Congrats to Pendragon!
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Congrats to Pendragon!
Yes congrats on the double win Pen :D
And thank you very much qimi I am so flattered :angel:
Wow, I can hardly believe I won! Thanks Qimi, and to all who entered the contest.
The next subject is: Déjà Vu
I will be looking for the one who manages to use the term correctly and make an interesting, blockbuster poem.
Deadline: September 15
Congrats Pen! Now all I have to do is go bust some blocks, yes? :)
Well done Pen, and an interesting challenge you have set us.
....and qim thanks also for your comments (and good choice)
H
DÉJÀ VU (ALL OVER AGAIN)
Nicotine walls - carpet to match - the bar stools lined up like a pint and a chaser
Some lost afternoon - our boats are all grounded - time to get bladdered come hell or high water
I set up my spot - my roll-ups and Bensons - a Stella for starters then Red Bull and vodka
Jenny drops in for the craic and some company - shift finished early - she starts on sambuca
By seven come the punters - Sunday-best posers - under-aged pool players trying to look hard
But we’ve entered our own little tryst of true drinkers - sneaking outside for a smoke in the yard
I buy us more doubles - she tells me her troubles and laughs at the barman who gives her the wink
‘Cause we’ve been here before - I check out my mobile - another missed call so it’s time for more drink
I sup myself sober - Jenny’s no better - I offer to stagger her home to her door
Inside she acts giggly until she remembers that $hit from the last time I called her a whore
But we still end up crashed in the same double bed - the same rumpled sheets - the smell of B O
She leaves on her sloggis and vest as precautions - she’s nothing to fear ‘cause I’m dead down below
Then I wake in the dark with a belch and this heart-burn - these curtains aren’t mine nor the clock by the bed
And the shape at my side - both soft and repulsive - I can’t shake this feeling of dread from my head
Did I do something stupid? Or couldn’t I manage again? The same question, the Catch 22
‘Cos I’m f***ed if I f***ed her and f***ed if I didn’t - we’ve been here before – in this same déjà vu.
H
totally awesome!
Luved it!
Kittypaws
A Soldier's Miss Saigon
I know your sad smile-
The same smile I saw in the streets,
Inside the steamy, neon-lighted bars,
Outside the bombed, shattered homes,
In my dreams of fragments and rubbles
Like everything just happened yesterday.
Miss, are you Déjà Vu?
Your Digital Eyes
How long has my reality
been a figment of your
dream?
I awoke into the living
nightmare the instant
I realized I lived
this moment before.
My life was not lost
in stagnant routine
but a single event
replayed
I caught the glitch
when the overlay delayed
and I stood waiting by the bus stop
and I stood waiting by the bust stop.
I have been spinning circles
in the digital fortress
of your eyes.
The maze of your iris
trips me along
concealed in the codes
of your mind.
I run through your binary
to find the key to override
your system and break
through the streaming
loop you have me
reeling on like Deja Vu.
Life's Deja Vu
I have been here before.
I was walking away…
What from?
past things I knew:
Destruction and death,
A life without hope,
A gasping.
Wandering down wrong
Paths-
Farther down,
Leading nowhere.
I had been there before.
Before…
There had I been,
Nowhere.
Leading farther
down paths, wrong.
Down.
wandering, gasping;
a hope without life,
a death and destruction.
Knew I things past?
Away from what I was
Walking from?
I have been here before.
We didn't start the fire burning
Said Hicksville's most sagacious poet
Yet for all the world still turning
It feels as if there's something to it.
I saw what I'd not seen before
I have seen what I'd not seen again
And yet I thought that what I saw
Was something that I saw back then
That feeling is the sense defined
By walking in Columbia's glades
A newer world than left behind
Yet full of memory's dim shades.
He didn't do it, didn't act
Within the compass of his days
And yet he feels the chilly fact
That he had trod those unknown ways.
She didn't say it, says it still
That wasn't said and yet it seems
Against her knowledge and her will
She said it once before —*in dreams?
You know it's new and never seen
A never-never scene to you
And yet it hovers in between:
These words, that act, this deja vu.
Deja Vu ~Bougainvillia
You shivered outside
alone
in early morning chill!
The way your green blouse blew gently
in autumn breeze
still and will always linger in my mind.
The purple corsages
you wore
were intoxicatingly beautiful,
caught,
and opened my drowsy eyes.
It's a deja vu feeling!
A stroll down memory lane,
I vaguely recall
we made a promise a thousand years ago
to meet again
somehow sometime somewhere
whatever the cost!
OK, I declare time up, and will forthwith give the winner.
First I'd like to say this: these are contests judged by a fellow poet who was fortunate enough to win last time. As such, they will always be judged on a manner of personal taste and expectations. That's just the beauty of these contests.
hillwalker You had a technically wonderful poem. But my own feeling is that profanity has no place in poetry beyond a single minor swear word for emphasis. My opinion only.
miyako73 I liked the poem, but I am not sure it fulfills what I was looking for. Sorry.
Dark Muse Totally loved the poem. I found this stanza particularly strong
I caught the glitch
when the overlay delayed
and I stood waiting by the bus stop
and I stood waiting by the bust stop.
Yes Deja Vu could be described as a "glitch in time."
AdoreroDio The reversal effect in your poem is sheer genius, like living it over again in reverse order so that you strongly remember what happened. Brilliant!
Autolycus You had perhaps the strongest ending to your poem.
You know it's new and never seen
A never-never scene to you
And yet it hovers in between:
These words, that act, this deja vu.
Loved it!
angliholic You also closed your poem on a high note that was very wonderful!
A stroll down memory lane,
I vaguely recall
we made a promise a thousand years ago
to meet again
somehow sometime somewhere
Great stuff!
But I must declare only one winner, and for her sheer brilliance with that reversed look at something happening over again, the winner is:
Andy Dio! Congrads!:hurray::hurray::hurray::hurray::hurray:
Thanks for judging, Pen! And congrats to AD! :)
Congrats to the winner, and thank you Pendragon for your kind remarks. I was inspired by the Matrix. As soon as I saw Deja Vu the first thing that popped into my head was a scene from the movie where there was an instantance of deja vu, and it was explained as being a glitch in the system.
Thanks Pen, and congraulations to the worthy winner!!
Wow I won, haha. Thank you!
Next Subject I suppose shall be... *drum roll*
The Last Meal
A man walks down the street
He says, "Why am I hanging alone down here?
Why am I hanging alone down?
Why has my life been so damn hard?
I need a psychoanalysis now,
I want a shot at redemption,
Don't want to end up in a poem
In a subject poetry contest!"
When I was young and dying
I was young and green as hell
Can I call on Dylan
Dylan Thomas he calls me
And I call me, Al!
A man walked down the street...
He is stringing out, stringing out the tension
Knowing he has no more pretension
He walked into an alley way
Unfortunate incident one day
Blood on the walls
Money for the lawyers
Many many lawyers
He sees lawyers in the architecture
Spinning out the legal system
The strings and webs of legal fiction...
When I was young and dying
I was young and green as hell
Can I call on Dylan
Dylan Thomas he calls me
And I call me, Al!
This is his longest walk, is he done walking?
He doesn't know, forever walking!
The sun is strangely hot at dawn
His necktie is oddly thick and strong
It's like the Third World!
He has no money,
He doesn't speak the language,
He is surrounded by the sound
Sound, sound, all around the ground
Then he's young and dying
He is young and green as hell
He calls out for Dylan
His Dylan thought bobbles at
The last:
Me
Al.
Death is a Gentleman
Death has come to sit
at my table tonight
we dine before the
hallow candlelight.
The wind howls
at my door, with the
braying hounds,
seeking another soul
to drag into the
cavernous darkness.
But Death can wait,
he above us all
can sit king over time,
there is no need to rush
but like a fine wine
savor these last moments
upon earth.
I break bread with
the shadow that seems
to loom over all
and we share a drink
to reminisce over times
past and gone.
When you take the time
to get to know him I find
that he really is quite
the gentleman.
And even before
the most humblest affairs
is grateful to be invited
before the fire.
But all too soon
the hours slip by
and at last the moment
has arrived for my
companion and I
to prepare for the long
ride.
He leads me out
into the gentle night
with a final good-bye,
in his chariot I mount
and away we fly.
The Last Meal.
The restaurant wasn’t crowded,
and the quiet pair
with silent smiles,
revelled in their intimate
reflections in the evening window glass.
Enjoying food for thought
and the music of their love,
they drank to each other
with their eyes, the woman’s kiss
a lipstick trace in red upon a rim.
A candle flame entranced,
and danced between -
a sinuous wisp,
that pooled in fluid amber light
which bathed two faces in its gleam.
And while they ate the food
that fed another hunger,
anticipation grew,
with quickening hearts
and thoughts of touching in the dark.
Until, a momentary glare of headlamps,
an engine’s dying scream,
the wine and blood that mingled
in the broken glass
amid their shattered dreams.
Fantabulous start!
I'll set the deadline as September 28
:]]]
THE LAST MEAL
The slingshot moon
sprays stars towards horizon
grey aurora barely lighting up the snowfields
caged beneath the tines of pine trees
as their mesh of shadow pins me down
but still I find an opening
where glaciers blaze with fire
yet bestow a chill upon
this haunting silence and the empty echo of an aching night.
The forest nurtures scents and tastes
distilled in one deep breath
an overload of hunger and decay
as every step shakes loose these bones beneath my pelt
the whistle of buran a constant gnawing at my tail.
Sometimes I stop and spin inside my judas tracks
I’m usually swift enough to shake them loose
that slinking predator, mortality
death dragging closer by the day
its chain of famine like a weight that never lightens.
Other times I sense its steel trap gaping
at the loose ends of my tether up ahead
one step too many for another meal.
This howl you hear is not of reckless rage,
my dying song;
it merely signifies my final meal
was something I no longer can recall
the taste of blood a week or more ago
this howl is winter
crying victory.
H
Last Meal For a Convict
They brought me my steak and French fries today,
Told me to enjoy while there was still time—
The clock says the hours are counting down fast
At midnight the Grim Reaper calls
I don’t claim that I'm innocent and do not deserve to die
I know the cold mistakes that I made
But I wonder about the kids starving abroad
And the irony of giving a man a very fine meal
When he is to die in four hours by execution
While a good part of the world creeps towards death by starvation
Pendragon
© 9/12/2010
Pen, I'm not questioning your judgement. Saying that I did not use "Deja Vu" correctly seems to me that you did not understand the poem at all. "Deja Vu" in my poem is both a Vietnamese woman's alias and a familiar experience.
Let's get real. Do you think "Knew I things past?" makes sense? That line assaulted the little grammar and good stuff I have known about the English language. Poetic license is old. Give another sensible reason.
Pendragon sent me a private message:
"I find you latest comment on the Subject Poetry Contest to be in very poor taste. To complain about how your own poem was judged is one thing. To cast stones at the winner's poem is quite another. I feel you should delete your hateful post.
The choice of winner was mine and mine alone. I did not have to grace anyone else's poetry with a comment. That I always take the time to do so is out of respect for my fellow poets.
I told you when I posted that things were just my opinion. If you are going to be so sensitive about any criticism, you might not want to post poetry in these contests. Many has been the time I disagreed with both the choice of winning poem (feeling mine was much better) and the comments made about my poem. But these are contests judged by our peers. Tastes vary exceedingly.
My advice, lighten up.
, and get your knickers out of a twist. You sound a lot like sour grapes.
Pendragon"
My message:
Respect the English language. Get real. Have someone read this: "Knew I things past?"
With this line, "Many has been the time I disagreed with both the choice of winning poem (feeling mine was much better) and the comments made about my poem.", coming from you, now I know.
Sigh. Could we take the grammatical parsing etc out of this thread?
"Knew I things past?" is grammatical, just possibly awkward in syntax. It follows the form verb-subject-object, as in "Loved I a woman..." or "Be this a man?"
VSO structure is common in some non-English languages, like my own native tongue, but the structure is clear and beautiful to the ears, and makes perfect sense when used.
Its use in English is still questionable. Some poets resort to it if verbs are just too powerful to be put next to the subject. I don't find "knew" more powerful than "be".
Using your argument and standard, this will be correct: "Played the students chess."
take :chillpill: :chillpill: before posting, and :chillpill: :chillpill: :chillpill: :chillpill: before reading people's comments.Quote:
Originally Posted by miyako73
if symptoms persist, may I suggest :auto:
"I don’t claim that I innocent and do not deserve to die" (Bravo! You very good.)
"I'd been every battle we fought with the North" (Can you tell me how one becomes a battle?)
What? Please! For God's sake. I'm beginning to doubt that maybe there are people here who have double accounts.
By the way, I'm not sourgraping. Dark muse's work was far more superior.
If the flaming comments continue, I will petition the moderators to lock this thread. After all, you may notice that I originated this contest. There is simply no place in a poetry contest thread for such remarks. That is why I PMed you. I take exception to your posting my remarks which were private between us.Quote:
Originally Posted by miyako73
As for my quoted line. I'm Southern. That's a whole different kind of American. But truthfully, it was a mistake I didn't catch. It should have read "Id been in every battle we fought with the North." The contest judge obviously could see past a minor error.
Yes, it is. "Played the students chess" is correct but considered awkward in most standard forms of prose English. However, it is poetry we are considering here. I'd like to add that this order is in fact a traditional English syntactical order, and its euphony depends on the words used.Quote:
Originally Posted by miyako73
This famous poem has an example of that order in its even more famous last line. The poem also has examples of other orders using various verb forms or noun forms.
Miyako, I am not trying to pick a fight with you. I'm just pointing out that we could go on and on about such stuff, but it wouldn't help the thread at all. This is a disputable area, and many of us are vulnerable to brain-farts that produce typos and suchlike.
LOL. BIG LOL!
the poem was written by:
Richard Lovelace. 1618–1658
LOL
Please do not personalise your comments.
Posts containing inflammatory or off-topic comments will be removed without further notice.
I apologize for my bad grammar, I was restricted by the form I chose to use. But as that is past and this is now...
Any more poems? Or shall I judge now?
Okay last chance :] I will begin judging tomorrow night
any more takers?
With folded hands they pray
to Christ's depicted last meal,
with only one sin in their hearts -
the belief they are weak and sinful,
not recognizing their holiness within.
How our thoughts make it true!
Christ's light is divine light within us,
but has nothing to do with Christianity,
or names we apply not knowing the truth -
God is the hedge at the bottom of the garden.
Great job everyone! I'm just about finished judging and will post the results tonight. :]
--autolycus
Your poem’s play on the idea of last meal and last me, Al was fabulous and I loved your repetition. Your writing reminds me of a mix between Sound and the Fury and Dylan Thomas’ poem Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night (was that a coincidence that you used the name Dylan Thomas or purposeful?)
--Dark Muse
I love your original take on death, not some creepy grim reaper but rather a gentleman to have dinner and wine with by the fire and then go on a ride with in his chariot. It’s a much more gentle view of death and one’s last meal.
---Hawkman
Wow. What a shocking poem! The build up is fantastic to such a gory end. I especially love the contrast between the stanzas. My favorite stanza was : “A candle flame entranced, / and danced between - / a sinuous wisp, / that pooled in fluid amber light / which bathed two faces in its gleam.” Beautifully done.
---hillwalker
Your poem is very haunting, and wonderfully composed. The final lines are my favorite.
---Pendragon
Leave it to you Pendragon to hit exactly what I meant by The Last Meal and then throw in some irony. I enjoyed the simplicity of your poem and its pointedness.
--- NikolaiI
Your poem is an interesting branch of the subject. I love your final line “God is the hedge at the bottom of the garden.”
It was a very hard decision trying to make up my mind which poem I should choose. You are all deserving of a win and I am amazed at the variety of interpretations of the subject. But for their amazing use of imagery and their haunting take on the last meal the winner is….
Hillwalker!!!!
:party::party: :banana: :hurray::thumbsup::hurray: :banana: :party::party:
Thanks so much AdoreroDio for your generous reading - and to all of you who always manage to give such challenging and inspiring competition, well done. There were some wonderful poems in this month's collection.
..... my subject for this month is 'The Eyes Never Lie' - anything that those words conjour up will be fair game.
The closing date: four weeks today - one minute to midnight on October 22nd.
Over to you, and good luck everyone.
H
Hillwalker: congrats on a masterful piece! :)
AdoreroDio: Heh, it was a mix of Paul Simon, Dylan Thomas, and yes, Faulkner-style American stream-of-consciousness. :)