Subject Poetry Contest.

[Dark Muse]

I do not know. I was going to give it a little more time, and than I was thinking about contacting my closest runner up and asking them if they would like to go ahead with the next subject.

[Pendragon]

Sorry, I was injured, and away for a couple days. Fine now.

Let's see: Subject is: "A Lonely Grave"

Write, poets, write!

[YesNo]

Ancient Sleep

They placed him in a tiny tomb.
A pillow rests beneath his head,
But there was not sufficient room
To move his body in that bed.

There was no air if he might need
To cough and clear his throat
Or smell the springtime's rush of seed.
A crypt was now his coat.

The coffin went inside the crypt.
The dirt went all around.
For centuries no water's dripped
To him beneath the ground.

[jajdude]

When he died we did not cry, those years were unkind;
We watched him stagger, we saw time tear away the shreds
of dignity and meaning

Cruelly, I thought,
Hours and days of unrelenting pain

Then it all came to an end, at last,
and the heaviness of his life, of this world,
simply fell away

I doubt he feels anything now,
under the ground,
or if he does, it's better than the misfortune he endured.

[cl154576]

He remembered the wind scathing his skin
The stars laughing through cold light
Her heart against his, the breath of fire
The thing called life that burned his veins.

He remembered his mother, kissing him goodnight
His father with his thick fat hands. He remembered his friends
This one laughing, that one silent. But

Her kisses melted
Into sick mud heaped on rotting bones.
Their faces swirled through eternity.
The centuries crushed their voices.
Faces, laughter, light, warmth, love
Twisted into an endless empty whorl
Of pixels and decibels and modulations of light. And Time

Tore them from his lifeless breast

until he lay

alone –

[zoolane]

The Lonely Grave.

Lonely grave is were I be.
Cold within the darker box.
Waiting for my time.
To become one with earth.
My bones are hurting cramp in these clothes.
Just laid bear beneath the dirt.

[moonbird]

The Stone Angel

There is a graveyard near my house.
I'm not allowed to play there,
But, of course, I do anyway.

It is an ancient graveyard,
So old that there aren't any mourners left
For the dead who lie below,
Rotting away to dirt
As their stone monuments remain
Cold and brittle above the ground.

The wind has long beaten away
The names and dates
From the weathered old stones,
Because the people buried there were poor
And couldn't afford
To buy nice rock
To preserve their legacies.

There is an angel in the graveyard.
She lives above a grave
Tucked away under a willow tree,
And I can tell she was once beautiful
But now her face is worn away
And her wings tarnished.

I like to sit and talk to her,
And sometimes I wonder
If the girl whose grave she guards
Can hear what I say
But cannot reply
For her voice is only the wind.
She must have been beautiful too.

When I die, I would like to have
An angel above my grave,
One that could last
Through the wind-blasted years,
And children would play on my grave,
And they'd wonder who is buried there
Below the lovely angel
All alone in the graveyard.

[Dark Muse]

The Forgotten Grave

Silently
(as silent as death itself)
they make their gentle
windswept decent.

Each a burst of flame
(brilliance, the last spark of life)
before they cover the grave,
like whispers of a forgotten
soul within.

Beneath the blanket
of sweet aromatic decay
(which ever fades)
in serenity lies the stone.

But its gray is ever
painted anew as the
seasons change,
and the sun alights
the dreary gloom
with the birth of each day.

While sweetly may the birds
sing their funeral hymns
and softly may the rains
awash gathering debris.

Gravestones
may begin to crumble
(even they must return to the earth)
and engravings of names and dates
fade, while flowers long dried
are blown away.

The beauty of life still
abounds unafraid, without
hesitation and now
and than a passing soul
(those still among the living)
may rest a moment.

With the dead and their thoughts
their only companions
and the world briefly
seems to stand frozen.

Even where the passage
of time remains ever
present.

[Pendragon]

With this nice turnout, I will now set the ending date at 9/15/2011. Wonderful entries so far!

[krymsonkyng]

Out in Domenigoni
beneath the reservoir and buried in years,
there is sunshine and ranchland fields
of summer soaked grass
long sunk and gone.

On a visit to where
my father was raised,
back before his home was bought and buried by Diamond Lake,
my brother chased goats into the field and found
a simple mound
and a lonely cross.

[The Comedian]

Here's mine:

The Empty Tombstone at Mount Hope

Over and down the hill
My friends and I ran
Until we made it to
Mount Hope Cemetery:
A few graves, under the
Wyoming sun and heat,
Rounded by barbed wire,
And that surrounded by pasture.
All flat stones on rough land
Except the metal one:
An iron monument,
Tall, narrow and hollow.
“Sackett” -- the old plate read
On the old gray metal stone.
We twisted the rivets
Off of Sackett’s iron plate
And, one by one, we kids
Squeezed into the opening
And stood on Sackett’s ground,
And breathed the dying air.
When we all had turned,
We ambled from Mount Hope
Like monarchs in the clouds:
Milkweed to Mexico.

[Pendragon]

Welcome! This is Subject Poetry Contest: The Results!

We had a super turnout for this round and I am truly grateful for all of your wonderful poems.

Yesno: A very fine poem from a viewpoint I hadn't thought of: the corpse eye view! Especially liked:

A crypt was now his coat.

jajdude Touching piece. Especially good lines:

I doubt he feels anything now,
under the ground,
or if he does, it's better than the misfortune he endured.

cl154576 I don't recall meeting you before, but you had an excellent poem here, building nicely to the climax:

Tore them from his lifeless breast

until he lay

alone –

zoolane Nice minimalistic poem with a solid ending. Loved the line:

My bones are hurting cramp in these clothes

.

Can just imagine a corpse trying to stretch its legs in that tiny, confined space!

moonbird My grandfather made stone angels as grave markers for young children that had passed. Sadly, graveyard vandals have destroyed almost all of them. I loved these lines:

When I die, I would like to have
An angel above my grave,
One that could last
Through the wind-blasted years,

Darkmuse A worthy poem with your usual careful crafting! I really enjoyed the lines:

Beneath the blanket
of sweet aromatic decay
(which ever fades)
in serenity lies the stone.

Reminds us that even death gets destroyed by time.

krymsonkyng Again it is your wrap-up that appeals the most to me:

a simple mound
and a lonely cross.

The Comedian

We twisted the rivets
Off of Sackett’s iron plate
And, one by one, we kids
Squeezed into the opening
And stood on Sackett’s ground,
And breathed the dying air.

Reminds me of my own youth when we cousins played in Round Hill Cemetery and the day the Lincoln's Tomb was left unlocked...

All poems were wonderful and deserving of the win, but I must choose only one: The winner is:

Moonbird You brought back so many memories of my grandfather and his stone angels watching over the lonely graves of children. Congrads. You're up next!

[moonbird]

Thank you, Pendragon!

Here's the next subject: Homecoming Dance

All the high schools around my house have a dance coming up and the teens are going nuts. Romantic slow-dances, spiked punch... Ah, the memories. Can't wait to see the poems for this one.

I'll set a deadline for October 15. Good luck!

[Dark Muse]

Pageantry

Primmed like peacocks on their fool's parade
petty lives in a vain masquerade
shallowness at the core
gossip for this years whore
waiting to see thier Barbie Queen made.

[The Comedian]

Congratulations Moonbird!