Poetry Contest

[Virgil]

Congratulations Virgil. Your poem was quite gripping. Not quite playing it like your namesake though, skipping eclogue and moving straight to epic . Looking forward to seeing the next pic.

Thank you.

[Virgil]

OK. After a search through some of my favorite images, I've decided on this one. I hope you find it interesting, but more importantly, inspirational.

[Petrarch's Love]

Thanks Virg. I've loved that Bellini ever since seeing it at the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna. Yet another of those exquisitely luminous paintings from the Venetian school. I look forward to reading the exquisitely luminous poetry it generates.

[mir]

does marble ever dream, in its long-living quiescence?
or sometimes think of summer, which would bright its endless snow?
a mouth that cannot speak cannot reveal what souled quintessence
may have been chiselled into that sculpture long ago.
still and sweet in picture, uncomplaining these masques stand,
with not a sound from posing lips to keep silence at bay
beauty and decorum oft do not go hand in hand,
so though many come gawking, almost nude the forms must stay.
alabaster stillness, painted nymph of long ago,
on whom brighter colors look like only a mistake,
if you were a statue, where did your emotions go?
frozen like your form, ever in one unchanging state?
gazing in the mirror, could you your irony see?
mother of a family of poetry and dreams,
but once statues were all that those of curving form could be;
perhaps the sadness in your eyes is more real than it seems.

yeah. um. feminist social commentary. is it too obscure?

[rabid reader]

Okay, I'm not very happy about this one and I kinda want to explain where I got these images for the poem. I am not very into Art as I really have little eye for non-literary symbols and all paintings truly mean to me is a bunch of bright colours mixed with dark ones. Sure I can stare at a painting and impress on something or other that I can see and hold up a convorsation, but that is mostly my talent of eminse bullspit at work.

So I read this is a painting by Bellini and doing some research I find out that this is his first nude woman, painted somewhere in his mid-eights. I also remember from the novel Angels & Demons by Brown, that Bellini was hired by the Church to paint. I also know since he is part of the Renaissance, which is famous for its return to natural beauty, that he may of thought of nature the holiest form. So with out further ado, here is my entry:

The Incumbus

They never know do they?
When I paint my skin,
They think I am one of them.
They think I’m their kin.
I know to be vain, and what to say.
I know their secrets that they hide.
I am their focus, their gem.
Through temptation I am Hell’s guide.

O’ the rolling hills do see,
The holes, and the truth.
The opinionated vineyards,
Know that I’ll never be Ruth.
They will always know me,
Through my never dying youth.
I am safe in my protect of guards.
Safe from nature’s tooth.

I am an incubus of temptation.
I sit here nude and knowing.
I must never return to nature.
For hell is where we’re going
I am pure of mark or adaptations.
It is my purity that is unholy.
Love me and your soul will fracture.
I feed on the unclean, souly.

[holograph]

[well done rabidreader and the rest of the excellent writers who submitted. kudos. ]

[always by the window].

voloptuous and languid she sits
nervously naked
her small plump tits
anxiously peek from behind

a creamy vanilla arm
like an elephant tusk
[the reflection
of dusk
in her eyes]

rapunzel, rapunzel
open your locks
and push down the door
the renaissance clock

just struck [a
concrete black] four
and it's ticking
[pecking at your
hear-no-evil ears]

a cancer eating away
at your coarse
haughty fears

that raspberry robe shrouds
the truth, my dear--
your shame is evident.

it’s clear [you are
no chaste care
-free Eve]

your gaudy depiction
cannot deceive
the dry-ice in
your optic cones.

that robust torso
nurses a secret
walled in black
and packed
in forest green,

and the corpulent
clouds wait for
you

[forever entrapped behind
a frame].

[Virgil]

Wow!!! Three great entries already. I can already see this is going to be a hard one to judge.

[Psycheinaboat]

I love to write, but lack confidence in my poetry. Here is my honest try. The letter in my poem refers to the paper lying next to the model in the painting.

*****

Beauty read the letter today,
It robbed her of her smile.
Her glow remained,
And eyes sustained
The musings of my soul.


Deep mocha eyes
That looked about
The hazy country side,
Fell upon her reflection
And tragically she cried.

My love and mirth
Were not enough
To maintain foolish pride
That tries to force its will upon
A heart refusing to abide.

I could not master
Beauty’s chasm,
Could not mend her broken heart.
When death came calling
Leaving me bereft, we had to part.

[Petrarch's Love]

I wanted to see how it looked on.
The fabric was the finest from the East.
With pearls of choicest luster sewn among
Swirls green like the earth and blue like the sky.
Indeed, the merchant told my lover
It was such cloth that when the ground was bare
And the sky grey I, his mistress, wearing this,
Would renew the color of the dead world.
My love believed and bought, and told to me
The nonsense, which I laughed at and loved him for.

I wanted to see how it looked on.
So I wrapped my long, loose hair in the cloth
And gazed at a reflection of reflection
To contemplate the way the pearled border
Divided colored silk from silken hair,
All the while half thinking of my young duke,
And partly of the letter from my sister
(Whose husband never bought her such fine gifts).
I did not see my beauty then but felt it.
Sometimes I felt it in the urgent press
Of the Duke’s body against my own,
But also when I sat alone I felt it
In the glow of my youthful blood and in
The strength of my young body. I did not see
My own beauty (that was just me, nothing novel);
I saw the beauty of the silk and pearls.
Delighting in my present, I forgot
The eyes of the aged painter looking on,
Over four score years, grey bearded, slow,
And hired by my love, the Duke Alfonso who
Wanted to see how I looked on canvas.

Because the artist looked like my old grandfather,
Looked drained of manly vigor to my eyes,
And waked no spark of passion in my pulse
My naïve self assumed no lust in his eyes,
Assumed his pulse a chaste paternal beat.
(If I knew then what I know now of old men!)
That is how it came that I forgot,
As women never can with young men,
That the old painter’s eyes were on me,
And that is how he asked me to pause
As I admired my new coif, and how he stopped
My movement, stopped my hand, stopped my breath,
Stopped my pulse, and kept all of me still
For everyone to see and none to feel.

[ktd222]

Here's my entry:

Even the eyes transcend a momentary cause…
a haze, as if the vast boundlessness
of fields were her.

(It would seem so)

The way the bedclothes slid away
and left her body bare,
a peach-touched texture,
nonspecific, gaining softer
against the soft lit air,

or how the greenery and sky
uplifts her hair, caressing softly
there and there.

She, like an Atmosphere of Land in part,
beside a bedroom abrupt and distinct

(in me)

[white camellia]

Dear friend Camillaa, my heart with you to win :

My heart smiles with your words, my tender!

And Riesa, thank you so much for your comment!

And Virgil, your epic is possessed of certain grandeur, like your name! Congrats!

Up to now these portrayals of this beautiful lady are all amazing and the one from k222 is very enticing with the ending words "in me" and it gives a feeling of the spontaneity of emotions, denseness of beauty.

Good luck to all the excellent poets!

[rabid reader]

Just wondering when the decision is going to be made.

[Confusecius]

this is short and soulful but rather rough.


The Muse

There sits she, by the window, nude,
'Tis her source of primal capers,
And if you examine to the right of her a**,
You'll lay eyes on her rolling papers.

There sits she, with tiny mirror in hand,
Her countenance couldn't be kinder,
It's surprising to see that she is not blonde,
As she didn't see the large one behind her.

There sits she, wearing naught but her curtains,
Her hair draped where clothing is not,
Onlookers have grown quite accustomed to this,
This lady goes nude quite a lot.

There sits she, in the pride of her womanhood,
Being immortalized by the artist Bellini,
Far into the future, with the ease of a keyboard,
Confusecius makes fun of her obscenely.


Do not take this seriously.

[Virgil]

Just wondering when the decision is going to be made.

Oh, I'm sorry. I was away for a bit. I'm now back. How about I choose the winner on Friday? This way any last minute entries will get a chance.

[smoothherb]

Hey there with your golden eyes
Will you come down to save me
Shall I be left here to die
While your comradz recruit
The obedient and the vain
Us with a lack of virtue
Must stand up to the pain
In your glass eyes I see no sympathy
Like you face was frozen by power
As I watch the ritous rise
Like a child holds up a flower
I guess they win the final prize
A life continued in heaven
The rest of us will die
forsaken here forever