2016 ILX Poetry Competition

These were some of my favorite threads of the past few years. We have talented people on this board and I'd like to read some of what kinds of things they've been scribbling recently.

Rules: Copy and paste your best poems into this thread. In a few weeks we will vote on them.

I'd like to read some of what kinds of things see what

I've got nothing recent, but I am willing to metaphorically slice some onions until I cry. Or I could just toss up something ancient from the 70s.

old stuff is great. you are encouraged to submit anything you'd like, maximum of two entries per poet

circa 1978:

The Uncle’s Song

Infant, terrible in beauty,
sucking on my silver ring,
my uncle duty
is in your keeping.
You be uncle to yourself
and I your uncle-doll.
Or else I'll crawl,
be you grown big.
What do I know of uncle-ing,
the uncle-jig,
unless I suck my silver ring
and throw away my uncle wig,
disregarding
old, remembered uncle measures
I taught uncles at my leisure
when I was a terrible, beautiful child?
I'll be your uncle undefiled,
sweet niece mine,
new kind of girl,
the pearl of my silver ring.
That's my uncle song.

This "love" thing
Yeah i read about it in books
I seen a lot of films about this
I heard a whole bunch of songs
(I still use our Spotify list, that makes one of us)
Don't paint me as some sort of amateur
And YES, I am aware of the etymology of that word
All this time and you still underrate me
Mute me all you want, that's fine
Pretend it was an accident, that's fine
I WILL NEVER GET THE PICTURE
I AM NOT GOING AWAY
Run away from me, that's fine
HA! You'd have to run to California
Or at least, I donno, London or something
Oh wait
OK, you win

"Be the Malky to my Aidan"
I wrote that in a song for you once
But I don't think you got the reference
And you never asked for clarification
To be honest, in a way I'm wasted on you
A thousand haikus tossed to the wind
Along with all those paper cranes
I'm folding penguins from now on
No real reason, stubbornness I suppose
But you took "obtuse" as an insult
So now... I donno
(It was meant as a compliment, by the way)
I'll stop speaking now
Like, forever
Pretend it's for a bet or something
Here, have a penguin

One Weird Trick

Measure your pain like coffee grounds,
throw away what’s left;
hold on to yourself,
but sacrifice yourself;
live inside the chestnut of a cruel paradox,
but transcend it.

yay pweems!

Cheer For The Sociopath

He wears fancy shirts
and expensive suits
Never overt
at the opera concert
He fits right in
his flashy car
and handmade shoes
Smoking a cigar
at the casino bar
he's the kingpin

Such style and grace
when he's punching people
in the face
You admire his taste
as he lights a cigarette
You're dazzled by his flair
as he kicks someone
down the stairs
Beats them with a chair
without breaking a sweat

Michael Jackson

Poetry is the name we give
to words we want to dignify
or disparage,
depending on our context.

Michael Jackson’s lifespan overlapped with mine for twenty years.
I feel lost.
I want to dignify this feeling
by generalizing it.
It isn’t even me.
What I feel, more or less, is what my generation feels.

I half believe this,
which is more than I can say
for most of the things I say.

Concrete.
Concrete.
Back to matter --
sights and smells.
Sound is vapor.

Soft Focus

Life is like a sax solo
Blaring and pointless
Played at the end of a movie in an empty theater

... your life maybe

thoughtful criticism of the entries is welcome on this page, but dismissive comments are, i think, a bad idea.

aw I was only trying to get into the spirit of the thing! I wrote a longwinded response too but I didn't keep it :|

it was my aborted attempt at vaporwave shakespeare. eat it, snowy.

fresh off the keyboard:

A New Soliloquy

This poor assemblage of aches and urges,
dim thoughts and dimmer memories,
this round of countless days, months,
years, and sneezes unnumbered,
as lavish as the specks of pepper strewn
on fried eggs by the thousand, these
make up the messy details of my life.

Viewed so, and in this bleary mood,
I'm tempted to dismiss the whole
as some bug's life, spent uninformed,
full of motion and ending in cheap death.
Yet, I know this is not justice,
Not a fair appraisal, not the truth.
Jumbled in among the unemphatic bits
are the moments that redeemed me.

I do not speak of suffering, though
of a certainty I've suffered much.
That is just the mark of living within
the swirl and turmoil of this unsteady world,
where we must be wrenched to new shapes,
lest we perish like untutored bugs
who cannot bear the buffets we survive.
It changes our bearing but does not redeem.
It merely keeps us mindful of the truth.

Laugh now, because I speak of love,
Those moments when I put myself aside,
to enter a place of tenderness and giving,
the moments when my life has been a splendor
in spite of pain or grief or joy,
and whatever death may wait for me
forever after can't be counted cheap.
I share this glory with dogs and cows,
Who rise as high as we do in this matter,

Laugh now in sweetness of recognition.
This is the moment we have lived for.

I felt it again
The howling emptiness
in the parking lot of the Bounce U

And at the birthday party
I felt it in her too
When she stood in the corner, sure
That no one wanted to play with her

And in the pizza room
Among those parents, with whom
The same pleasantries exchange,
Never more than that

And in the endless documents
Of a midwestern pension fund
in transcripts
and spreadsheets
and half unoccupied bedsheets

And adjacent to you
On the grey couch
When you said
You couldn't cry around me
Though your grandmother was dead.

The howling emptiness
Bites sometimes
I'm sorry for that.

Yet somehow in the subway
Under the ground
In the bitter yellow light
Under the unacknowledging gazes
Of every one whom I'll never know,
I felt the terror of what
It must be like
No longer to exist

That was a nice surge of activity. I enjoyed that. It makes me want more poems to read, but I've exhausted my limit of two, so it will have to be someone else who pushes the ball ahead.

Deems? You there?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v--IqqusnNQ

Hi treezy I'm here and reading.

Your nose has stopped bleeding
But you've seen better days
And you're drunk on the wine you saved
In case of company
There's a cat on the sofa
But he leaves you alone
Because you're not the same person
Since you moved back home

So you kneel in the corner
Facing the wall
With the bible in Swedish
You stole from the hospital
You try hard to focus
And hum to yourself
Because there aren't any answers
But the ritual helps

And there's things left to say
But you're not going to call
Because Pride counts for something
And Truth most of all
A memorial tattoo
It didn't even hurt
But what would've happened
If manoeuvre X had worked

Nice! I love the rhyme scheme. The end of the first stanza definitely gave me chills the way perfect lines of poetry are supposed to

Really good imo

The flat affect contains hints of Larkin. A poem that can travel anywhere, be read by anyone. I've read it about five times now. Will probably read it another five and it will still work.

When you awaken you will be filled with a desire to post a poem to this thread!

(snaps fingers briskly)

The Plan

Just so you don’t think
there was no plan
and become somnolent with the pointlessness
of whatever; well there was- there was
such a plan! And it was God’s plan, which was to plan
a community- to spread out the streets
and the gutters
and the various fluids,
and to then let them be
self-governing through fear
and Pringles, the tension between
the orchestral and the fenestral,
the various and inexplicable screaming
in the dead of the night.

That part went all as planned,
so far, so good,
so pleasantly luminous
against the backdrop
of the tower of skulls-
which is of course where
we finally had to fuck
with the plan. The whole shebang
banged
against the hanging
Joe Namath, his bulging
ganglia, his golden
secretions. His secret cookies.
It was hard standing in the line
with the statues that became liquid
and the solitary mattress resplendent
with the single bawling Baronness
with the wandering eye. How she glittered
with illicit salts. How the trampolines lifted
angry virgins
to their final resting place
amongst the stars.

There was no planning this
fashion disaster. We had neither the films nor the sense
to abuse ourselves
properly. Nor the fiscal discipline. We now wanted to kill God,
possibly out of spite,
but his location was not
sufficiently obvious
to us. Had he planned this
as well? You cut yourself
off from the twittering mass
and tried to listen. The littlest voice
in your bread. The biggest sandwich. The most spiritualistic
of all the tuna salads. It was illiberal
to pander to your pottage
you proposed to your penis,
as you went on your way
ordering the universe,
eating the breads,
doing your very best
to avoid stepping
in the dog shit.

^ an unlooked-for pleasure

https://static-secure.guim.co.uk/sys-images/Guardian/Pix/pictures/2011/8/24/1314207708786/oliver-twist-007.jpg

Please, kind sirs and ladies, could we have some more?

Wine revives dreams as words
that echo lush, sweet breaths.
Beyond verses' memorable thoughts,
she listens blindly in front of the sea.

My voice might reach her;
we might meet again.
Perhaps, I shall confide,
she was a vestige of the future.

Red and green lights of love
danced against a blushed visage.
What strange shadow hid you from me
that deafened crackled, dead leaves?

I wrote you in prose,
your crystalline eyes broke.
I searched for your touch,
in your tender shores.

But if the moon reddens from thirst,
or silka deer explore your pond,
would your spirit be able to survive?
I trust you'd trek long journeys to do so.

I am still, awaiting you,
everything is dark,
my vision slowly blurs,
uncertain the sea will rest.

On a Spruce tree a stem would’ve grown.
Light would’ve tarnished those without faith.
This mind has been emptied out of words,
a rumour that can’t be buried in dreams.

Stop your snickering,
there’s no use for more.
Lions roam in the rain
and I turn to water.

New blood! Welcome to the ruthlessly cutthroat world of competitive Poem Tossing, pierre.

Now you have joined us among the ranks of ILX tossers.

thanks, aimless!

i've been lurking for quite some time and enjoy these threads

For Soup

'What hasn't been
never will!'
and other deprivation arrows
to the heart of maudlin hysterics

That old folly
dried up and now
its face pointed at pretend instincts
not fully incubated
and NO I never saw it hatching but
"I just wanted the other children
to believe"

The poor starcasters couldn't stomach fruition
and spent their only coins divining
habitats in the desert
to turn into timeshares
no one would buy
You can still find those tarpaulin-hiders
baked to amnesia in the sand and
prey to stowaway clinicians
seeking purpose

Nightbus outliers
evade swollen cassette tape prescriptions
and live on intrusive edicts
from Paul
a teenage angel somewhere
between wall and spine
with a proclivity to
disappear for decades
WHERE ARE YOU PAUL

No representatives to offer compensation
No longer interested in backstreets encounters
Don't cast your bathwater
among swine and
don't labour the essence of desire
Ultimately live
in the brothy endeavours
of youth club memorising -
the beams are always the nicest part
of the building

If someone else posts a poem I promise to admire it.

How very inclusive of you

I was just trying to bump the damn thread, imago. Why don't you post a poem?

I too would like to read more, two out of the last three were excellent. I already submitted two so can't really contribute further, although I did write an extra verse for my last one, after a sunday afternoon in a hunpub and a drunken rewatching of Aguirre: Wrath Of God...

Give the new Star in the sky
A new Star on her shirt
Might as well give her two
For all that they're worth
New gold down the river
A new ship in a tree
Kinski twist to the camera
It's just you and the monkeys

...but I think I prefer it in the previous form. Up to youse tho really.

No one likes this poem except me. So I post it here!

Sunny Delight

First I noticed the former GE Capital associate with the fuchsia handgun
on his $185 lilac tie. He gave out
his business card next to a Danish man twirling
a Turkish woman. A Bank of America employee
left out his firm’s name
when he said he works
in Risk. We had come together
to discover the value in coming together
with other curious risk-takers,
where we belonged, taking each other
seriously. A current associate
with Goldman Sachs Group Inc.
rocked violently back
and forth
sitting in a Bergere-
it’s a chair—
as he expressed his negative outlook
regarding yuan futures
to an unseen counterparty, his eyes fixed
somewhere in mid-distance, the object unknown
or unstated. On his thigh rested
a notepad
from which I solemnly read the words
“Sunny Delight,”
a phrase which was underlined, once,
then twice—
three times-- with the final line
having been struck almost entirely through
the entire ream of paper. The pages came together
at a point, swollen with ink
beneath the D and the e, which together formed a pool
of almost perfect aqua marine, contrasting almost perfectly
with the light blue of the associate’s eyes There was a--
a swooshing!--
as his thighs came together with their natural friction and the friction of the material coming together met the truly open air
of the room, the openness of our expressions
contrasting perfectly
with the black morass
of his crossed thighs, the host of faces swimming
about his closed thighs,
with their portion of heaven
closed to each and every open,
expectant face, each and all and always
exploring the point
where the creases came
together at last, impulsively looping
and loping
and waiting for more.

well some of the line breaks are screwed up, but who could tell

nice. starts strong. kind of mires down at the end. but ending strong is always the most difficult trick to pull off.

I love the ending of that last one! All of that closing and opening and erratic ecstasy...great. Absolutely loved Gatemouth's other one as well, and reading everyone's poems in general. I hope more are to come! Is there a closing date on this or does it span all of 2016?

Gatemouth's definitely my favourites by someone I'm not cohabiting with

I'm going to do one now. As in, start and finish writing one now, while drunk and listening to Coil

GLIDING INTO THE HEXAGON

this forest bulging northerly upward

***

visiting the coast for treats we can never
diversions manned by god and foremen
we can't go to the coast, we can't go to the hills
we crunch oat-based galactic helpings
on the coach to the cliffs, past the mound that
space-giants used as a goalpost
when they played three-a-side kickball in
~the hexagon~

***

our coach got kicked quite hard! oh it's
airport not for another ten miles
no fuel, why do ducks shun to alight
soon we shall crash back down to
~the hexagon~

***

******

so we won't see the coast then, but
maybe the forest? yeah that's cool,
full of pellets and god particles. here it comes
a really big forest and we're
to glide right into it very fast
a flaming elongated molotov cocktail
full of dissatisfied holidaymakers
~THE HEXAGON~

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

boom! bang! fucking bang! oh fuck! we're all dead
in
~the hexagon~
but there's a giant scar on the hlllside and everybody's
a chalk cerne abbas outline
quite a few trees have been crushed
our excursion became something unforgettable
thanks god, thanks foremen
thanks most of all the space-giant who plays
centre-half for lower england
and enjoys her hours within

******

~~~THE HEXAGON~~~

I tried to think of something acerbic and witty to say but I actually just really like it so much. Please write everything like this.

Buy me alcohol

^ good title for your next poem

Rules: Copy and paste your best poems into this thread. In a few weeks we will vote on them.

― Treeship, Monday, March 28, 2016

Probably getting about time to declare a deadline.

bump in the night (or late afternoon in this time zone)

deadline is JUNE 1st

!!!!!!

Feck I thought of a title but forgot it ah well

borrow one and 'repurpose' it. 'palimpsest' is always good for another go round.

That's about the palimpsest idea I ever heard

Lines wheezed on a seat, Grand Canal, Dublin

The day dawns with a sense of muscle pain
Penance of a run ran in the rain
If this the cost to reach the age of Christ
I must confess to find it overpriced

This running toward an ever-fixed mark,
A timed fool! Bent, sickened, come, pass, come.
I admit impediment, I'm set to park
My racing heart's last race is raced and done

This ageing man wants but a pastry thing
When one has final flung the final fling
To leave the young to flinging is no wrench
The only fancy fancied now is french

If truth indeed is beauty, beauty truth
If this be all we know and all we need
My once lithe body lies belying youth
I'll pass on passing on, and go to seed

^ high impact exercise

deadline is JUNE 1st

the anticipation builds

I'm going to do another one now, like right now, while stuffed with baklava and listening to Toenut

Buy me alcohol

it's ok you don't need to buy me alcohol
i've already got crystals full of ichor, stout kegs
guarding malted broths beyond compare,
cork-stoppered amphoras in the underloft

but on the off-chance you're down that way
it's spoken of an offie with golden tins
packed seven to a
~HEXAGON~
with one at centre, and these tins contain
a philtre laced with velvet booze, the very
softest alcohol upon which head was laid

if you buy me this alcohol, i'll be -
but no, there's no obligation. forget that.
no liquor truly might outmatch my hoard
for any practicable purpose. except there's one

of which is whispered little, a wooden gourd
in carriage with a stone, whose dipping is
essential. it's only sold in one major chain -
which one i do not know. finding it is hard,
buying it harder still, for what plea is this
but one whose scorning is a simple matter?

"i did not find your alcohol. but look, i brought
the 24-year islay. will this do?"
it'll have to.

very talented ppl on this thread. will assemble the poll tomorrow or over the weekend.

um hey little extension? if i get it in in like... 30 minutes?

Granted

eluviation

oh hey you’re crying
and we’ve only just met
making this a best performance that once
we’ve departed will be submitted
to a book of records where
names and dates and figures
outlive our crumbling bodies

i’ve told you about
our endless time when
minute hands walk backwards and
you’ve told me about frozen chambers
where flesh is made eternal
icy eyes that see visions
of digital carapaces carried on
glittered eyelashes of languid electric camels

it is just easier you said
to preserve your corpse for a low monthly rate
of just $29.99
than prepare your soul
but my hands are already deep in a basin
100% pure olive oil
to cleanse my sins

nor shall death brag
that in decay it discovered within my white bones
a heart you said i never had
embalm then unsex me
be not proud
caged in a frosted forever
that you will whisper psalms over my grave

as i am eaten by worms
just a vigilant statue overlooking
what is even now
barely a memory
and an empty blazed desert devoid of life
that looks back waiting waiting without end
to wake you up with soft
whispers carried across sand that echoes our poetry

I had to look up your title. that's one sweet word you've got there, sir.

ty

Treesh, since putting the poll together is more or less a straightforward copy-and-paste task, how about I do it for you? You are probably busier than I am.

That would be a big help honestly if you don't mind.

I definitely do not mind.. It's almost in the hopper, even as I write this.

POLL: 2016 ILX Poetry Competition Voting