Thank you, and congrats, I really enjoyed your poem, a well deserved win.
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Thank you, and congrats, I really enjoyed your poem, a well deserved win.
The Watcher
The watcher stands high on the cliff face
Overlooking Crater Lake and Wizard Island below
The watcher is bent and twisted by the decades
Of solitary fortitude in performance of duty
The watcher stands tall and silent for the most part
But when the wind works as accompanist
The elderly tree whispers secrets of bygone ages,
Of all that is, that has been,
And even glimpses into what is yet to come…
Pendragon
© 1/19/10
First poem, yay :D
Deadline is on the 30th. Sound good?
Spirit of the Land
Untouched purity
captivates the soul
and propels the mind
into the embracing solitude,
as echoes carry across the mountains
their songs speak of legends
which are whispered within each
ripple of the water, for faces which begin
to fade away into the mist, and watching eyes
from those who touched the spirit of the land
knowingly with quiet reverence,
now preserved with the passage of time.
A thousand stories which can be read
into the changing landscape,
the passage of the seasons
altering natures course,
winter's encompassing touch
erases the memories of a passing year
heals scars and conceals old wounds
to make virginal once more in its glistening
white touch, and soon to melt away
into new life reborn free from the collective sorrows.
Beauty which entrances and transcends
beyond human thought
to touch the pulse beneath the land,
listen to the Earth's heartbeat,
and feel the passage of the spirits
in the bone-numbing cold of
winter's fog, they know you
even if you have forgotten.
Abandoned By The Light
Peeping around the tree, i see a union of evil sea and evil shore.
No chance of escaping, no chance of departing this desolate destination
The jagged rocks at my feet cut to my souls core
Devoid of colour, no green, tangerine or carnation
The trees branches, like witches fingers
Casting evil upon the land.
The fog, that fills the air always lingers.
At the shore no tiny gold crystals of sand
The only music this place has known
is the most melancholic of a durge.
The only sound is the trees low drone and groan,
Unlike other waters this cannot purify only purge
This could be the very coast
that is patrolled my Charon.
The air is haunted, by lingering lamenting ghosts
who glide along the water like a smooth satanic swan
The sea and sky both hollow,
Like a murderers eyes and soul
This land has been abandoned by both Apollo
And Sol
a place to be, to exist,
this is my spendrift quest;
A place from which to
watch the sun rise and set, and
pirate dogs and whales cavort
to feel the wind lay back in my arms,
her cloudy hair hanging down, trailing like fertile damp and portent tendrils
and sailing on a downdraft
inhaling exilaration
I found it, looming
over the sea's riotous waters,
balancing precariously on the border
of the wilderness and dreams
from this spot I wandered freely in my brown monk's robe
rescinding the sensual pleasures that most demand
I turned my mind to the
healing of their souls
it was here that I fought my
nemesis in a battle that lasted eons
as my tortured thoughts
wandered on the midnight stormy moors
I thrashed my head in bitter, futile terror at the loss of self,
my desolate soul raging against the
night and the churning sea
there was no refuge
from the hawk like swords and feral rain
my enemy unleashed upon me
skies so grey that nothing grew
earth thought it was the night
and cowered
bunching up her crinoline skirts
until it threatened to tear my home
from its iron bound roots
I had grown so that my fingertips could gently brush
the tears from the moons' gibbous eye
my feet the while curling round the
river styx
and in the folds of hubris that wind round
me like swaddling clothes
or a shroud
I beat back the storm of
my insanity and dear despair
and when morning came
then she did thread her rosary through my lank hair
thus blessed I left open
the door, let the malachite fountain of
life find me, weaved a leafy thicket with
another, and sometimes,
in our dreadful conjoining, felt,
as her hand touched mine,
as we lay resting from one recondite battle or another, watching the moon
toss handfuls of bright confetti
on the waters at her feet
sometimes, then, I feel
between the two of us,
a great quiet, an acknowledgement of the martello tower
wherein is locked away from the four winds that
roam the earth
that which we call our hearts
it falls on us, like night and snow on places that
had once been bare
Qimissung
By the way, DanielBenoit (so much fun to say :D) congratulations on your winn. I really liked your poem. I laways love those gritty urban modernist poems. I thought I caught a little whiff of James Joyce when I read it. Good one. I especially liked:
"I've injected herion on 3rd Avenue
But never on 5th, I'm not ready for fifth"
so random. Anyway, congrats!
Hmmm, time's almost up. We should really set shorter deadlines, because what usually happens is that everybody posts their poems within a few days and then, silence, and everybody forgets.
The thirtieth??? Yikes! That's today! I printed the picture and have been carrying it around to get the feeling of it. ;) I agree that shorter deadlines might be good.
I hear what you are saying, but this contest was less than two weeks long. I, myself, have posted poems in the last days and hours of a contest for a variety of reasons, but mostly because of time constraints and/or a reluctance/lack of confidence in tackling the material. Maybe a month is too long.
Okay, here we go:
Pendragon - I loved the use of words and images, but the repetition of "the watcher" and the coldness of it was not to my tastes. That said the final line really stuck with me.
Dark Muse - Some really sublime imagery here. I knew when I posted the picture that it would probably resonate with you for one reason or another. You captured the naturalistic intensity of the picture as well as the pantheistic feeling I got from the picture. This was a top-runner.
Albion - I noticed that you seem to be new here, so I would first like to say, welcome to the forums :D While I liked a lot of the lucid description, I think it treats the wilderness presented in the picture as some kind of hell, as oppose to the strangely pagan-like atmosphere that Dark Muse presented in her poem.
And the winner is. . . . . .
qimissung - No it wasn't her bribing compliments that got me (:p) but her supremely excellent and beautiful poem. Like Dark Muse's it capture's the essence of what I was looking for in the photo, but even more so with such vividly beautiful and gorgeous description. I especially loved the quiet begining, and then the catastrophic intensity of the latter half. Such a wonderous use of natural metaphors and descriptions! I love it.
Congrads, Qimi! :):):)
Thank you, Pendragon! :) And thank you, DanielBenoit. Everyone's poem was good, imho.
So, I'll find a good picture and hopefully get it posted in the next day or so.