The Wake Leg
So, this is a weird one, and it’s actually based on two incidents of talking in my sleep, as well as one of my stranger dreams.
I’m awake, I’m awake. Ma, don’t hold the door. There’s cereal on the tugboat, and the ship’s too far from shore.
Acorns scatter, turn ‘em into mash. Don’t lose it. They’re good for the stewpot and the baby, turn it all to ash.
Looking for that unicorn, spying for that bird. We’re living in a school bus prepped for the end, don’t believe a word.
Instructions
Leg 13 – The Wake Leg: Write a microfiction in an invented dream language.
Not pure gibberish, really, but language with meaning still. Language that can resemble English, and even acquire strange new meanings. So, make your own private dialect. Break them words. Or glue them together. Mishear them, whatever suits you.
This prompt is inspired by Joyce’s Finnegans Wake, where English melts into puns, funny new words, baby chatter, rivers, multilingual pub gossip, myth, dream, etc. The reader may not understand everything, especially off the bat, but the rhythm should carry them like a river.
Make language dream badly. Make it dream mythically (or deathly).
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