Poetry Challenge for First Week of May

[annaswirls]

Hey Congratulations! This was a beautiful poem. And super congratulations for your ambitious task of taking on all of the participants poems.

All Hail Tzara!

Honeyguides-- Epmd: you need to buy the children's book: Honey Honey LION!!! a honeyguide is the main character of a great story

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.

 

[annaswirls]

Congratulations on a stellar poem, Remmie. Can
I call you Remmie?

:clapping:

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.

 

[annaswirls]

Tzara, thank you for reviving this poem- I had forgotten I had written. You really are masterful in the art. I do not know how you can keep bettering yourself. It is a little scary.

I just love the first line. It said what I would have said had I had half your talent, intellect and vocabulary. Seriously. Really resonated. Thank you

I know. I have too much time on my hands.

This one is based on a lovely and mysterious little poem by Ms. Swirls. I just took a couple of images from her poem and wrote something else. Hope that works in terms of the rules for the challenge.



Scut

If I could read Demotic, I wouldn't have to trace
the hawk-head bodies and writhing snakes
bitten into the gray stone
of your intentions. I could orient
by more than stars and a moistened finger
held aloft in your feathery breeze,
as if that ever tells me anything,
which it does not.

I'm no Champollion or Young
and only guess these hieroglyphics
mean just there or slower or yes please, now,
and however much I can divine

is surely more biology than reason,
just trying to keep up with a doe
scudding left and right through a pathless forest,
racing to where she wants to be.


.

 

[annaswirls]

ah you me and ee! Put us in a boat and call it the moon!

Really, a very tender poem you have written here, I really love how you played with my playing with cummings. My first poetic menage a trois, and such good company!

Anna: wholly to be a fool


another fool

I can’t say we’ve never touched.
We have, but not in a way
that sparks feelings and desires
and speaks those words best left unspoken.

When you cried that day
I longed to brush them away
first with fingers and then with kisses
but instead led with furtive backrub

and innocuous words.
I could see the words play
the word play within my dreams
but trembled myself awake

and away from you,
so you could not see the secret spot
I’ve hidden from you deep
within my soul.

Now I must hide my eyes,
my words,
so they cannot be taken out of context.
(Before the syntax lies to you, to me

since it’s you that offers my life
all its meaning.)
I must turn to that soft doubting place
where you can never be,

you can never know,
how much words mean so little to me
unless spoken softly by lips
pressed tight in that first kiss.

 

[annaswirls]

thanks for showing me how it is possible to rhyme my poems!
Well done!

I close my eyes
and carry you down aisles,
push your shopping cart for miles.

We used to pick berries from bushes
pinch blueberries 'til they burst,
here they sit uniform in boxes,
twice washed, thrice bundled

No more heathen berry prayers
offered to make you mine,
as the once great players
now queue in checkout lines.

.......................................................
AnnaSwirls' Source Material


I will close my eyes
and tell you what is mine.

This, your beauty I carry with me down aisles
calling for lost children, selecting
the box with the reddest of strawberries.

All of these are mine.

Not all berries, these berries.
Not all children, these children.
Not all of you, but this part of you only I hold.

Other lips may taste juices,
I see them on display,
but not these, not mine.

 

[annaswirls]

it is just cool to have someone play with my poem, thank you, very humbling.

loving the "...knock us down" part-- and it all feels right! Thank you for

.




brick walls are all well and good
for keeping things in
keeping things out
as points of start
and finish
but true to our nature
we remain static and endure
immovable even when we would move
remove ourselves as barriers
all we can do is wait
slowly crumble
shed the odd brick
and wait
hoping someone will come along and
knock us down
opening the way

 

[Tzara]

I guess Tzara wins again

Geez, Empd, you make that sound like it's a bad thing, and that is messin' with my self-worth and my ability to bond effectively to the group.

Not that, apparently, the group wants me to bond with them. I guess. *sniff*

Thank you, anyway.

I think this "winner" thing is bogus, personally, no offense intended. There were several very good poems.

'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.

That actually was not intended as an avian reference, but as an apian one, or at least a botanical one. I meant honeyguide (or as Wikipedia wants to make it, honey guide) to refer to the markings in a flower that guide insects toward the nectar (and get them also to pick up the pollen from the extended stamens). It's a simile I have used quite often to mean something like "wispy, streaky things pointing somewhere" (like clouds).

I learned the term from reading about Karl von Frisch's work on the vision of bees. Honeybees have a visual spectrum skewed (from a human perspective) toward the violet. They cannot see reds (i.e., can't distinguish red from, say, black), but can see ultraviolet pigments. Some flowers have honeyguide pigmentation that can only be seen (by humans) under ultraviolet fluorescence.

That bird thing is cool, though. Didn't know about that.

Please don't grade me down, though, for that, please.

Or do. Whatever.

 

[Tzara]

I thought this was a particularly interesting challenge. Certainly, for a challenge lasting roughly one week (I think it was a day or two over that), it produced something like 41 poems from 14 different poets, referencing poems (I think, all distinct source poems, but I didn't check that) by 16 different poets.

That's pretty good.

Some curious facts:

• Tess was the most inspirational poet (i.e., to crib/rewrite); six poems used her work as inspiration.
• chipbutty was next, with five. Anna, Champ, and UYS each had four poems riffed off of theirs.
• Guys apparently want to write about girls, but not so much the other way around--"guys" (always hard to be sure about who's which on the Internet) wrote 18 poems on "girl" sources. "Gals" (I am counting Palba as female, though I'm unsure about that--I didn't see any definitive statement in her/his profile about it) wrote only 5 poems based on guys' work, though they wrote 12 on poems by other women. In fact, guys wrote 6 poems, based on other guys's poems, despite there being more female participants than male participants (8 F/6 M).
• On the output side, you have chipbutty writing 5, Fool and Tess writing 4 each.
• I think everyone except for eagleyez had at least one poem written off their work, and he joined so late that the window of opportunity was likely too narrow for someone to riff off one o'his.

Anyway, as I said, that was a cool challenge. Thanks, Empd!

 

[Epmd607]

Everyone likes a winner, Tzara. Too bad everyone else has to be last place losers! J/k and all that.

I think Palba is a guy from other conversations I've heard from them. Palba do you have a P or a V?

Chipbutty's play off of AnnaSwirls reminds me of Edwin Markham.

He drew a circle that shut me out —
Heretic, rebel, a thing to flout.
But Love and I had the wit to win:
We drew a circle that took him in.


Tess and AnnaSwirls crush(possibly incestuous) poems were excellent, made me sad for young girls and their broken girl-hearts.

 

[butters]

i loved this challenge. really. it didn't feel at all competitive or anything, just simply fun!

there were a few poets whose works i did read but didn't have the desire to touch (they were so right just as they are) or the time/quiet to riff off them with any complacency once i have this puter upstairs and am able to shut myself into a haven of peace, it'll be different. but sometimes it seems churlish to do stuff to a poem that seems so complete. oh, you know what i mean. plus i wish i'd had more time to write more. is there a thread dedicated to this sort of thing here already?

and yay for Tzara and Remec!! some superb writing here all round, people.

 

[butters]

Everyone likes a winner, Tzara. Too bad everyone else has to be last place losers! J/k and all that.

I think Palba is a guy from other conversations I've heard from them. Palba do you have a P or a V?

Chipbutty's play off of AnnaSwirls reminds me of Edwin Markham.

He drew a circle that shut me out —
Heretic, rebel, a thing to flout.
But Love and I had the wit to win:
We drew a circle that took him in.


Tess and AnnaSwirls crush(possibly incestuous) poems were excellent, made me sad for young girls and their broken girl-hearts.

hey, you made me go look him up! introduced me to another poet, so thankyou

 

[Epmd607]

hey, you made me go look him up! introduced me to another poet, so thankyou

Markham occupies that weird space that Whitman managed to avoid. Markham isn't as popular because of how overtly nationalistic and socialistic he was in much of his writing. Markham and Melville the Nationalist poets.

 

[Algonquin Twit]

A couple of days late... and with apologies to Tristesse

My stuff's here Have at it. Gloves off, swords unsheathed, leave the bodies where they fall - oh, and have fun.

I unwrite "Charcoal on Paper"


To the Edge of a Pearly World

Where waves steal onto the boat
in black clouded slivers of wet
a morning sea yearns for the blue
unclouded skies, still hopeful
he reaches for the uneaten fruit
but, distracted by the dark curve
of a breast, finds warm grays
and black, her smoothly soft thigh.

They could burn again, a sip
spread in languid liquid, kiss
as fingertips mold to a face -
a memory of what was once
a fine dust floating in the light
the remaining grit smeared
on her cheek, her eyes dreaming:
charcoal on an empty page.


AT

 

[CharleyH]

Excellent challenge EPM. I am always awed at the ease with which certain poets write, and not just poetry, but DAMN GOOD poetry! Admirable. I will always be awed, me thinks. This being said, I loved reading every original poem and every re-imagining. Everyone is a winner imo, but congrats to THE ONE (Tzara™) . Fab in every way.

 

[PandoraGlitters]

Excellent challenge EPM.

What Charley said I totally ditto. *snaps*

And welcome, Algonquin!

 

[CharleyH]

What Charley said I totally ditto. *snaps*

And welcome, Algonquin!

And yes. WELCOME, Algonquin.

 

[GuiltyPleasure]

Some curious facts:Tess was the most inspirational poet (i.e., to crib/rewrite); six poems used her work as inspiration.

Many thanks to those six.

Anyway, as I said, that was a cool challenge. Thanks, Empd!

....add my thanks too, Empd, great idea for a challenge. Thank you Tz for your "Coles Version".