[HalcyonSpirit]

Is anyone actually planning on submitting this round, or should we move on to the next?

[Jax Mandrake]

It would appear that nobody is feeling particularly poetic lately...

I wrote a new verse for an old Frank Zappa song, but I don't know if it would qualify for submission (or whether I shouldn't try to assemble a band and get it recorded).

[Mirby]

I wrote a story, but since it's not a poem...

Here, I'll write a quick limerick.

There once was a writing contest,
All would choose which was best,
But nobody wrote,
Not even a note,
That was the start of a quest.
---
PART 2!
---
A man wandered all over the land,
Searching for writers at hand,
He found a few,
And formed a crew,
And the contest was saved by his band!

[AlmightyArceus]

Is there a particular theme I have to follow for the round?

[HalcyonSpirit]

No, but you only have a few days left to submit if you're going to. Submission ends on the 14th, and only because I don't want to see this competition wither and die; it should've ended on Nov. 30th. Regardless, we need two more submissions to even have a vote this round, and I'm too bogged down in job applications to even think about something to write. Not that I write poetry, anyway.

[A-RoN]

Hi! After a long hiatus from this site, I think I've found a place to submit some of my own works of poetry/spoken word which I've been using in my own music lately. Here's one for submission for this round:

Twenty-eight years on the planet Earth,
One simple mind that never strayed since birth!
My fingers have channeled many ideas through tools of creation,
Sketches, pianos, computers revolved 'round my vocation.
The crowd used to be my motivation,
Novelty was my only book of innovation,
After facing its fiestiness, a PA's sytem shutdown after broadcast,
Failing schoolwork and a youth that wouldn't last,
To hell and back for me was handcuffs to salvation,
Calvinism was my root while Hobbes checked my plantation,
Prideful piety challenged the service under a name,
The score used to be fun until my best friend added his own rules to the game.
I turn to new hope dodging what Koopa shells bring,
After a favoured jewel accepted someone else's ring.
It won't be just another year with distractions lurking,
After tasting every dish, I now feast on cold turkey!

[evory]

Not sure if there's going to be a competition in the end, and this is terribly rough, but here goes. I was stumped as to what to write about, so I decided to write about writing, and it somehow became a poem about the magic of books, revolving around a rather lame pun on the word 'spellbound' (you know, the physical binding on the book? Bind? Bound? Nevermind). Anyway.


Spellbound

There’s a sort of magic in a book
From that slight crease in the spine
As gentle as folded linen or skip of velvet
To aspirations of Japanese art
Where each and every touch marks a sculpture

A vehement proclamation
An almost animalistic urge to mark
One’s territory, the boundaries of knowledge
As proof of claim to the secrets within
Masked in the ridges of living ink

A strip of gloss and paper that connects
Imagination to reality, a dialogue between one
A link that defies the stamps and clichés
Almost as if it were forged from magic
We lie entranced, spellbound.

[AlmightyArceus]

So here's one of my original poems, entered for this month's competition. I'm new to the competition so I don't know how everything goes down, but hopefully this submission suffices.

Monochrome
Would you be able to touch shadows
or fade into the sunlight?
Would you be able to sit back
and watch the color fade from your life?
Would you try to touch the world,
expecting your hand to melt,
and come out unscathed?
Would you touch the wall
and fall right through,
or would the wall keep you in place?

There is much to observe
in that time between evening and night
where all is grey, and color
becomes a thing of the past, not the future.
For in monotone chromes we see
the truth set before us
in the most vivid and gaudy arrangement
ever to be created before.

Color is a hinderance.
Color distracts.
Color takes the forms of you
and turns it into something different.
Color makes the odd things matter
and throws the important things
to the grey space.
Color is the difference between us all.

Would you be able to live without pain?
Would you see lies as colors?
Would you be able to embrace the monochrome
or just fade into the facade of color?

[Jax Mandrake]

(Lack of) Original Thought

I spend a lot of time thinking these days.
There isn't much else to occupy my time or mind.

What thinking I do is not my own.

There is plenty to stimulate reaction,
but rarely is that reaction more than a tired joke,
and that joke was often written or spoken by someone else.

I am a semi-sentient cross-reference of humour.
(Debate amongst yourselves the truth of this statement.)
What emerges from my mouth,
whether or not my brain has seen fit to deem it appropriate,
would, had it been typed,
be accompanied by the name of somebody who thought of it before me.

Sometimes I do not know the reference's origin,
though it is clear that it is not my own thought I express.

Once in a while I think of something that I want to believe is original,
and perhaps it is,
but I do not pretend that I really am that clever.

I find my eyes rolling deep into my skull in response to one of the myriad television ads obviously designed to enthrall the stupid,
which I refer to as "dummercials."
(This is an example of my attempt at original thought,
which I cling to because someone else already came up with "badvertisements.")
I realize quickly that any sarcastic comment I could cough up is just a poorly-modified quip from the likes of Dennis Miller or George Carlin.

Strangely, I'm rarely clever enough to keep my mouth shut.

[HalcyonSpirit]

Voting period has begun! Got a bunch of last-minuters this time:

Unnamed Limerick by Mirby
Unnamed Poem by A-RoN
Spellbound by evory
Monochrome by AlmightyArceus
(Lack of) Original Thought by Jax Mandrake

Get your votes in by the end of the 30th. I mean it. You submitted, so vote, dagnabbit!