Right, the deadline is tomorrow. I'll be out pretty much all day and can't guarantee being back home until about 10-11pm. So get them in before that and I'll post in this thread to say that I'm not taking any more entries tomorrow night. I'll make the deadline 23:00 tomorrow.
Right, the deadline is tomorrow. I'll be out pretty much all day and can't guarantee being back home until about 10-11pm. So get them in before that and I'll post in this thread to say that I'm not taking any more entries tomorrow night. I'll make the deadline 23:00 tomorrow.
Sorry - is that the 8th of November or today? The time difference makes it a little hard to calculate.
Hahahaha, **** it. I still haven't written anything down and there's no way I'll be writing anything soon. No idea why they changed the deadline in the first place, a week is ******* nothing.
Hahahaha, **** it. I still haven't written anything down and there's no way I'll be writing anything soon. No idea why they changed the deadline in the first place, a week is ******* nothing.
littleshambles and sleekchic, don't worry too much about making your poems publishable or anything like that. Personally, I'm just using this as practise, and I think everyone else here is too. Getting the knack of having an idea down and then editing it is a useful thing to cultivate!
Saying that, mine could use some alterations, but I'm still keen to see what everyone else has written already.
Hahahaha, **** it. I still haven't written anything down and there's no way I'll be writing anything soon. No idea why they changed the deadline in the first place, a week is ******* nothing.
Originally Posted by sleekchic
The reason for shortening the deadline is above: there is no point waiting around if all the entries are in (since a week is plenty of time). The offer of waiting a bit longer to allow everyone who wishes to enter a fair chance to do so is also above.
The reason for shortening the deadline is above: there is no point waiting around if all the entries are in (since a week is plenty of time). The offer of waiting a bit longer to allow everyone who wishes to enter a fair chance to do so is also above.
A week is plenty of time for some but not all, besides it generally takes me a while to write poetry and even then it's still crap so there's no point extending the deadline for me, it doesn't seem fair on the others but shambles might feel otherwise.
Whilst changing the original dealine by an entire week does seem a little harsh, I think a week is plenty of time; and as DisgruntledMoth said, this isn't exactly a professional contest, far from it. If you intend to enter a competition that gives you two weeks and you don't write anything until the end of the second week, then that's not really much different to having only had one week in the first place. Plus, the deadline was changed a few days ago, not this evening, so it wouldn't have been hard to check for updates.
Here they all are. They're in completely random order. A couple of people have asked to stay anonymous, so if these people happen to come in the top 3 I'll simply say 'anonymous'. I've cut out all titles because the title is 'Escapism' for every poem.
Eighteen people have entered so the same number are eligible to vote. I'll leave it one week until Sunday 15th November, or until everyone votes, before I announce the top 3.
Please vote for up to 3 poems, in order from favourite to third favourite.
e.g. 1 - Poem X, 2 - Poem Y, 3 - Poem Z.
You can only vote if you entered. Don't vote for yourself. Don't vote until you've read them all.
In 1926, after a tiresome day
being buried alive,
Harry Houdini attended a tremendous
funeral.
His late uncle's wife,
bright-eyed and red-faced,
asked if he would adopt
His late uncle's bird.
It was a small, yellow body of feathers.
Blue-wild-eyed, with a vague face,
like a child.
Within weeks, the bird became
his shadow; they surrounded each other
Like concentric circles.
The bird watched over him
at night, at dinner. At work,
He was bagged, buried,
bottled and boxed.
Tied and re-tied.
Drowned, caged, cuffed.
Suspended.
The bird fled at night:
It was a silent escape.
The cage was locked; tight.
A hesitant yellow feather
had settled by the window.
When he saw the empty cage,
bright-eyed and red-faced,
he smiled.
(Of course, this is all absurd.
Harry Houdini died in 1926.
He never owned a bird.)
The longest day is ebbing
As night slips in like old age.
Ebbing to the clarity
I am not afraid to say
What I think here in this hole.
The vivid colours of Sky sets
Blend into one singular
Education. Heroic
Is the man not afraid
To say what he thinks, or live
In this hole hemmed by mortar.
How the tension never falters
In the tidy postcoded lives
Who all have sex stamped on the brain.
Oh, I love the life-high suburbs!
Nothing, no-one hides or pretends
That new-reg cars and patios
Are all a paid-for, receipted front.
This collision of long odds
Gave me life and page to fill.
I fill one with the other.
And that fills my vacuous brain.
I am a saint on these sepia
Streets. Lost, yet alive.
In this hole halogen halos
Expire to gasps in the stare
And gilt of the first sun rays.
I fantasise about cocaine
As sugar on my cornflakes
Today, I wake a dead man,
Fall into the kitchen; toast, butter,
phlegm yellow lemon curd
Leave not quite alive, but freshly microwaved
phone rings, leave it - no time, get the bus -
One station please, no change, big stress, sit down.
There she is. Awkwardly cast – more clay than marble -
Fuzzy legs bristle in the morning light.
Heavy, smeared glasses, she chews her lower lip. I want to say,
‘Marry me – you can be as ugly as you like, and I will never mind.
We can talk cars, Clarkson, Eliot, silence – anything.’
But sit there, send a text, check the time.
Get off at my stop, float deadly off,
Leaving still not living, but freshly microwaved.
Bus stop girl, for ten seconds, now,
I have been in love with you.
See me, hold me (gently), kiss me – marry me.
Be my wife, as I drift through this day,
This life.
(I should mention the unfortunate truth that she would
love me forever,
being unlikely to find someone better.)
Day unspent, conversations unhad.
Email unsent, quarter to four,
Wedding’s been had, you’re fatter than you were
Before – the house is bought, the rubbish put out.
End of the day, nothing achieved, rush home, all alone -
Just a wasted dream of a spectacled plumpling,
on this faintly blue October Monday.
Escapism is blue
Light flicks square from England windows tonight,
And does not blink
To wander through the supermarkets,
Giddy on a cigarette.
These are the lines that will hold you.
There is a puddle
And there is cold water in the sink;
There is a train and
There is your mother and father.
In a fit of inattention your left hand shifts to graze the desk,
and the unfinished work laid down,
all the paper strewn so haphazardly; ethics, history - how futile it seems.
Irrelevant, time is for now.
Decide to shirk responsibility and ignore the righteous issues,
the vexing talk of problems alien;
we'll be dead before it matters, so there is little need to confront such ills.
Why not waste time alone, in a dimly lit room?
With half an ear you listen to the irregular tap of hard chrome,
a companion to the maudlin hum of the seductive thing
a breadth from illicit, yet so typical.
How many hunch like this at night; bent low behind closed doors,
brows furrowed and dark faces made bright?
Illuminating options decked in pale, virtual squares,
aiding withdrawal and occupying the mind, the digits cease to tick.
Rapid clicks war against the patter of keys, to the next one and onwards
through this fantasy extension of the world, so infinite, addictive.
Where one can be kept awake, sleepless and searching,
trawling without aim through possibilities, for what?
It is 3 am, and the house is silent but for patient breathing and the incessant click.
On the internet,
I can dream my dreams,
I can bask in superiority,
I can be someone I'm not,
I can leave myself behind,
I can revel in intellect,
On the Internet.
All around the voices shout
I've tried at times to block them out
but as of now I have found
a place inside without sound
A peaceful, silent, warm retreat.
When it comes to the time I fear
and then i know that it is near
A place inside to hide away
and many times I wish to stay
in my silent, warm retreat.
Even now its tighter hold
never makes me feel this cold
I start to run before I find
A place to hide inside my mind,
in my warm retreat.
Six years ago today
I thought I was escaping.
I left my family
the doctors
the memory of raping.
Diagnosis colliding with dreams,
six years ago today
I became your extreme.
They said the pills would
cure me in a week's time.
Send the clouds back over the sea,
I’ll begin that great climb.
The whales, make my head
clear and free.
I am no longer
your devotee.
Now I’m anchored to the bottom
of the ocean; i can't hear the planes
false promises, hopes,
everything that my heart contains.
I can't see past the darkness, the cold
I’m holding my knees, I remind myself
that the whales cannot feel the breeze.
Send the clouds back over the sea,
the whales, make my head clear
and free.
I wished I could fly when I was a kid.
It seemed like a better class of transportation,
what with the added bonus of my mum not being able to catch me
and the inevitable uses this would have when taking an extra sweet
from the communal sweetie jar.
I didn't want a toy wheel in the car,
so i could look like i was driving (although it was tempting)
I knew that it wouldn't get me far.
So while my imagination was thriving,
as it tends to when you are young and sweet
and have no idea what the words '**** off' and 'bastard pigeons' mean,
I dreamt of soaring above the clouds, free as a bird, with little wings
to propel me forwards through the air.
I honestly did think in the end
that if I wished really hard,
- provided my brother really did drive me round the bend,
That I'd sprout wings and take off with only a card
to tell my mum where I'd gone off to.
It would have been good.
I'm older now,
I have a job in finance, a nice house and a little family,
a real car with a toy wheel for my daughter to play with
because she really wants to drive for me.
I look at her sometimes, and sigh in a sentimental fashion,
and remind myself to take her on a plane one day.
Even now, I close my eyes when I step off the kerb,
just hoping.
Smoke until your lungs are full
Puff until the senses dull
Blue clouds float gently in the breeze
Till a single breath chokes your throat
Eyes grow misty and ears stay put
Mind stretches infinite on cosmic stilts
The scent of poppy fields on Venus
A timeless nightingale screams in the void
You return for the body on the bench
Pleading and begging it will not follow
Strength and spirit waver, you take your seat once more
Soul chained and bound the door dissapears
The way is shut
There is never lasting escape, only temporary
Until next time, the way is shut
In a pub on the North Shore, a war veteran savours the taste
of ale on his gums,
and it’s like victory to him.
He’ll go to see his wife in hospital soon,
knowing she won’t remember
every line in his face like she always used to do
Two boys kick a football to and fro,
The streetlamps light up their ashen faces
dirty from the night before.
They long to be like their heroes.
Nearby, a prostitute sidles in the gutter, shooting the moon.
Pretty, once, and she still is in a way.
She plotted hopes on a near horizon,
now only Heaven is closer.
He said he would always love her.
The blood adorns the walls,
covering pictures of her children,
the day she said “I do”, she curses.
and sobs herself to sleep, and in her mind’s eye
she says adieu.
But she can’t dream forever.
A couple stroll along the promenade,
taking snap-shots as the tide eases in.
Their breath rises in the wintry fog,
stretching like a phoenix beyond the tower lights….
Post your poems, artwork, graphics, photographs etc, or others' works (must be credited).
Re: Poetry Competition: 'Escapism'
go procrastination...
Managed to rush through one I'd been thinking about for some time.
'.
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