Poetry Challenge for First Week of May

[EroticOrogeny]

Didn't get to mine today - hope to have it up tomorrow.

 

[Tzara]

Unrhymed, odd reimagining of Boo's (quite excellent) Scrying:

What I Saw in the Magic Water

All I saw was a tree, its low limbs feet
tucked deep in the earth,
as if to warm them. The tree's boughs
were arms who wanted me,
wanted to clasp me in their spindled length.
But I crouched low
and evaded them.

I don't want to live alone in the forest,
with all those trees
crowding me,

as if they want me also to turn tree
and root.


​

 

[Tzara]

done in distraction and far lesser poem but here and done and enjoyed looking for this and hoping for more

Nature

fresh from shower
I bend over

the word "willow" may be written
into your poetry tonight

my body will become slender trunk
perhaps my hair the leaves that
hang low to kiss the water

or perhaps
it will be all scarred bark
and witches sea weed mane

I cannot remember how we left things
Did I nag about the forgotten
red peppers or did I remain soft,
changing the menu without a word.

your eyes narrow their gaze
from my
navel down
matted moss.

Foucault swings Mobius
twists still you are nature
and must stalk.




nature
by Tzara©

fresh from shower
you bend over

a willow seeking out the sun
with a graceful arc of trunk

long hair hung low
like netted branches dipped to water’s flow

and there, in fork of limb,
that dark bit, that damp moss

such beauty should be contemplative
but i am also nature

i am animal
and must i stalk

Gawrsh.

That made me sit up and bark, anyway.

 

[Tzara]

OK, OK. With my ineptly riffing off Angeline's lovely poem Being There by Chance, I think I've managed to Tzarize™ everyone who placed their poems, explicitly or implicitly, in range of my rewriterliness.

Whew! Good poems, people!

Oh, yeah. My crippled take on Ms. A:

Seasons, Fate, Equations

I wouldn't know about spring, being
always winter, burying
saplings and small animals

in my random irritation,
as if I never cared about beauty,
let alone truth.

Somehow, though, beauty always wins,
because bees are drawn to her, fascinated
by nectar and honeyguides

and the call of pollen
packed thick along their legs,
so although it is verboten

for an icy god to love,
I do love, I do, in my own remorseless way,
from the backside of the equinox

that divides us
as if it was somehow Kepler
who calculated how to keep us two apart.


​

My apologies to all o' you for my often clumsy reimaginings. I plead timeframe constraints and lack of talent.

Great fun, though. Loved y'alls poems.

I think I'll rest my fingers now, though.

 

[GuiltyPleasure]

At ten past four,
a birth of happiness
a gasp of breath, and blue eyes
that gaze out
while wrapped in fuzzy
cocoon and glory, always near.

A gift of brilliance
or of genetics brings low
the joy of a treasure
not yet uncovered but soon
the spark will ignite
the fast flame of high
metabolism to make legs
too thin and cheeks
drawn but that smile
creates melody.


One grandmother notes
in a quick drawn letter
of passing practicality,
"The child must learn
to find a middle ground"
bipolar windings run in the family

To always have that joyous
burden of talent that at last
erupts with budding breasts
and then to find the calm,
so this fire burns eternal.

Inspired by Tess2's Jacqueline Du Pre 1945 –87.

Lovely, thanks Carrie. (only just caught this)

 

[GuiltyPleasure]

My inspiration was Stir Fry Tank Top by Tzara


Steamed rice noodles

That's how my breasts feel
against silk as I lift my chop sticks

eyes already starting to digest him.
Sizzle is too cool for this moment

but they’re making law bak go so
we lock toes and nod twice across our table

to the pretty girl with the trolley.

 

[Tzara]

My inspiration was Stir Fry Tank Top by Tzara


Steamed rice noodles

That's how my breasts feel
against silk as I lift my chop sticks

eyes already starting to digest him.
Sizzle is too cool for this moment

but they’re making law bak go so
we lock toes and nod twice across our table

to the pretty girl with the trolley.

Ow! I think that poem burned my tongue, Ms. Tessie.

It burned something, anyway.

 

[GuiltyPleasure]

Ow! I think that poem burned my tongue, Ms. Tessie.

It burned something, anyway.

The original raised my temp., fair dos Mr T.

(that sounds so wrong in the light of The A Team)

 

[eagleyez]

rip rap off Tess...

like a melon, that is, the sound
you droped like a ragdoll
slap across that cement edged walkway.

my arm my arm-you kept sayin, and that
thing just clickety clacked when you rose it about,
dirt in the bones.

my breath blows bubbles in my chest,
im cut within.
ribs crunched front and back.

with the last crash of the fall,
after my chest had flailed
and my arm broke up,
i snapped my forehead
onetime. crack.

The mark looks oddly
Like a lotus.

 

[annaswirls]

I want to play with this poem but it is too delicious and I am afraid I will get it wrong. Posted here as placekeeper maybe I will be brave enough to try.

Devilish, Naked, Uneducated
by bflagsst©

Eve, you're naked.
You're unconditional.
He didn't make you,
you made you devilish you.

The first night I told you your hair was red,
but I was uneducated. If I only knew
I wouldn't have sided with the other animals,

I would have taken you and kissed you
irrespective of the silly old man.

The other animals missed you when you left.

 

[butters]

This has interested me since you wrote it. I was considering replying in verse, but considered that to almost be a thread jack, since it would almost become a dialog. I may yet reply in verse, just not here.

that's cool, fool
if you get around to it, i'm sure it'll make for interesting writing. *nods*

 

[butters]

From Chipbutty's post

You bit the line close to the knot
Later we got lost on the highway

You put aside your ember glow
The quarters in your pocket are now in mine

Lofty black sounds made the city people dance
Wily wary watchful smart baring teeth, cutting string

The grey dog rests; the best breeze blows
Let me ask you a question, has day erupted from her dress?

Experience lifts the mists, liars see the glass
Does your love enmesh laughter?

Thin the mist and see me lost on the highway
Does the ember erupt from your pocket?

Throw your quarters in a grand parade
Seven is a better number, agree?

ha! i recognise each nod, Pablo!

Sorry, I can't keep this thread open indefinitely. Once AnnaSwirls posts her poem I'll likely comment on a bunch and then be done with it. A good challenge should have a beginning and an end. Plus, I don't want anyone's poems to get all rotten and moldy sitting around here for months.

mouldy poem shtink. truth

Didn't get to mine today - hope to have it up tomorrow.

i hope you get it posted, EO

 

[CharleyH]

A Bumpy Road

Ripped straight from the heart of UYS's: A Bumpy Ride and with attempt at Annikey.

"Fasten your seat belts. It's going to be a bumpy night."
From All About Eve, Margo Channing (Bette Davis)

"Excuse me, Mister, the bones. You won't be wanting the bones?"
From Waiting for Godot, Samuel Beckett

Some conjure music, scents, tastes, but what really means to me
is the arrival of a train and a trip to the moon
the difference between realism and reality
millions of images glued to moments never lived then, or again
but lived, in happy frame of friends on arthouse roof, atop the city

Now and whens align, as do sun to earth and howling moon
yet the texture of night, loosely framed, returns time and again.
The ethereal taste of avocado means little to me,
but when the fruit dangles from tree in certain light, that's reality.
We cluttered rooftops, flirting. Swirling smoke above the city.

Non-synchronous strings of orchestras collapse reality,
a look, a gaze, an erotic glance, change friendships, life, change me.
The sound of the thing pales to the silence - rewind, record again -
silence deafens music , like fires fading off Orion's moon.
Eventually, a man climbs a pole and blots out light in the city.

Old whore-house, year-end laughter, cabaret in centre city,
Pink Ladies and Black Russians dance, a stolen kiss enlivens me.
Stage alights burlesque, Technicolor fades from my reality,
millions of moments come and go, lived and never again
such is the world, says Shakespeare, and so such is the moon.

We lived in Levi cut-offs frayed, moving karoke lips. Again, again, again.
The comings and goings of Godot, a mere fraction of reality,
charading Stockard Channing and ding-da-ding-dinging Blue Moon.
Stage, theatre, Beckett, Genet and '93, really mean to me.
We danced, we drank on patios, dreaming of bright lights, big city.

 

[GuiltyPleasure]

Wow Charley! That's terrific! I never did master Annie's form (she won't keep still long enough)

 

[CharleyH]

Wow Charley! That's terrific! I never did master Annie's form (she won't keep still long enough)

I doubt I did, either, Tess. I noticed too late that I didn't follow her rules, exactly. I gave it my best, though, and came up with a poem I like a lot, and that's what matters to me. lol Thank you.

 

[CharleyH]

My inspiration was Stir Fry Tank Top by Tzara


Steamed rice noodles

That's how my breasts feel
against silk as I lift my chop sticks

eyes already starting to digest him.
Sizzle is too cool for this moment

but they’re making law bak go so
we lock toes and nod twice across our table

to the pretty girl with the trolley.

Love it! Playful, fun and who can deny adoring the line, 'but they’re making law bak go so'

 

[CharleyH]

Bumpity, bump.

 

[EroticOrogeny]

Allies

Riffing off Tess' marvelous Allegience, with perhaps some counterpoint to her point.

We each stumble in alone
sit in sullen sorrow
old friend now a foe
Head hurts, hide in corner,
helpless hollow haze;
know no one

Smiling face approaches
hand out, gives his name;
guides me to group of guys
Smoking, joking, swilling coffee
laughter follows story of past problems.

Head of table asks if newcomers.
Weak hand held up
numbly my name escapes
admit possible problem; powerless.
But I manage my life,
make it too work most Mondays.

Afterwards a few fellows find me
suggest I stay sober a single day
just for today, just for myself/

Days draw into weeks, months and more
a day at a time.

 

[annaswirls]

I loved this one by Tess! I had such a crush on my older cousin, this poem took me right back there! So grateful for this challenge, I got to read and re-read so many great ones!

Another Crush

First time I saw an apple
peeled in one long piece
twisting from his pocket knife he
was working my daddy's farm
over Spring Break.

I christen you
"Rapunzel, Princess of Produce"
he laughed as he placed the curl
over my pixie cut.

Strutting the linoleum
catwalk flaunting my new
hairdo for him, I imagined the day
he would come back for me,
surprised by the new curves
under my sundress and the long curls
hanging soft over my shoulders. "Look at you
all grown up" he would say,

the time I would be the one
peeling the first fruit.




Crush
by Tristesse2©

I was eight and he
could peel an apple
in one long piece,
a curl that drifted down
between his knees.
He draped it in my hair,
smiling, "Now you have a curl".

Crisp white flesh sliced to share.
"A bite for you,
a bite for me."
but it was the green and yellow
curl I cherished, lifted
from my hair that night
and hung to dry
slowly twisting in the air.
Long after he'd gone
back to Arizona,
I could smell apple again,
hear his laugh and long
to be seventeen too.

 

[UnderYourSpell]

Ripped straight from the heart of UYS's: A Bumpy Ride and with attempt at Annikey.

"Fasten your seat belts. It's going to be a bumpy night."
From All About Eve, Margo Channing (Bette Davis)

"Excuse me, Mister, the bones. You won't be wanting the bones?"
From Waiting for Godot, Samuel Beckett

Some conjure music, scents, tastes, but what really means to me
is the arrival of a train and a trip to the moon
the difference between realism and reality
millions of images glued to moments never lived then, or again
but lived, in happy frame of friends on arthouse roof, atop the city

Now and whens align, as do sun to earth and howling moon
yet the texture of night, loosely framed, returns time and again.
The ethereal taste of avocado means little to me,
but when the fruit dangles from tree in certain light, that's reality.
We cluttered rooftops, flirting. Swirling smoke above the city.

Non-synchronous strings of orchestras collapse reality,
a look, a gaze, an erotic glance, change friendships, life, change me.
The sound of the thing pales to the silence - rewind, record again -
silence deafens music , like fires fading off Orion's moon.
Eventually, a man climbs a pole and blots out light in the city.

Old whore-house, year-end laughter, cabaret in centre city,
Pink Ladies and Black Russians dance, a stolen kiss enlivens me.
Stage alights burlesque, Technicolor fades from my reality,
millions of moments come and go, lived and never again
such is the world, says Shakespeare, and so such is the moon.

We lived in Levi cut-offs frayed, moving karoke lips. Again, again, again.
The comings and goings of Godot, a mere fraction of reality,
charading Stockard Channing and ding-da-ding-dinging Blue Moon.
Stage, theatre, Beckett, Genet and '93, really mean to me.
We danced, we drank on patios, dreaming of bright lights, big city.

Wowwwwwww I am gobsmacked in fact my gob has never been so smacked!!

I loved this one by Tess! I had such a crush on my older cousin, this poem took me right back there! So grateful for this challenge, I got to read and re-read so many great ones!

Another Crush

First time I saw an apple
peeled in one long piece
twisting from his pocket knife he
was working my daddy's farm
over Spring Break.

I christen you
"Rapunzel, Princess of Produce"
he laughed as he placed the curl
over my pixie cut.

Strutting the linoleum
catwalk flaunting my new
hairdo for him, I imagined the day
he would come back for me,
surprised by the new curves
under my sundress and the long curls
hanging soft over my shoulders. "Look at you
all grown up" he would say,

the time I would be the one
peeling the first fruit.




Crush
by Tristesse2©

I was eight and he
could peel an apple
in one long piece,
a curl that drifted down
between his knees.
He draped it in my hair,
smiling, "Now you have a curl".

Crisp white flesh sliced to share.
"A bite for you,
a bite for me."
but it was the green and yellow
curl I cherished, lifted
from my hair that night
and hung to dry
slowly twisting in the air.
Long after he'd gone
back to Arizona,
I could smell apple again,
hear his laugh and long
to be seventeen too.

I looooooooove both of these so evocative perfect just perfect

 

[GuiltyPleasure]

I loved this one by Tess! I had such a crush on my older cousin, this poem took me right back there! So grateful for this challenge, I got to read and re-read so many great ones!

Another Crush

First time I saw an apple
peeled in one long piece
twisting from his pocket knife he
was working my daddy's farm
over Spring Break.

I christen you
"Rapunzel, Princess of Produce"
he laughed as he placed the curl
over my pixie cut.

Strutting the linoleum
catwalk flaunting my new
hairdo for him, I imagined the day
he would come back for me,
surprised by the new curves
under my sundress and the long curls
hanging soft over my shoulders. "Look at you
all grown up" he would say,

the time I would be the one
peeling the first fruit.

Perfect, thank you.

 

[Epmd607]

Stigmatized

The pain along my temple
pulses a rhythym to match
the blow you struck my chest;

You never seem to aim
directly for the heart, but your
near strikes are enough to
arc my back and make
hand and foot fold themselves
about their rivets;

Anchored in place, I no longer
stagger under the weight of you,
or the devotion I still maintain,
but simply abide..shallow breath,
sour taste in my mouth,
and questions I cannot bring
myself to ask.

inspired by I bear on my body the marks of... by bflagsst​

-----

I think I've read everyone's poems twice now. Remec is the Runner-up. He really plays well with the original poem, if they were side by side you might think they were written by the same hand for a garland or something.

In my next post I'll uncover the first place winner of the Poetry Challenge for First Week of May.

 

[Epmd607]

OK, OK. With my ineptly riffing off Angeline's lovely poem Being There by Chance, I think I've managed to Tzarize™ everyone who placed their poems, explicitly or implicitly, in range of my rewriterliness.

Whew! Good poems, people!

Oh, yeah. My crippled take on Ms. A:

Seasons, Fate, Equations

I wouldn't know about spring, being
always winter, burying
saplings and small animals

in my random irritation,
as if I never cared about beauty,
let alone truth.

Somehow, though, beauty always wins,
because bees are drawn to her, fascinated
by nectar and honeyguides

and the call of pollen
packed thick along their legs,
so although it is verboten

for an icy god to love,
I do love, I do, in my own remorseless way,
from the backside of the equinox

that divides us
as if it was somehow Kepler
who calculated how to keep us two apart.


​

My apologies to all o' you for my often clumsy reimaginings. I plead timeframe constraints and lack of talent.

Great fun, though. Loved y'alls poems.

I think I'll rest my fingers now, though.

I guess Tzara wins again

Angeline and Tzara both manage to play well with TS Eliot. TS Eliot seems to be the most quoted/befriended poet around here these days. Pollen, Kepler, Equinox, Verboten are good words to use in any poem, and possibly four words to make up a future challenge. 'Honeyguides' is the most obscure avian reference in a Literotica poem I've seen so far. I thought he was just mating two words for a bit o' that surrealism, but I looked it up on the Inter-nets.

 

[Angeline]

OK, OK. With my ineptly riffing off Angeline's lovely poem Being There by Chance, I think I've managed to Tzarize™ everyone who placed their poems, explicitly or implicitly, in range of my rewriterliness.

Whew! Good poems, people!

Oh, yeah. My crippled take on Ms. A:

Seasons, Fate, Equations

I wouldn't know about spring, being
always winter, burying
saplings and small animals

in my random irritation,
as if I never cared about beauty,
let alone truth.

Somehow, though, beauty always wins,
because bees are drawn to her, fascinated
by nectar and honeyguides

and the call of pollen
packed thick along their legs,
so although it is verboten

for an icy god to love,
I do love, I do, in my own remorseless way,
from the backside of the equinox

that divides us
as if it was somehow Kepler
who calculated how to keep us two apart.


​

My apologies to all o' you for my often clumsy reimaginings. I plead timeframe constraints and lack of talent.

Great fun, though. Loved y'alls poems.

I think I'll rest my fingers now, though.

I love it! It's me and not me. You've done a wonderful job of conveying something essential about each poet you've "tzara-ized." The poems present a fascinating mix of the original author and you. Well done (as usual).

Darn, but I wish I weren't in the midst of unpacking boxes and trying to figure out what goes where. I need to get back to the poems, and I will soon!

 

[annaswirls]

so wonderful to read you again!

rip rap off Tess...

like a melon, that is, the sound
you droped like a ragdoll
slap across that cement edged walkway.

my arm my arm-you kept sayin, and that
thing just clickety clacked when you rose it about,
dirt in the bones.

my breath blows bubbles in my chest,
im cut within.
ribs crunched front and back.

with the last crash of the fall,
after my chest had flailed
and my arm broke up,
i snapped my forehead
onetime. crack.

The mark looks oddly
Like a lotus.