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Look below (and listen afterward) and notice how Bloodhound Gang rock their similes in “The Bad Touch.”

The Bad Touch
Bloodhound Gang

Sweat baby, sweat, baby sex is a Texas drought
Me and you do the kind of stuff that only Prince would sing about
So put your hands down my pants and I’ll bet you’ll feel nuts
Yes I’m Siskel, yes I’m Ebert and you’re getting two thumbs up
You’ve had enough of two-hand touch you want it rough you’re out of
     bounds
I want you smothered want you covered like my waffle house
     hashbrowns
Come quicker than Fed-Ex never reach an apex just like Coca-Cola stock
You are inclined
To make me rise an hour early just like daylight savings time


Do it now
You and me baby ain’t nothing but mammals
So let’s do it like they do on the Discovery channel
Do it again now
You and me baby ain’t nothing but mammals
So let’s do it like they do on the Discovery channel
Getting horny now


Love, the kind you clean up with a mop and bucket
Like the lost catacombs of Egypt only God knows where we stuck it
Heiroglyphics? Let me be specific I wanna be down in your south seas
But I got this notion that the motion of your ocean means small craft
     advisory
So if I capsize in your thighs’ high tide, B5 you sunk my battleship
Please turn me on I’m Mr Coffee with an automatic drip
So show me yours I’ll show you mine tool time you’ll love it just like Lyle
And then we’ll do it doggy style so we can both watch X-Files…

For those with more literary tastes, look below at how Anne Sexton rocks her similes in “The Witch’s Life.”

The Witch’s Life
Anne Sexton

When I was a child
there was an old woman in our neighborhood
whom we called The Witch.
All day she peered from her second story window
from behind the wrinkled curtains
and sometimes she would open the window
and yell: Get out of my life!
She had hair like kelp
and a voice like a boulder.

I think of her sometimes now
and wonder if I am becoming her.
My shoes turn up like a jester’s.
Clumps of my hair, as I write this,
curl up individually like toes.
I am shoveling the children out,
scoop after scoop.

Only my books anoint me,
and a few friends,
those who reach into my veins.
Maybe I am becoming a hermit,
opening the door for only
a few special animals?
Maybe my skull is too crowded
and it has no opening through which
to feed it soup?
Maybe I have plugged up my sockets
to keep the gods in?
Maybe, although my heart
is a kitten of butter,
I am blowing it up like a zeppelin.
Yes. It is the witch’s life,
climbing the primordial climb,
a dream within a dream,
then sitting here
holding a basket of fire.

For Friday’s Flash prompt, rock your similes so much so that they become unlike ghosts haunting the piece & more like characters, visible presences in the meaning-making. If you’d like more of a challenge, try to draw from the same “set” of images for the similes, such as cooking, music, the 70s, Robert Frost. Make this “set” purposeful (meaning there’s a clear reason why you’ve chose this set rather than some other one). Now, go at it like they do on the Discovery Channel.

For further reading, check out FlashFiction.Net’s suggested readings of flash fiction and prose poetry collections, anthologies, and craft books, by clicking here.

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