Ekphrasis: Exercises in Ecstasy

I'm not the biggest fan of "poetry prompts," little exercises meant to stretch your poetic muscles, such as writing down random words and making a poem out of them on an equally random topic. Some people respond to these really well, and some people just don't, and I'm one of the latter (it might have something to do with my overall allergy to exercise of any sort). Occasionally, a prompt will move me to write something funky I would not have thought of before, but more often my attempts at...