Starry Night

One of our writing prompts last semester was to look at Vincent Van Gogh's Starry Night and write a descriptive narrative as though you were witnessing a scene.

I always write with my students, but I have six classes, so usually I try to vary up my approach in each class. This poem was written with my eighth period class after I had tested out different moods, characters, and time frames for the painting.

I like this one the best:

Starry Night

Limbic system
spangling gangleon
alight in
synaptic fury
cloudbursts
in brilliant
twisting chaos

Burn out
my retinas
score my heart
in swirling
whirling
twirling
song

Ignite
at night
the fuse
refuses
to let it all go
it spins
frenetic
it twins
kinetic
a diaphany
of plasma spasms
leaping chasms
and missing abysses
to frantic blisses
of cosmic kisses
and dancing a
dervish
half mad
all curvish
each blindly
unwindingly
kindly entwining

filaments feeling
each one
revealing
sparking embers
always remembered
that first
bursting truth

of his lips
on mine
infinitely defined
amid the sublime
and all that's divine
like a star
at its birth
all joy and all mirth
this starlight infusion
this fiery confusion
that settles upon
us and finally
brings us
to the
ground.