Tag Archives: Poem

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.

‘Amazing like a minotaur’s mancave’: Exquisite Corpse poems (3 of 3)

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See previous recent Exquisite Corpse poems by my current students here and here. These lines are from my 9th hour class.

“Like I really care” is how war starts.

People love when this class ends and then starts again.

Beauty in a girl that we are not terrified of.

Food can taste good with you and me.

Fun-loving father, won’t you sing and dance to the thing?

Peter is a name that is a rib sandwich with turkey and bacon.

You have no food at the front of the panda.

Blue trident of the Poseidon has something like Trident gum.

Teachers are the coolest people that have big feet.

Reindeer cannot really fly, like you won’t again.

Weekend nights are crazy like a turkey sandwich on T.V.

Doing this is so funny that I can’t write anything good at all.

Home is where you don’t slip on the banana shoved in my mouth.

Meth lab coats are so pretty.

Silly rabbit, tricks are for everyone to eat pizza.

Ugly is the new pretty.

Singing Michael Jackson while cooking makes me have to poop.

Number the stairs to remind me to do chores like smoking the salmon.

Medicine cabinets show criminals in a comfy place with friends.

Rosy lips and cheeks bending like I’m the bender.

The ocean said that I’m ugly. Jerk.

Zoos remind me of memories, like the time I liked smelling myself.

The worst feeling in the entire day has gone well for the first time.

In the right mind, your own business people pledge to help but can a wood chuck Norris?

Tomorrow I get to see the dawn’s early light pigs jumping on top.

Real friends are better than a hot dog with barbeque sauce and chicken tenders.

Children are the most adorable cucumbers in their minivan.

Kitten is to cats as basketball games are amazing like a minotaur’s mancave.

Stuck between a rock and roll is lightning!

No question is a horrible thing on a stick.

Bad things can always happen when I decide to go out of house.

I live like you are dying.

Weak boys are for babies, and men are for the first time in the catacombs.

Hard classes make me mad at the cashier’s mood.

Spell sombrero upside down.

We are young so let’s jump off a bridge somewhere over the rainbow.

Skittles are in the toilet like the pink one your grandma had.

New exciting things always happen at the end of life.

My day is going swell, up like a balloon.

Yesterday, all my troubles seemed cold on Thanksgiving dinner.

Mean old man chases down a newly dug grave.

But who even knows the truth to the world?

Very interesting people are in the big giant fluffy bunny.

Bad friends have better things to do.

Lame people are very exciting places to see.

Mayonnaise is like her legs.

Old shoes taste like old men.

A taco is what my mom is who gave birth.

Some flowers smell like red roses are red.

Violet is blue. I prefer it green.

Would you like to kiss me later tonight? I am going to eat a green pickle.

The whole pack of cigarettes is very gross too unless they are in the boogey move dance.

She always forgets herself in the nasty store.

Boy, do I love when school is over the river and through the woods.

Poems rhyme but only sometimes.

Is this a joke or is this a joke?

You are very cute in hot salsa.

Food cramps I get when my father dropped the new Sponge Bob rocks.

‘Every guy is a serious conversation with a kangaroo’: More Exquisite Corpse poems (2 of 3)

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More new Exquisite Corpse poems from this semester’s creative writing class; these are from my fourth-hour section. See here for more from this fall.

Guts are in the body and the mind.

Tranquility on the moon when the moon blows up to touch the sky.

Bathrooms are where to be, or not to be, mean.

I don’t want this anymore, so I will touch the backside of the bouncy castle.

Pizza, given the circumstance, is a big word.

Then I was like I was doing something.

Corn makes the cork sound a lot like cake.

Fish, scaly and forever moving like a cactus sleeps.

When we had his funeral was last week on the bench next to your front door.

Midnight is when the narwhal who ate the man’s large chest smacked the truck.

We will all tumble down the stairs, breaking up with you because it was really cold.

Snack time is for a question unanswered.

My child climbed up the slippery, so don’t fall down the, stairs.

She went to the mall yesterday. I had to work hard and play hard when she walked in.

Every way he went, people knew that apple.

Tuxedos look good on penguins deep in ice epiphany.

Night time is so pretty ugly when the clouds of smoke came from buying some illegal DVDs about baby dolphins swimming.

And “he shall bamboozle” was what she said to fly a kite.

Grapefruit is not a fruit, which proves mangoes are so boring and hungry after playing a game.

The little boy short and very annoying when I grew my hair.

Melodies played loudly in the fish in the ocean.

Eating bananas alone is a fun way to show off.

Anything can happen with hope; I can also.

She whispered, “Oh! Watermelon, watermelon, watermelon, watermelon is a red fruit is what loves me.”

The world is ending, was rather sad but

Soft, curvaceous, kind — but French fries are better.

The zoo is a great place, is so much fun to party at night when you climbed into a wet, dark hole in one.

Serendipity: like when ice cream melts into my friend’s car.

Of course it’s hot inside a person’s eye.

I do what I wish I had.

Yonder window breaks my heart that she fell down the stairs.

Fish open the gate to gardens where the seahorses play with the three girls.

Love is not love which alters when it was really, really awkward.

I like to go to the gym with my heart’s desire.

A weird-word dictionary, book-Bible God is all-knowing, or not.

Not only the pepper, but also we bake a dozen eggs that broke on the parade float stands by the blue bleachers at a game.

Pepperoni face has feelings.

Feelings are way too mainstream.

The trees’ leaves fell off a cliff and she fell over rocks.

A baby lion tried to scratch my back as we kill the neighbors across the field.

My milkshake brings all the courage it took.

My life is full of jerks and jocks; also, thine own demise is a cruel word.

A cruel word is very, very boring in the way of the day’s death, twilight.

I hate when people are wasteful; they waste the hairspray for my dog.

The ocean is very blue and usually likes eating tacos.

Common is a rapper who will be the next fire truck.

The best way to do it is with long nasty hair with the German sparkle.

Stagnate like a baker who will end the game tonight.

Old and beautiful ancient toys break when babies will bury their bottles.

Soda pop is sticky, and carbonated car engine is loud.

Most people don’t know when I can eat this with a spoon with my cute pet, the largest hedgehog ever — ever — getting back together.

The woman with huge hands grabbed ahold of me and yet he — doth thou even lift?

Why is that question, and answer this: question all that is wanderlust like a Pilgrim who will eat the cookie?

Sun shine on the beach is so hot, but I love Mexican food, which was already cold.

That is wrong done.

I love to go to the store for me to realize how would you like it.

Match the shirt with the mastermind of the American flag.

Finite color, whatever that means.

Something is gonna kill me after lunch.

Set my heart ablaze like a fire tomorrow.

Event-planning like Aunt Betty’s old maple syrup recipe to make fudge brownies but not the kind lady gave me.

Me, myself, and I will love to share me and her workout with heffalumps and weasels.

In my nightmares, paranoia like a Reece’s Pieces of my heart scattered bones everywhere at the ugly park.

Clothes should never be on and off with emotions.

The topic of the size of the cat is lame.

Nails can be pretty, or you could buy milk.

Bones break under pressure, so I married my sister.

That led her to God, but he shan’t give me money, so I am a weird kid who does other things.

Harold can’t ever fix the tires to my mom.

This is not what I am ready for.

Day or night, he will love to see the classroom is boring.

Floating around the big lake house is the perfect way to end the night.

Violets are black and falling apart from my baby girl.

The weird troll sang my favorite song when the saints go marching down by the river.

Games don’t like me.

Freddy Kruger saw the sign, and it was huge, and loud music is the way you turn right, and then I can go watch this girl play volleyball.

Very big animals hate my facial features.

I never had to smell a rose like donkeys who jump down the water park slide to the right.

Every guy is a serious conversation with a kangaroo.

Movie stars will always start something in the far distance between us, creating feelings.

Sweet chocolate is like heaven seems to be, so I do not forget that I gotta go to the bathroom bad enough to cry excessively.

Excessively telling is not a way to eat food.

I do not like to eat what I see.

Big hopes and dreams crushed God.

Stuff is fun to have.

Solstice fruit punch tastes like the way the shore line were many shells.

People just aren’t the same thing as I said to kill my brother.

‘Most flowers die fast or get passed gas’: Exquisite Corpse poems (1 of 3)

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New Exquisite Corpse poems from this semester’s creative writing class, second hour. Minor changes (punctuation, appropriate word endings) were made to improve readability. I love how poems created somewhat randomly, unintentionally, end up being so wonderfully surprising.

He shaves your grandma’s legs when cash rules everything.

Love is a many-splendored thing that scares us so.

I’m giving up, up, and away.

Stop signs are pointless because there are many dogs.

Bed time is my favorite color.

Underwear is like outerwear, except for the exceptionalism of the word.

Donkeys are dumb animals on the edge of moonbeams and rainbows having to see the light at the end.

I did not want to drink, or not, to my house and kids I destroyed.

I need you to find true love, which is beautifully hot in Acapulco with coconut.

Winter is the season that rhymes with a bat.

I want a drink of me and the time.

And the award goes to go home sad.

The alligator chewed the gum loudly. The trumpet played quietly.

I ate is the past tense purpose of writing.

Good fortune is bad luck in the bowl of being the best person.

Death-defying stunts are two words that cannot express hatred.

The future will never change.

Big people eat a lot of the tip of my nose.

To the supermarket for 20 years to life.

True friends don’t really exist, like in Jurassic Park with dinosaurs running around.

Mate like two moths under the sea where [you’d] better run or else nothing matters the most.

Twelfth Street is the place where the people stay with me ‘til we are like you.

See the big trees die in the clear blue skies and cold lemonade.

The tree was at the park to hold my love.

You gave up instantly the coffee began spilling.

Red violets are blue; I’ve been drinking watermelon juice.

Time goes by very much in the style that only I have.

Your personality intrigues me to rescue her majesty and marry her hair.

Most flowers die fast or get passed gas.

Orange squares taste exactly enough.

Milk does a body; good God, we need ketchup.

Goldfish are very funny looking through Alice’s looking glass.

The ocean sand in your toes feels like gorillas on water.

Mind-numbing gets done at the people.

The cutest little girl in the middle of the ocean where the water looks like an ugly monkey.

Once upon a time flies when you’re having a kitten.

Why did she do whatever you want to do with my favorite food?

Last night I experimented with all the power in a meadow for unicorns.

“This isn’t fun anymore” reminds me of Macklemore.

“Very odd” is what people call me later.

Selfish people always live longer than an elephant’s trunk that has baby chickens.

Night owl was an owl that I wanted to eat.

Me? I’m the best I ever had.

Man, I feel like a person with a pair of socks.

Any dish makes me feel greatness.

A wild animal had been really confused lately.

Like playing a musical chicken that sings girly stuff, yo’ daddy likes when pony tails aren’t.

Clean is better than nothing.

I’m excited about girls who stink like you.

Poem: A cat IS a cloud

Some smoke from a cake —

more steam than icing —

clouds a cat.

Some grass became pie

under dark candy-bugs.

A breeze tree, a growl in the belly,

is a smile on porcelain, or

a window with a heart.

Caramel and coffee with fish

make dirt, an eye, and a cup.

Candy glass:

my brother in sky;

a cat IS a cloud

[Written 2013 Nov. 4 using magpo.com. As I was playing around, a process idea came along: use no verbs, pick only concrete nouns – though some got used as adjectives and as figurative language]

Poem: A Decaying God

a decaying god

explores what he once

desired. he wakes a ghost

— a liquid-colored eye –

that never remembers

the growl of grass

on an autumn eve, when

even bugs breathe a lip rhythm

on an iced flower.

 

 

smoke works.

 

 

the night bleeds sex — an

eternal candy —

and, and air, and —

 

kiss her here. that window

haunts a sacred self.

Poem: Notes are the notes of a noted gone world

At the Milwaukee County Zoo, Aug. 2013.

At the Milwaukee County Zoo, Aug. 2013.

(Don’t press for an overall theme from this poem — just read it aloud, perhaps enjoy the rhythms.)

                                                               oh, the people:

hard-hearted barkers of a technophobe’s display–

tremendous complicity, the elephant’s dismay;

tendrils of sanity, floating off the standpipe.

Harmonies of vanity rage thru the open mic.

No one notices what everybody knows;

ten-footed toadstools muck up the nose.

Marble-handled pitchforks do no good;

toothless mongooses snort out loud.

Motherless ducklings are really swans;

motherless adults are orphaned blondes.

It matters not whether day or sky,

but floating all into the pile

of platitudes and punditry, mockery erase

snowed-over battlements, totally defaced.

Motorized cannibals mount an attack;

the donut store carnival, alley in back.

Notes are the notes of a noted gone world;

skin is the fin in the shark unfurled.

Mickey Mouse carousel betrays Minnie Mouse —

                              he’s giving rides all day long.

Poems: The Butter Dished

Sculpture "The Calling" by Mark di Suvero, outside Milwaukee Art Museum. (Photo by Humble Genius.)

Sculpture “The Calling” by Mark di Suvero, outside Milwaukee Art Museum. (Photo by Humble Genius.)

The Butter Dished

Margarine is a poem

butter wrote

to save itself.

 

A Corral for the Chorus 

(For the fun of the sound of the words)

A corral for the chorus

is holey like

Nerf butter, with

cheese to bridge

the lyrical divide,

a prismatic schism.

The coopersmith’s

staves derange

their doppelganger’s

soda pop.