Twenty-Nine Prompts From John Murillo's Up Jump The Boogie

Ode To The Crossfader: Forget the looks and the money, what culture did you get handed down from your mother or father?

Practicing Fade Aways: Think of a small group of your friends when you were young. Ones where you have lost touch with most or all of them. Where have they gone? What are they doing? (Facebook or Google-stalking is encouraged for this poem. It's not creepy. It's research.)

The Corner: Meeting the devil at the crossroads isn't as popular as it was in the early twentieth century. Should the Trump Residency bring it back en vogue, imagine the crowds built up at the crossroads. What are they wishing for? What do they talk about while they wait?

Hustle: What habit or activity have you been using all your life in attempts to better your circumstances? Has it occasionally worked? If not, why haven't you given up on it?

At The Metro: Two line poem that encompasses the surface of someone's living situation.

Santayana, The Muralist: Find a mural you particularly like. Imagine a conversation between the artist and the patron who commissioned it. Did either of them achieve the message they'd hoped for?

Sheman Ave, Love Poem: Imagine a situation you believe you could justify killing yourself in. Talk yourself out of it.

Enter The Dragon: Write about your favorite movie where you identify with someone who isn't the main protagonist.

1989: Pick your favorite year that you lived through. Look up what the most popular song was. Rewrite it.

Renegades Of Funk: Write an ode to a person or thing you encountered when you were young that you think about more than you imagined you would.

Up Jump The Boogie: Ghost line: "Try to scrape the cool from the womb of you."

The Poet Laureate: Write about the poet laureate of a place you traveled to and didn't like.

Monster Boy: What myths (urban or otherwise) did you believe in as a kid that you've never seen disproven?

Variations On A Theme By Eazy-E: Choose one of your favorite songs from when you were a teenager. Write about a time that you heard it, and use the themes of the song as much as possible.

November 26, 1980: Write about a time when you had to caretake for a friend, relative, or stranger. Do not talk about your own heroics or hint at how great you are for doing it. Just focus on what put the person you are caretaking for in that position. 

Dream Fragment With A Shot Clock And Whistles In It: Ghost line: Blacktop Sisyphus in sweat socks.

How To Split A Cold One: Was there a time you fought against a part of your inherited culture that you now celebrate? What caused you to change your position?

Sin Vergüenza: Ghost line: Shame is a luxury lost on the wretched.

Trouble Man: Remember a time you were leaving a place you desperately wanted to stay. Write about the limbo place between the environment you were leaving and the one you were headed towards. Allow your reactions to the physical parts of this limbo tell your feelings.

Flowers For Etheridge: Apologize to a ghost as thoroughly as possible.

Miralo: Someone once tried to tell you a story that broadened your mind. You focused on how it related to the person telling the story, rather than the story itself. Revisit that story or lesson as if it were told to you by someone you never need to care about.

The Prisoner's Wife: Where do you first touch someone you love that you haven't seen in long enough to have felt their absence?

Stolen Starlight Lounge Sutra: What act does someone want you to apologize for that you can't imagine ever wanting to apologize for?

Soon I'll Be Loving You Again: Think about your favorite artist in any medium. What drives them?

Round Midnight: What does your muse do while you're busy not imagining things?

For The Good Times: In a world without wedding rings, what would mark a person as being in a relationship?

The Juju: Ghost line: Something whispered years ago in another city.
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Second Line: Write a praise poem for a traditionally mournful event.

Song: Objectify a place instead of a person.