we will see.

Your mom is always yelling about 20 years ago today.

I want to leave me alone right now.

Happy is how I feel sad.

Leave here is today’s homework.

When the crow squeals angrily, screaming bloody hell, murder on my little mind is.

I want to stop believing in myself.

Father is very cold when alligators are very rideable.

Cats and dogs tear flesh off the night.

Pretty girls make me nervous about little things like asteroids hitting the moon.

Time doesn’t always affect me because I rode motorcycles.

Is this the end of the end of the best part of me?

Extinct is what people call me.

Hard times are happening now.

Last week is way too long.

Can we please make out with friends and Clifford?

The solar system of equations in math will eventually kill me.

I just lost my knee.

Swim in a pool of your new sweat.

Wear your best dress. We will never die and stop and go, and, without it, there’s nothing.

Animal abuse is not ever going to stop at Stop signs.

Warm hot days are cracked eggs.

You need to get the teardrops on my guitar.

The right word can make other words.

The Bakers lived like no one watched when you are grilling my hot dogs in summer.

My friend, are you ready to go away and leave?

Do you think of me when I sing loud noises like fireworks exploding bombs?

Everywhere we go there is extremely sad and boring old teachers.

I don’t know what I am trying.

You’re a very special friend of mine; why are people alive any more?