Minimalist Poetry Contest

First breath

Shellfish gets the sun's attention
Owl hoots deep in the forest
Unconscious happiness ends in a tunnel
Sudden light and noise and smells
Woman screams, doctor says,
'Alright! 'Tis a boy, Mrs. M.'

Just one week to closing, hurry in and post your entries :)

theme:
anniversary

deadline:
Friday November 12 at 11:59pm

Anniversary.

Anniversary is here again.
I sit and crying.
Staring at the photo.
Gold chain in my hand.
A tear drop fall.
Touching my hand.

Anniversary will do for me
I am eclectic

Will go for any rhyme scheme
Gloss, literary flourish
A sucker for metric potency
Or low-hanging punnets

Annually cryptic
Anniversary will do for me

It's coming on mid-November
Another year's golden promises nearly gone
Bridges burned and gone in flames
One final scene, one fading frame
One more year spent in a crowd but all alone

I don't recall just how I discovered it was over
No particular hour, I forget the exact day
But cold November rolls around
One more year of falling down
And watch the hours like minutes fade away

Was a cold night in November 1960
When my tiny cry split the universe apart
For a while my own birthday
Was happy in its own way
Now sometimes I wish I could stop its start

I fell apart around the fourth of July
But my birthday is the date I fear the most
November comes and means that one more year
Of pain still exists here
The memories of yesteryear haunt me like a ghost

So I take myself another shot of courage
Watch the days and years just slip on by
Raise a glass to cold November
To drown my sorrows and make me remember
No one is there to lean on when you cry

Pendragon

ok, have to admit that I was really surprised when I saw poems about birthdays coming in. I never thought of birthdays as anniversaries. I consulted with a veteran writer friend and he said birthday itself is an anniversary. Fine. I would still say happy birthday to my friends on their birthdays, not happy anniversary, and I'm going to leave it at that.

In terms of poetics every entry is a gem in its own rights.

krymsonkyng, endearing memories and romance throughtout while the metaphor of fire burns warmer at each milestone.

DieterM, thanks for sharing this beautiful autobiographical event, the most vivid imageries of childbirth I've seen.

zoolane, a tear jerker of a poem. It speaks for so many who went through a similar moment.

autolycus, discombobulatively clever! kudos

Pendragon, such an affecting piece, this certainly made the case for a birthday as a worthy anniversary of heartbreaking remembrances.




And the winner is....





*drumroll*





*rimshot*



krymsonkyng. Every word glows. Congrats!

Well done Krymsonkyng

Thank ye kindly and a great showing all who participated!

Next subject: Surgery. (Roommate just got some pretty routine knee work done, so it's on my mind.)
Deadline: 10 December.

Congrats, krymsonkyng, for your luminous exercise in wordsmithing! :) And thanks for the new title.

Awareness

White lights
faces above
blurred around the edges
sounds distant
colors fading
rearranging,
paralyzed,
voiceless,
white hot pain
beneath the cold knife,
a heart beat of awareness,
panic

WAIT!!!!!!

Anesthesia
Four years ago,
Scabbed over -
Cut, cut, cut
Me up?
And if I wrote a thousand
Sonnets -
Each one more carefully
Than the rest,
Would I be avoiding you?
Avoiding me, at best.
Band aids gave way
To thighs and hips,
Saliva ships,
Crashing into your Rock of Gibraltar
And I fear I’m
Far too
Seasick
To remember.

He offered children candy
The young ones found him kind
Their families went off elsewhere
The twins stayed behind

Now let's have some fun
Let's see what we can do
You go here and you go here
I wonder who is who

Uncle Mengele
He acted nice and sweet
He had a butcher shop
He liked to deal with meat

No rose-red cities nor the mighty ships
Just sudden darkness and distant poundings
An itch I couldn't scratch and silent lips
Slack and still set soft in my surroundings

They went all armed once more into my breach
Their blades and tools into the deeper mines
A sea of islands on a distant reach
A hidden jungle grown festooned with vines

They cut my freedom from the world they found
They took my green redoubt, my ancient ground
They built me cities, called for elections
Cast their doubt like stones on my selections
They cut my soul, a cancer, from my land
And made me suck the money-making gland

I broke my leg as a teen somewhat wild
The doctor that set it made a mistake
One year later it snapped again
They said surgery was my only hope of avoiding going lame
I remember how scared I was lying on that table
Wondering if I'd wake up again
I saw five seconds slip by on the clock
Then I woke up in recovery
Cold weather always brings back the memory
When the metal in my ankle stabs pain
At least I can still walk and even run...

Pendragon

Here's a comment...

I've noticed that our 'minimalist' poems are getting less and less minimalist. I am appalled that I just wrote a sonnet and passed it off as minimalist, which it clearly is not. I'm so sorry. :(