Writing Prompts for Mottos & Manifestos

The New-York Historical Society preserved Post-it notes left at the Union Square subway stop after the 2016 presidential election. The "therapy" project was organized by Matthew 'Levee' Chavez.  This photo is by FattMuller at imgur.com 
Read more about the project and the preservation efforts here.

Mentor Poem

United
NAOMI SHIHAB NYE
 
When sleepless, it’s helpful to meditate on mottoes of the states.
South Carolina, “While I breathe I hope.”  Perhaps this could be
the new flag on the empty flagpole.
Or “I Direct” from Maine—why?
Because Maine gets the first sunrise?  How bossy, Maine!
Kansas, “To the Stars through Difficulties”--
clackety wagon wheels, long, long land
and the droning press of heat—cool stars, relief.
In Arkansas, “The People Rule”—lucky you.
Idaho, “Let It Be Perpetual”—now this is strange.
Idaho, what is your “it”?
Who chose these lines?
How many contenders?
What would my motto be tonight, in tangled sheets?
Texas—“Friendship”—now boasts the Open Carry law.
Wisconsin, where my mother’s parents are buried,
chose “Forward.”
New Mexico, “It Grows As It Goes”—now this is scary.
Two dangling its. This does not represent that glorious place.
West Virginia, “Mountaineers Are Always Free”—really?
Washington, you’re wise.
What could be better than “By and By”?
Oklahoma must be tired—“Labor Conquers all Things.”
Oklahoma, get together with Nevada, who chose only
“Industry” as motto. I think of Nevada as a playground
or mostly empty. How wrong we are about one another.
For Alaska to pick “North to the Future”
seems odd. Where else are they going?
​
Source: https://poets.org/poem/united?mc_cid=8ce80f8173&mc_eid=7b28ff41f7
Copyright © 2016 by Naomi Shihab Nye. 

Writing Prompts

1. What is the motto of your province, city, state, location, organization, church, etc?  Write about it.  Or write about what the motto should be. 
2. Write an “anti-motto” poem.

For reference (or random ideas), check out these motto links:

• U. S. Mottos
• Canadian Province Mottos
• Etymologies of Japanese Prefectures
• Baptist Church Slogans

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2nd Mentor Poem

Image by Burgin Matthews at  burginmathews.com
PoetryBones originally visited this poem
​in the session: “Writing Prompts for Wanting and Doing”

Writing Prompts

Write a personal motto/manifesto poem.  Don’t have any personal mottos? Create some now, or “pastiche it” (wing it by piecing one together) with ideas from these resources:

• 9 Reasons you Need a Personal motto  
• Baptist Church Slogans  
• The amazing Wikipedia “list of mottos!”  
• What is a Patiche? 

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For Discussion

A Poem for Pulse
JAMESON FITZPATRICK
 
Last night, I went to a gay bar
with a man I love a little.
After dinner, we had a drink.
We sat in the far-back of the big backyard
and he asked, What will we do when this place closes?
I don't think it's going anywhere any time soon, I said,
though the crowd was slow for a Saturday,
and he said—Yes, but one day. Where will we go?
He walked me the half-block home
and kissed me goodnight on my stoop--
properly: not too quick, close enough
our stomachs pressed together
in a second sort of kiss.
I live next to a bar that's not a gay bar
—we just call those bars, I guess--
and because it is popular
and because I live on a busy street,
there are always people who aren't queer people
on the sidewalk on weekend nights.
Just people, I guess.
They were there last night.
As I kissed this man I was aware of them watching
and of myself wondering whether or not they were just.
But I didn't let myself feel scared, I kissed him
exactly as I wanted to, as I would have without an audience,
because I decided many years ago to refuse this fear--
an act of resistance. I left
the idea of hate out on the stoop and went inside,
to sleep, early and drunk and happy.
While I slept, a man went to a gay club
with two guns and killed forty-nine people.
Today in an interview, his father said he had been disturbed
recently by the sight of two men kissing.
What a strange power to be cursed with:
for the proof of men's desire to move men to violence.
What's a single kiss? I've had kisses
no one has ever known about, so many
kisses without consequence--
but there is a place you can't outrun,
whoever you are.
There will be a time when.
It might be a bullet, suddenly.
The sound of it. Many.
One man, two guns, fifty dead--
Two men kissing. Last night
I can't get away from, imagining it, them,
the people there to dance and laugh and drink,
who didn't believe they'd die, who couldn't have.
How else can you have a good time?
How else can you live?
There must have been two men kissing
for the first time last night, and for the last,
and two women, too, and two people who were neither.
Brown people, which cannot be a coincidence in this country
which is a racist country, which is gun country.
Today I'm thinking of the Bernie Boston photograph
Flower Power, of the Vietnam protestor placing carnations
in the rifles of the National Guard,
and wishing for a gesture as queer and simple.
The protester in the photo was gay, you know,
he went by Hibiscus and died of AIDS,
which I am also thinking about today because
(the government's response to) AIDS was a hate crime.
Now we have a president who names us,
the big and imperfectly lettered us, and here we are
getting kissed on stoops, getting married some of us,
some of us getting killed.
We must love one another whether or not we die.
Love can't block a bullet
but neither can it be shot down,
and love is, for the most part, what makes us--
in Orlando and in Brooklyn and in Kabul.
We will be everywhere, always;
there's nowhere else for us, or you, to go.
Anywhere you run in this world, love will be there to greet you.
Around any corner, there might be two men. Kissing.
 
 
Source: Jameson Fitzpatrick, "A Poem for Pulse" from Bullets into Bells: Poets and Citizens Respond to Gun Violence.  Copyright © 2017 by Jameson Fitzpatrick.  Found at https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/147304/a-poem-for-pulse