Picture Poetry Contest (...continued...)

Thank you all who entered with your great works. Now I have the hard task of choosing a winner.

GEETASHREE: You created some beautiful imagery with your words. I loved the scene you created, and the story you gave to the picture, I thought the emotions of pain, isolation, and loneliness could be strongly felt. I particularly loved the last verse of the poem.

Pendragon: I absolutely loved your poem, naturally I thought your concept was great. It was a little bit like The Crucible and The Scarlet Letter. Thee was some lovely lines and I thought you captured the image well within your poem. One of the things which struck out at me is the contrast of the normalcy, and yet bareness of the background, with the boldness of her dress and I thought you captured that idea in your poem.

Skia: I really liked the eeriness of your poem, it had an almost haunted house feeling to it, which is very Halloween appropriate. I also liked the way in which you seemed to take the image in a different direction, seeing her as actually being condemned in this sort of Gothic world. I particularly loved the blood seeping through the floorboards.

zoolane: I liked the Femme Fatale aspect of your poem and the surprise at the end.

But the winner is

:: DRUMROLL::::

Hillwalker: What can I say? Your poem I thought was brilliant! It captured some of the most unique imagery and I loved the atmosphere which is creates. The other thing I really enjoyed about your poem is the way in which you captured the essence of the picture without writing too literally about it. And you had some outstanding lines.

Thank you DM got feeling that I was a serial killer or something in past life. With some stuff I have being written recently.

Thanks Dark Muse - not an easy task for you, and thanks everyone else for entering.

I thought I would post a seasonal picture for this next month's competition.

http://www.online-literature.com/for...pictureid=8127

Deadline for entries 1 minute after midnight four weeks tomorrow (14th November). Good luck!

H

Nice going, Hillwalker, and thanks for the compliments Dark Muse!

It inhales her.


That poor girl.
Forced to try and to try,
The parents knowing
she cannot fulfill her duties.
they laugh as she weeps,
trying to break down the words
so she can impress her reluctant daddy
and big roll up smoking mummy...

Heavy pages yellow with age
hold an enthralling story.
With a young mind so
open and impressionable
it's hard
not to get possessed.

The Book.

I am trying to stay wake.
So satan does not come knock on my door.
It so hard my lids are closing.
With each second that goes by.

I am reading my father's favourite book.
The words are blending into each other.
This book help in my father, in hes work.

The Reader

Little girls in twighlight zones
examine satanistic tomes
and in their cutesy, childish lisp
announce, ‘They’re here,’ while spouting sick.
And then she asks, and sounds profound,
‘Is my head on right when this way round?’
Of course it’s hard to understand
In language from another land,
so far away in time and space,
unlooked for from so sweet a face.
And Aramaic’s hard enough,
in sussing it you feel quite chuffed,
especially when you hear it spoken
backwards like the player’s broken.

The deadline crept up on me and overtook us all without my noticing so it's about time I declared the winner.

Thanks for the 4 entries - each one a quite different response to an unsettling picture.

@Skia - putting yourself in the place of the mentally abused child struggling to impress her slacker parents I'm guessing

@krymsonkyng - focussing on the well-thumbed paperback - and rounding it off with a very witty line

@zoolane - again the book is the catalyst for the little girl's struggles to get to grips with grown-up stuff

and finally @Hawkman - whose poem got me from the opening line and then the wickedly amusing rhyme and references to 'Poltergeist' and of course 'The Exorcist' itself.

Without having to study my tarot cards, throw chicken bones into the pentangle drawn on my kitchen floor or ingest vast amounts of peyote I can declare that the winner this month is

Hawkman - many congratulations sir, and commiserations to the other 3. His satanic powers were obviously too masterly for you to stand a chance.:devil:

H

Congrats to Hawkman. Thank you for comment H

Thanks Hill and zoo. Desperately searching my archive for a suitably interesting image. Please bear with me, I'll post one as soon as I can.

H

OK Folks, here it is, the image that must excercise your poetry muscle :D

http://www.online-literature.com/for...pictureid=8262

I'm making the deadline midnight GMT on Tuesday 7th December, that's three weeks from today. I look forward to reading your entries!

Live and be well - H

He's feeling lonely
Somewhere out there his true love awaits
He watches the peahens passing him by
He flashes his tail hoping to attract their attention
Like a lovely wallflower springing into bloom
Like a man hanging out at a bar
Hoping the next girl is the girl of his dreams
Hoping they don't think he is just a showoff
Or worse, a flasher...

Pendragon

Come on chaps! Don't let poor old Pen win by default! Surely the picture's not so bad that the entirety of lit-net is confounded for inspiration. Put pen to paper, fingers to the keyboard and pummel your brains to grace the thread with your indivitual wit! I wait, with worm on tongue, to read your submissions...

His head is tilted to the side
With feathers spread to show his pride.
He hopes some hen will care.
But it's just me. My camera tried
To picture hope when sweet hope lied.
There was no lady there.