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.'
Printable View
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. :(
…doo-Doom…
…doo-Doom…
Pick up your scalpel
Cut through my flesh
…doo-Doom…
…doo-Doom…
Crush my ribs and pull it out
That darn pulsing lump
…doo-Doom…
…doo-Doom…
Take it out, take it
Hold it up, bleeding, red
…doo-Doom…
…doo-Doom…
It still hurts, you know,
Under the cold neon light
…doo… d…
… …
Hurts less now
Than when it beat for you
The flat line has begun to form,
A new exception to the norm.
I try to tell them I don't mind:
That light refreshingly feels kind.
Invisible Surgery
the man with the
sightless eyes
leans over me
his hand
with rusty knife
begins its invisible
surgery
a bloodletting
the corpus christi
flows
benign and mirthful
down my throat
streaking the white
with the memory of birth and violence
but of all this I remain unaware
the blood is gone
the light is all around
and all I can hear is your
laughter, good, and clean,
and strong
Qimissung
December 2010
We've got plenty of excellent entries thus far, but only one day remains! I'll judge the entries around six tomorrow night, so there's plenty of time if anyone wants to take a last stab at maximizing the potency of their language.
Death comes
happy
but
sad
Lots o good entries. Let's take a look, shall we?
Dark Muse- Great concrete imagery, my favorite lines are:
"white hot pain
beneath the cold knife,
a heart beat of awareness,"
SarahDrago- Excellent manipulation of form, your poem reminded me of the groggies post op. Favorite lines were:
"And if I wrote a thousand
Sonnets -" and
"Saliva ships,"
jajdude- Two entries it seems, so I'll go with the most recent poem.Truly bare bones and simple, you use several potent words to create a strange dichotomy surrounding death. I most enjoyed the simplicity created through formatting and a lack of punctuation.
Autolycus- Wow. Your poem straddles both micro and macro at once. Either the world is operated on, or the speaker is, or both. In three stanzas a story that winds back into itself is told with a florid and colorful portrayal of Gaia under the knife. Very well done, my favorite lines included the last line's punch, and
"They went all armed once more into my breach
Their blades and tools into the deeper mines"
Pendragon- Touching and personal, Pendragon, your work is always a pleasure. In my opinion, the poem sports a steady flow and an intricate rhyme scheme surrounding the solid imagery. It is a bittersweet tale, in that order. Favorite lines:
"I broke my leg as a teen somewhat wild" and
"When the metal in my ankle stabs pain
At least I can still walk and even run..."
DieterM- Good repetition using the ominous heart beat's "Doom" that reminded me of "Bodies" from the Smashing Pumpkins for some reason. Strong.
Favorite lines:
"It still hurts, you know,
Under the cold neon light"
YesNo- A nice bite in rigid form, and highly efficient. It's the kind of short that you can carry around and think about. For the nice little break my favorite lines were:
"I try to tell them I don't mind:
That light refreshingly feels kind. "
Qimisung- Haunting. I went through line by line, and I am still unsure of whether I should be afraid, or satisfied by the speaker's sacrifice. There seem to be two voices within the last two stanzas. Each stanza carries several lines that strike the reader, but my favorites were:
"streaking the white
with the memory of birth and violence"
"laughter, good, and clean,
and strong"
Good entries, all. I enjoyed going through each, weighing and balancing who, for me at least, provided the most bang with the least blah. For me, that was Autolycus. Congratulations, you win this round.
Congratulations, Autolycus. A fine poem, but then yours always are. I do not, however, know what it means.
Also, per your earlier comment, you have a point, but please don't make us be too minimilist. Although I like the challenge, minimilism is essentially a state of mind, isn't it? :D
Most sincere congrats, Autolycus. I just love this contest as it allows us to discover so many great poems!
krymsonkyng, thank you very much for the honour...
qimissung and DieterM: thank you very much for the encouragement...
...and to all my worthy colleagues, thank you all for the continuing inspiration!
=====
The subject of the next contest will be: Zero.
I don't think it can be much more minimalist than that! :)
Let's make the deadline midnight GMT, between 2359 on 9 Jan 2011 and 0001 on 10 Jan 2011. :)
infinity
confined
to finite dimensions
a nonentity
destroyer of
sanity
black oblivion
white void
matter
time
ripped apart
shredded
then stitched back together
mutated
strange
and unruly
two
half-entities
so perfectly
opposite
that they are
identical
indistinguishable
two parts
of a whole
unending optical illusions
invisible infinity
false randomness
conjoined twins
one cannot
function
without the other
blasting us with
nothingness
until we are
blinded by darkness
deafened by silence
impossibility
meets
reality
There is no sound in a vacuum
No joy in a frozen heart
Absolute zero is more than a temperature
For some it's a way of life...
zero
the discovery of
zero
left them
none
the wiser
A zero here, a zero there won't get you anywhere.
.....oh!
ahhh... your guys' poems are a lot more "minimalist" than mine :)
people
wait
in your head,
aspirin
on the radio
is there,
you too,
a poem,
almost —
ringing phone
mistaken posting
One needs one, nothing to do;
One meets one, one has two;
One hurts one, one runs away;
One is cold, one is clay;
One has no one, no one for fun,
One has nothing, one has none.
Hmmm. Some of you have posted comments which might (fortunately or unfortunately) be mistaken for entries, being pretty minimalist themselves. So sorry, but could you please let me know (especially if your entry is a single line), if it is meant to be a comment? By default, I shall assume they are all entries. :D
My single line offering was supposed to be a poem. (But who knows what it is. :) )Quote:
Originally Posted by autolycus
I formatted it below to make it look more like a poem. Nice topic by the way.
Zero
A zero here, a zero there
Won't get you anywhere.
my 12/14 post is a commentQuote:
Originally Posted by autolycus
Nut tree lifting
its bare branches
like snow-covered arms
Each step a crunch
on the frozen meadow
a white ocean
Alone in winter
with temperatures
below zero
Excellent, all, so far. I can foresee headaches... :)
My earlier posting was a joke. Perhaps you could also take it as a poem. :)
It was nt
until the discver y
f nil
_
that math culd prgress
where ever it will