Credit goes to Alx2 for the format of this contest and these rules.
(Special thanks goes out to ep., Stifle, Madding, and Zaph for helping to update the rules.)
Rules (Updated 1/2/09)
Any type of poetry is welcome.
You may vote up to TWO poems per round.
The current host may create a new official submission(s) thread if and only if the person liable of said thread has been inactive and does not update the thread regularly.
The host is responsible for creating the poll/discussion thread for every round.
Submissions are constantly open to anyone so there is no need to sign up beforehand, just drop in when you want to participate in a round.
A round will end after 7 days or after 10 poems. (The round ends when the poll ends.)
There can NEVER be two polls going on at once.
For each round, a public poll thread will be open. Anyone can (and in fact, should) vote.
Voting for yourself is prohibited.
There is no theme or prompt to the poems (This rule may change in a few special rounds).
One submission per person per round.
If the poll ends with two (or more) entries having the same amount of votes then it is considered a shared win among the winning entrants. (This rule may be trespassed by the current host if he/she deems that there is a lack of activity in the voting poll within reasonable doubt.)
The next time you will start crying,
– Hope that day could never come –
Ask yourself just for a moment:
Why the tears are only water?
When you smile, your happy laughter
Will decrease, with time, your joy.
But if all you feel is sadness
Your pain – the pain! – will never stop…
Why the tears don’t clean your mind of
All the painful thoughts devouring
Lungs the heart all of your body
IT WILL NEVER GO AWAY!
You are lonely with your headache
Sleepless, writing on a page.
Indomitable though she may be,
a witch is still prone to fire.
And however wondrous cathedral saints,
how ordinary are the rocks that break them!
Humbling are the artillery
that wreck our every boundary,
and perhaps salvation was never meant to be
sold for a pittance of relief—
all because of forgiveness: such a useful word
in these—
indebted
times.
Mirror take me back behind my eyes
in the cranial storage where I tend to my mind
and help me to understand and find
not the word of God but the words of men:
who time and time again
who coarsely joked and nakedly sighed
with innocence and depression entwined,
to understand why child prostitutes and game show hosts surprise me far more than
All of these—
well-defined
moralities
Because foolish though I may be,
This vision is as of yet untouchable
A world of uncompromising
Terror, dread, sloth and fragility
Let us not be afraid
To confront our worries
With nary a cheap and lazy excuse
In our breathtakingly short time
On this—
Bountiful
Earth.
I I am sure that it was long ago That your halo was forged In the half tone light of an upper room In the half hearted whisper of an untruth And he never heard the hammer strokes
His words, a slant of light, And you, the particle His voice, a wind, And you, illuminated, In the morning light And tossed about the currents To settle down, here or there And left to rest by he Who does no keeping
II You are not sure how long ago it was That betrayal was remembered And left a scar in the palm of memory In the half crescent halo of broken hearts And he never felt you tremble beneath heavy strokes
His words, a slant of light And you, a window His voice, the space between And you, radiant, In the morning light Your color thrown about the room Your angles changing, as he revolves And left to rest by he As he moves on
III Now there is a better silence Between the spaces of the past Enveloped in the richness of the present In the half written twilight of the future And your halo, crowning, not for want of it
His words, a slant of light And you, a page His voice, softly touching, And you, ablaze Even in the darkness Your story – poetic in step An entirety, despite progression And left to rest in a moment You choose to keep
Private Mod Note
():
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
If you need an example, see figure 724-b on page 1432 of your field manual"
my mouth is full of winsome lies -
and eyes are full of death besides
but luckily the soul is wise -
it sees beyond my blindness and
forced failure makes a better guise,
so as i come again alive,
it feels like life's a decent plan
Cold steel hits the fire,
_heated to bright white,
Bellows steady pumping,
_fans the flames up high,
Hot steel on the anvil,
_molded blow by blow,
Back into the passion,
_heated just once more.
Air breathed from the bellows,
_quickens stroke by stroke,
Flames are leaping higher,
_all consuming hope.
Red to yellow, yellow white,
_into the air once more,
Hammer’s steady pounding,
_cutting through the roar,
Then quick from flame to water,
_salt that makes it soft,
Time that makes the difference,
_hard’ning what was wrought.
You and me together,
_the steel that’s in the flame,
The passion flooding through me,
_calling you by name,
My heart, my breath the bellows,
_quick’ning with every sight,
Floating ever higher,
_my soul is turned to right.
Now out of the fire,
_you change me day by day,
Your word, your touch the hammer,
_molding me like clay.
And when I must depart you,
_the sword from the heat pulled,
The emotion that was rampant,
_by water now quenched full.
But when once more I see you,
_and feelings spring to life, Then I know you’ll soften, _time hardened pain and strife.
A/N: Time to go back to the past and pull something out from the vaults.
inhaling her thoughts
maybe i'm loving her thoughts
like a pack of pocketed mint
she stays so fresh
so clean with ideas
while i'm left to suffer
with mundane cliches like "she's a breath of fresh air"
and I feel asphyxiated whenever she is
whatever she does I just feel inadequate
for she tears away at my testosterone bravado
while she stays majestic like the
peak
of a mountain
so i'm constantly exasperated
because I can't wait to inhale
what her wit will exhale
Somewhere behind us,
In the vast obscurity
Lay the dreams and ideals
Of lives we thought we could build
Where in large fields
Under the darkness of our own tragedies
Lay the tombstones that mark the casualties
Of those who dream with care
I stood at the foot of Gatsby
And took the numeric measures
That had always failed to capture
The gravity and sincerity of another's passion
Later that night
I sat at a table with Gatsby
Another ungracious guest from across an
Endless tract of pages, and failed to hear his offering
Far too early
I saw the death of Gatsby
From just beyond that hedge, and blinded
By the safety of narration, saw the loss of just a man
I revisited
My friend J. Gatz
After sixteen years, less the numeric
Measures which had always failed to see the truth
And found the inheritance
Waiting there for me
Somewhere, back West
In a dark field of the Republic
As the pages of Gatsby turned on,
Under the night...
The sun
I am the center of my own universe,
low wells of gravity
pulling weakly
and giving life away,
Do you take for granted that the sun comes up in the sky?
Talk to myself, omniscient being,
the true world wasn't meant for seeing,
the scale's too large to comprehend
(the end)
my mouth is full of winsome lies -
and eyes are full of death besides
but luckily the soul is wise -
it sees beyond my blindness and
forced failure makes a better guise,
so as i come again alive,
it feels like life's a decent plan
Here in this field I feel
The world is mine
And I'm astounded by
The whisper of the wind
As if it almost might agree
I'm spinning freely, arms outstretched
To take it in
The sun is watching
Probably bored, but hey
Still giving me
The time of day
And that's enough for me
I'm so alive!
God, I am forgiven Risen new, a fraud A phoenix Once declawed, now Flapping wings Straight for the sun And setting traps to Snap your sheep up One by one Until your flock is None but me Your only son Come Easter Day The hunt is on Come Easter Day
Snow, covering the frozen creeks
of ice, sterility twice entombing
something; I don't remember.
Memory is so fluid...
collected in the hippocampal roots
and drawn up into broad flowers
that do not bloom in winter (and it withers, eventually...)
But I was never cold
And though now I am an industrial force
sullying this with black ash and
coughing up blood:
I was once in-phase; I was a runner
I was your original motivation
your argument and your capital
you used me and infused me
with a burning question (so please do not ask me what is it)
Up ahead, natural mammoths rise up
Acts of genesis held in stasis
And I, with entropy, with heat,
with a carbon processing chip
capable of running the complex algorithms
to solve this entanglement and define
our quantum superposition...
But of course, all that is behind me is flat.
Caught between moments, a sun's blink,
It is always summer somewhere, and
even now, there is heat.
In my engine smolder tiny flames.
The weight of love presses on the shoulders And causes tentative steps, the pawing of the ground, with toe, before you ask- the weight of love pushes a gaze to the ground and buries words but perhaps the words aren’t needed
Love is such a simple thought pattern
It merely is-everything-two fold. You are And I will give
But what is everything, but mass And mass a strange state Of electricity and everything Either on or off Existing in things that don’t exist
And electricity a hum, a buzz, a pulse Love is now a pulse Your pulse my pulse A pulse increased by the very thing that weighs us down
The weight of a hand to a cheek The gentle convergence A trembling kiss Fingers softly intertwined A fleshy mosaic, a pattern A shared burden of expression
Expression is the weight of love…
Private Mod Note
():
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
If you need an example, see figure 724-b on page 1432 of your field manual"
The Rat
People change. I watched the drama unfold, stain
the hands of those around, abstain
and blood drops all around me. Say
it's not my fault. The rain,
when I looked up,
was slick with blood.
And for my life, cowardly self,
I turned traitor, played the snitch.
-
My past smells wistfully of crime,
my present but an absent wish.
Protection can be twice defined:
Once to live,
once to subsist.
my mouth is full of winsome lies -
and eyes are full of death besides
but luckily the soul is wise -
it sees beyond my blindness and
forced failure makes a better guise,
so as i come again alive,
it feels like life's a decent plan
A/N: My slap across the face towards intellectualism.
Plato still stands
If there was even a morsel of compassion
through those hazel-colored eyes
Or a slight sense of intellect
within the patchings of that robe
Then you would have probably wondered
about the finer things in life.
If those lips spouted even a breath of knowledge
about the raw sensation of love or the structures of welfare
you might have even considered what makes man function.
But neither the curvings of your mouth
nor the faint smell of mosaic can answer the eternal.
You must have sought a sense of truth
asked the question to the dillema.
So maybe considered wise amongst your peers
yet still an inevitability to the etchings of mankind.
But if your porcelain skin was once more a beating pulse
then you would have been content.
For all your triumphs and theories are honored
Revered among philosophers; exalted towards scientists.
But did you ever cease to think?
Did it cross your mind to stop and just say?
Hero
All Vegeta wanted to do was be the best at fighting. At every turn he worked harder and harder. Goku just trained when he felt like it.
Whenever they fought, Goku would win.
Vegeta had noble blood in his vains and Goku was a peasant. He wanted to win more than anything, and Goku just thought fighting was fun.
Whenever they fought, Goku would win.
Vegeta gave up his friends, his family and his very soul for the power to be the best fighter, and Goku gave up nothing.
Whenever they fought, Goku would win.
You see,
Vegeta worked harder than Goku.
But,
Goku was better than Vegeta.
You see,
Goku was born to be the best.
And,
Vegeta trained to be second.
(Special thanks goes out to ep., Stifle, Madding, and Zaph for helping to update the rules.)
Rules (Updated 1/2/09)
Current Host
Hall of Fame (Trophy Winners)
Winning Poems
Archived Submission Thread(s)
The next time you will start crying,
– Hope that day could never come –
Ask yourself just for a moment:
Why the tears are only water?
When you smile, your happy laughter
Will decrease, with time, your joy.
But if all you feel is sadness
Your pain – the pain! – will never stop…
Why the tears don’t clean your mind of
All the painful thoughts devouring
Lungs the heart all of your body
IT WILL NEVER GO AWAY!
You are lonely with your headache
Sleepless, writing on a page.
A flowing breath of air,
Heart plucked before its time,
Whispering of despair.
Pain and tragic loss,
As it withers and it dies,
All too great a cost,
As its spirit flies on high.
The untainted scent
Of nature fills me.
And then I die
Alone.
Upon the jungle floor
Last breath
Unexpectedly sweet.
Indomitable though she may be,
a witch is still prone to fire.
And however wondrous cathedral saints,
how ordinary are the rocks that break them!
Humbling are the artillery
that wreck our every boundary,
and perhaps salvation was never meant to be
sold for a pittance of relief—
all because of forgiveness: such a useful word
in these—
indebted
times.
Mirror take me back behind my eyes
in the cranial storage where I tend to my mind
and help me to understand and find
not the word of God but the words of men:
who time and time again
who coarsely joked and nakedly sighed
with innocence and depression entwined,
to understand why child prostitutes and game show hosts surprise me far more than
All of these—
well-defined
moralities
Because foolish though I may be,
This vision is as of yet untouchable
A world of uncompromising
Terror, dread, sloth and fragility
Let us not be afraid
To confront our worries
With nary a cheap and lazy excuse
In our breathtakingly short time
On this—
Bountiful
Earth.
I am sure that it was long ago
That your halo was forged
In the half tone light of an upper room
In the half hearted whisper of an untruth
And he never heard the hammer strokes
And you, the particle
His voice, a wind,
And you, illuminated,
In the morning light
And tossed about the currents
To settle down, here or there
And left to rest by he
Who does no keeping
You are not sure how long ago it was
That betrayal was remembered
And left a scar in the palm of memory
In the half crescent halo of broken hearts
And he never felt you tremble beneath heavy strokes
And you, a window
His voice, the space between
And you, radiant,
In the morning light
Your color thrown about the room
Your angles changing, as he revolves
And left to rest by he
As he moves on
Now there is a better silence
Between the spaces of the past
Enveloped in the richness of the present
In the half written twilight of the future
And your halo, crowning, not for want of it
And you, a page
His voice, softly touching,
And you, ablaze
Even in the darkness
Your story – poetic in step
An entirety, despite progression
And left to rest in a moment
You choose to keep
Evelyn extended everything, expectant. Evelyn's endurance explained events.
Entered excuses eradicated elegance; epicenter's expressions entertained.
Endurance expected ebullient elles. Enveloping entertainment ended extent.
Enliven & envision ebullition. Extortion enters Evelyn, enraged.
Evelyn expects everyone's erosion. Erudition encircles, escapes estranged.
Envision Evelyn erupting ecstatic. Envision Evelyn, erotic,
unrestrained.
and eyes are full of death besides
but luckily the soul is wise -
it sees beyond my blindness and
forced failure makes a better guise,
so as i come again alive,
it feels like life's a decent plan
In my heart so fireless,
I know the end is coming.
And this spider that is tangling
In the webs that it has spun
Seems to be praying...
‘God, I beg you hear me.
Tell Diana I am sorry.
I have never loved another
Now I give myself to thee.’
And I falter for a moment,
Spend my final breath repenting
Then I crumble
Like a monument to something
Old and
Something best forgotten.
Pave me over.
Give this world
A better idol.
Can't you see
My soul is weathered?
Like a statue
That is bettered by
The sculptors
It inspired
Like a monument to nothing
Great and
Nothing to remember.
Cold steel hits the fire,
_heated to bright white,
Bellows steady pumping,
_fans the flames up high,
Hot steel on the anvil,
_molded blow by blow,
Back into the passion,
_heated just once more.
Air breathed from the bellows,
_quickens stroke by stroke,
Flames are leaping higher,
_all consuming hope.
Red to yellow, yellow white,
_into the air once more,
Hammer’s steady pounding,
_cutting through the roar,
Then quick from flame to water,
_salt that makes it soft,
Time that makes the difference,
_hard’ning what was wrought.
You and me together,
_the steel that’s in the flame,
The passion flooding through me,
_calling you by name,
My heart, my breath the bellows,
_quick’ning with every sight,
Floating ever higher,
_my soul is turned to right.
Now out of the fire,
_you change me day by day,
Your word, your touch the hammer,
_molding me like clay.
And when I must depart you,
_the sword from the heat pulled,
The emotion that was rampant,
_by water now quenched full.
But when once more I see you,
_and feelings spring to life,
Then I know you’ll soften,
_time hardened pain and strife.
In a park,
There’s no one
In the dark,
Just a bench,
The trees, the grass,
The stars and your thoughts
Of the past.
Same old story,
All again:
How the present
Is worse than
The old days when
You were young,
The days that are gone
Since so long.
Stop being nostalgic
And pick up the phone:
Time has come
To call back home.
Someone will answer,
A friendly voice,
That will always help you
To make the right choice.
Share all your worries
With who knows you best;
Once you start talking,
Time will do the rest.
Now you feel better,
Isn’t it true?
Next time you’re lonely
You know what to do.
inhaling her thoughts
maybe i'm loving her thoughts
like a pack of pocketed mint
she stays so fresh
so clean with ideas
while i'm left to suffer
with mundane cliches like "she's a breath of fresh air"
and I feel asphyxiated whenever she is
whatever she does I just feel inadequate
for she tears away at my testosterone bravado
while she stays majestic like the
peak
of a mountain
so i'm constantly exasperated
because I can't wait to inhale
what her wit will exhale
__on eagles' wings
_Above the dark crow's call.
And let me love
__with a child's eye
_Before again I fall.
-Caitiri
In the vast obscurity
Lay the dreams and ideals
Of lives we thought we could build
Under the darkness of our own tragedies
Lay the tombstones that mark the casualties
Of those who dream with care
And took the numeric measures
That had always failed to capture
The gravity and sincerity of another's passion
I sat at a table with Gatsby
Another ungracious guest from across an
Endless tract of pages, and failed to hear his offering
I saw the death of Gatsby
From just beyond that hedge, and blinded
By the safety of narration, saw the loss of just a man
My friend J. Gatz
After sixteen years, less the numeric
Measures which had always failed to see the truth
And found the inheritance
Waiting there for me
In a dark field of the Republic
As the pages of Gatsby turned on,
Under the night...
I'll add something poetic here in a few days.
I am the center of my own universe,
low wells of gravity
pulling weakly
and giving life away,
Do you take for granted that the sun comes up in the sky?
Talk to myself, omniscient being,
the true world wasn't meant for seeing,
the scale's too large to comprehend
(the end)
and eyes are full of death besides
but luckily the soul is wise -
it sees beyond my blindness and
forced failure makes a better guise,
so as i come again alive,
it feels like life's a decent plan
Here in this field I feel
The world is mine
And I'm astounded by
The whisper of the wind
As if it almost might agree
I'm spinning freely, arms outstretched
To take it in
The sun is watching
Probably bored, but hey
Still giving me
The time of day
And that's enough for me
I'm so alive!
And then it rains.
The wind shakes the trees
And the scent that billows from
Them is reminiscent of the mythical
Manna from Heaven.
It grows in girth
The old Oak tree outside.
Towering over all of man
Forevermore. Forevermore.
God,
I am forgiven
Risen new, a fraud
A phoenix
Once declawed, now
Flapping wings
Straight for the sun
And setting traps to
Snap your sheep up
One by one
Until your flock is
None but me
Your only son
Come Easter Day
The hunt is on
Come Easter Day
Snow, covering the frozen creeks
of ice, sterility twice entombing
something; I don't remember.
Memory is so fluid...
collected in the hippocampal roots
and drawn up into broad flowers
that do not bloom in winter (and it withers, eventually...)
But I was never cold
And though now I am an industrial force
sullying this with black ash and
coughing up blood:
I was once in-phase; I was a runner
I was your original motivation
your argument and your capital
you used me and infused me
with a burning question (so please do not ask me what is it)
Up ahead, natural mammoths rise up
Acts of genesis held in stasis
And I, with entropy, with heat,
with a carbon processing chip
capable of running the complex algorithms
to solve this entanglement and define
our quantum superposition...
But of course, all that is behind me is flat.
Caught between moments, a sun's blink,
It is always summer somewhere, and
even now, there is heat.
In my engine smolder tiny flames.
This reflection of me.
Always changing, yet still the same.
I'm not that person, he wanted fame.
If you look closely you can see.
There's a bit more to me.
You only see what's on the outside.
If you say you know me, then you lied.
With all of the brightness you bring,
If I could ask you for one thing,
It is to look me in the eye,
And try not to cry.
And causes tentative steps,
the pawing of the ground, with toe, before you ask-
the weight of love pushes a gaze to the ground
and buries words
but perhaps the words aren’t needed
Love is such a simple thought pattern
It merely is-everything-two fold.
You are
And I will give
But what is everything, but mass
And mass a strange state
Of electricity and everything
Either on or off
Existing in things that don’t exist
And electricity a hum, a buzz, a pulse
Love is now a pulse
Your pulse my pulse
A pulse increased by the very thing that weighs us down
The weight of a hand to a cheek
The gentle convergence
A trembling kiss
Fingers softly intertwined
A fleshy mosaic, a pattern
A shared burden of expression
Expression is the weight of love…
People change. I watched the drama unfold, stain
the hands of those around, abstain
and blood drops all around me. Say
it's not my fault. The rain,
when I looked up,
was slick with blood.
And for my life, cowardly self,
I turned traitor, played the snitch.
-
My past smells wistfully of crime,
my present but an absent wish.
Protection can be twice defined:
Once to live,
once to subsist.
and eyes are full of death besides
but luckily the soul is wise -
it sees beyond my blindness and
forced failure makes a better guise,
so as i come again alive,
it feels like life's a decent plan
Plato still stands
If there was even a morsel of compassion
through those hazel-colored eyes
Or a slight sense of intellect
within the patchings of that robe
Then you would have probably wondered
about the finer things in life.
If those lips spouted even a breath of knowledge
about the raw sensation of love or the structures of welfare
you might have even considered what makes man function.
But neither the curvings of your mouth
nor the faint smell of mosaic can answer the eternal.
You must have sought a sense of truth
asked the question to the dillema.
So maybe considered wise amongst your peers
yet still an inevitability to the etchings of mankind.
But if your porcelain skin was once more a beating pulse
then you would have been content.
For all your triumphs and theories are honored
Revered among philosophers; exalted towards scientists.
But did you ever cease to think?
Did it cross your mind to stop and just say?
That the way it is, is just because.
All Vegeta wanted to do was be the best at fighting. At every turn he worked harder and harder. Goku just trained when he felt like it.
Whenever they fought, Goku would win.
Vegeta had noble blood in his vains and Goku was a peasant. He wanted to win more than anything, and Goku just thought fighting was fun.
Whenever they fought, Goku would win.
Vegeta gave up his friends, his family and his very soul for the power to be the best fighter, and Goku gave up nothing.
Whenever they fought, Goku would win.
You see,
Vegeta worked harder than Goku.
But,
Goku was better than Vegeta.
You see,
Goku was born to be the best.
And,
Vegeta trained to be second.
We all have hope of being Vegeta.
It's cold.
It hurts.
Make it stop.
Stop.
Please.
Stop it.
Make it stop.