“Poetry is a deal of joy and pain and wonder, with a dash of the dictionary.” ~ Kahlil Gibran

                    INAUGURAL POETRY CHALLENGE WINNER

                    Definitions I Prefer

                    meas·ure:
                    a photographer,
                    his mistress.

                    touch:
                    two sleeping strangers,
                    a Greyhound bus.

                    pre·ma·ture birth:
                    a poet,
                    mother’s coffin.

                    time·less·ness:
                    chameleons,
                    a branch.

                    soothe:
                    aloe,
                    summer home.

                    hun·ger:
                    swirling fork,
                    empty plate.

                    pres·ence:
                    hurricane,
                    twelve dead.

                    song:
                    cobbled roads,
                    lover’s cart.

                    ho·li·ness:
                    morning fog,
                    reindeer antler.

                    weak·ness:
                    bodybuilder,
                    unshared bed.

                    tone:
                    wood,
                    pressed ear.

Poem written by www.yesorotherwise.tumblr.com

Selected by poet Allen Braden as the Inaugural Poetry Challenge Winner

Judge’s comment: “‘Definitions I Prefer’ was chosen for its innovation in taking a kind of list we are all familiar with (dictionary entries) and re-envisioning it into the form of a catalog, or list, poem. This poem also practices William Carlos Williams’ advice ‘No ideas but in things,’ what Samuel Taylor Coleridge warned against—‘the danger of thinking without images.’”

Advertisement

“Poetry is thoughts that breathe, and words that burn.” ~ Thomas Gray

INAUGURAL POETRY CHALLENGE FINALIST

*********************************************************

Of Time, In Time

You dare say everything is about time,
the precise ticking of interlaced hands, moving,
         trembling and skipping just to conquer a space

before it splits into structures, monuments,
and gestures, all crumpled into ambiguous sketches
from an aged comic, yellow, edges wrinkled,
         the intention of knowing and not knowing.

Still, I would dare speak of time as a little fixture in a wall
asking for a decoration, as the distilled calm that wraps
the earth and the sky minutes before dawn, as the eternity
found in the surface of a wide-eyed glance.

I would tell you that a day is a word devoid
of descriptions or affectations, that a moment
passes and ceases with consciousness. Time,
as it comes, is only the sudden, suspended motion
         of lifting your head before the needles fall

right into place,  to puncture you,
to devour you,                              if you would

give me melodies that seep through sound,
music created for the sake of music alone,
I would hang by its threads, humming and swinging

to the sound of cradles in a night powdered with sleep,
in the wake of familiar lullabies,                          would you

give me words that dispel all the traces
of an afterthought, talk to me across the gaps
of the walls in the street, and would I listen until the silence

starts to strangle my memories, until my memories
starts to strangle the silence,                           if you would

give me eyes that stare with a million shutters,
yet another million edges that inflict these incisions,
these convictions that reveal what I hide

in the slant of my lips. Then would I recognize you,
as the child buried in my imaginings,                 would you

give me time as you would give me everything
in time, although I could only offer you this acknowledgment,
this detachment, would you give up a moment to wait

for the inkling, the impulse, the action,
if time permitted it,  you and I might understand –
you and I would never be too old for anything we dare to be,
         in time.

Poem writtenby www.bluntvoidprototype.tumblr.com

“Poetry may make us from time to time a little more aware of the deeper, unnamed feelings which form the substratum of our being, to which we rarely penetrate; for our lives are mostly a constant evasion of ourselves.” ~ T. S. Eliot

This one is mine. Apparently, I cannot add an mp3 unless I buy the upgrade. Sorry. If you want to hear my reading, click on the link below. Thanks.

INAUGURAL POETRY CHALLENGE FINALIST

Heart’s Importunate Hunger

What you asked:

         What do you love? 

What I answered:

Moonlight on dark water,
the salty spray of the ocean on my cheeks,
fierce lightning and thunder and
the sonorous sound of the surf
Solitary walks in the summer rain
Overgrown woodland paths and
the earthy scent of fallen leaves and loam
Boxes of old photographs and cards,
dried lavender and rosemary for remembrance,
Bundles of faded letters from old lovers
and glossy images of country cottages
surrounded by wild vines of wisteria and Carolina jasmine
Mozart or Beethoven or Chopin’s etudes,
as the soundtrack to Sunday morning
with cups of strong hot tea
and French bread with butter

            More? 

So much more, yes, cathexis,
yearnings—imaginary and real—
contradictions, assembled, converging—
of what has made me:
The feel of paper beneath my fingers
as I turn the pages, and all of the words
of all the sages who ever lived—
Shakespeare and Tennyson,
Fitzgerald and Anaïs Nin 
Virginia Woolf and the rocks in her pockets
That certain smell just before the first winter snow,
the vapors from a horse’s nostrils on a winter morning
The trumpet of a train that cleaves the night
and torch songs that speak of unrequited longing

            What do you want? 

To fly like the red-winged blackbird,
leaving a narrow flash of crimson in my wake
and to bathe in the Castalian Spring
beneath a beggar’s moon
To sit by the shore in the gloaming
as grey mist descends, cloaking everything
except the plaintive refrain of a fog horn
echoing off the bay

           What do you need?

Truth before a lie
Poesy and prayer, unattainable grace,
solitude and silence, 
unfettered passion and
shameless tears of love and hate
The courage to stray
from what is known, what is certain
and enough faith to abide—
never to become
destiny’s unwitting victim or fate’s fool—
and the constancy to embrace
this confluence of unfulfilled longings.
These things I covet,
—crave as my own             
before the days run down
like a forgotten watch in a drawer.
These things I prefer.

Poem written and read by www.frenzyandlightning.tumblr.com

Photograph “White Moon on Black Water” and its rendering also by www.frenzyandlightning.tumblr.com