Minimalist Poetry Contest

Can you pause a moment
Can you watch with me one hour
Ignore the voices that beckon
Or is patience beyond your grasp
Hurry up before time runs out
Carpe Diem, that's the way!
No pausing or just waiting
Patience lies beyond your grasp

Heron

Stands. Is.
Reads the stream’s
free-flowing lines.
Reads. Reads.

Reads for meaning’s
sheen through eddies
of meaning.

A glimmer. A gleam.

The cracked church bell’s broken song
The moon, on a single blade of grass

Whirring clocks and running rivers
My mind, anticipating your return

My soul, a dog teased with hope of a bone
Waiting, waiting, patience rewarded?

Open books, closed hearts
No reward for these vacant thoughts

Patience?
Take a rock
and watch it
in geologic time.

She Waits

She waits

inhale exhale

but still the phone never rings

She waits

breath held

but no familiar knock comes upon the door

She waits

tick tick tock

and only silence

She waits

flowers wilt, tarnished photos, tattered lace

only dust and bone.

When I yell out 'fiddlesticks!'
white doves fly on down
many hit tips of mountain tops
one shows me a sun.

©M.Z. (Adolescent09)

anyone for judges?!! i think it today :)

Thanks for reminding me about the contest, cacian. It looks like today is the deadline.

tailor STATELY: I liked how patience was requested to come swiftly. It usually is needed right away.

cacian: I liked the last four lines the best. They held my attention on the "tension"-"attention" words.

Pendragon: Yes, "carpe diem" seems the opposite of patience.

blank|verse: Occasionally, I watch a heron just stand in place in a nearby pond. It does seem to be a very patient bird, but then does it have anything better to do? What it does is done gracefully.

The Highwayman: Nice description of patience unrewarded.

Hawkman: Watching a rock would be a good test of patience. It kind of reminds me of meditating. Nice minimalist poem.

Dark Muse: I can sense her frustration in how you described the waiting and then the final lines made me think she will be or has been waiting for a long time.

Adolescent09: I like the sounds in this poem. I don't know that it is about patience, but I may have missed it.

Thank you for all for the entries.

The winner is Hawkman.

This one fit the minimalist constraint the best although I enjoyed all of the entries.

Congratulations, Hawkman!

Gosh! I wasn't expecting that! Thanks Y/N & Pendragon. There's some particularly good poetry being posted in the games section at the mo - it kind of attracted me back. All the entries were memorable in this round, so thanks to everyone else for sharing.

OK here's the next one: "Reading Greek." You can do what you like with it, as long as it's minimalist and poetic :D

Deadline: midnight GMT Sat 14th September.

Live and be well - H

Reading Greek

Alphas, Omegas
Have to get to Vegas
Beta, Gamma
Someone tell my mama
Delta, Zeta
Babe I'll catch ya later
Epsilon, Phi
I'm waving goodbye!

Pendragon
8/25/2013

νυνι δε μενει πιστις ελπις αγαπη τα τρια ταυτα μειζων δε τουτων η αγαπη(1)
1 Corinthians 13:13

Ancient, modern, never through,
Love caresses, ever new.

(1) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1_Corinthians_13

reading Greek
is Greek to me
said tongue-in-cheek

read the greek
and feel the streak
remove the steek
unancient weak
latin is seek

Enigma

Trying to understand you
has always been like
reading Greek.