2013 ILE Poetry Contest: I speak for the trees, for the trees have no tongues

Ok thx. So the poll will be first line or title? Title is necessary?

can i withdraw my first entry, "a haiku"? i don't like that one.

xpost - titles are optional. I'll list titled poems by title and untitled poems by first line.

(but please don't be an asshole and title your poem "http://i.imgur.com/MhchgAH.png" or something)

c'est nes pas une bike

or rather, ceci n'est pas une http://i.imgur.com/MhchgAH.png

can i withdraw my first entry, "a haiku"? i don't like that one.

ok, I'll leave it out of the poll (and you can enter another one if you'd like).

I liked your haiku, mainly because it reminded me of a line from Cristina's "Things Fall Apart" (which happens to be haiku-able, in an awkward way)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s5Xgktqp-Zw

"I can't stand in your
way, it's wrong."
"Way of what?" I
asked, but he was gone.

or rather...

"I can't stand in your
way, it's wrong." "Way of what?" I
asked, but he was gone.

24.

At 15 I had faith in the internal consistency of my opinions.
Or I remember having had this.
Or I remember remembering this.

Full disclosure:
I remember that I remembered remembering this,
Very recently.

Faith remembered is different but the same as
Faith lost,
A leap of faith into a canyon,
An A+ paper,
A wasted moment,
The moon.

I don't know now if I ever was in love,
Or if love is real,
Or if it is social construct,
Or if social constructs are real,
Or why wouldn't they be?

I have an opinion on why this matters,
On why I matter,
And you:
I have an opinion about you too.

And here's the part where I tell you why it matters.

a very old one (all my poems are now v. old)

City Crows

Crows will separate to nest
And raise woodstraw strewn
Leftover sucklers of pups
Who scream when lonely
Like broken glass.

They will chitter to attract mates
And offer tasty meals of rot.
Crows kiss with clacking
And though feathers are well spit-slicked sleek
Their stubby little wings can't hug.

From those high up separate carrion nests
They perch and observe this Saturday night.
Monocled heads cocked and sporting suede vests
On the watch for spoiled food,
They'll ignore the bewildering plumaged sights
As people, idiot creatures, flock.

And another v. old one (even by the standards of my old poems)

How past

How past the past may potentially recede!
A bastard string of new beginnings, boastfully begun
and by that token truncated, just half there
in a wasteland with definite width
inscribed across flesh to fantasy, wounds inspiring flight
as would a trail of imagined slights, silent stigma
of being for others, bending, so as not to break
How distant old heartache, homes, even dreams
in Manhattan's midday crowds and heat I marvel
at the subtlety of auspicious beginnings, so secret
as though unnoticed, until all is underway.
The ground that shifts is a vessel, that rumbling the rail.
Some take, some give or stand their ground, some simply do.
New digs, new take. New town, God I love you!

Regarding Time

What exists exists
for the benefit of a lit torch,
young lives hungering
through all of that space
between us

I made a list of all the things
in the world I missed
and it was a perfect white
page, or rather the page was
yellow- and I am only off-white,
on my better days-
but the days would continue mysteriously
to get better, or at least lighter, until finally
they would cease to exist.

Then we'd release the evening
like a band of mist
all around us

Liking this year

The MacGuire Building, to Be Demolished

Here, at the entrance, we will place a small silver cameo
skin shitting bricks into the immediate atmosphere
wrapped in Tyvek and tiers of scaffolding
sheet rounded hospital blue

Then a room, an unknown man's recorded voice
dark walls haze like curtain smoke
soft walls flex to silent rhythm
thoughts half traced, the unframed sky

The angle of the camera (imaginary) is low
placed to suggest the looming divine
woven into his speech, a constant sigh of aspiration
"Now," he says, "the great wheel of heaven."

Wood blinds crack to falling light, reclined across the couch
but take note of the carpet
a blue so rich it seems black
in this light anyway, at the end of the day

As a brick flies, the sidewalk surface, membrane streets
the television is ancient, monstrous, looming like a shitty condominium,
a gathering of debilitated objects in a semicircle
flies above the sink

i like all of these a great deal, but i would like to note that Gatemouth's poem, particularly, is very moving/haunting.

a very old one (all my poems are now v. old)

As a counterpoint to my entered poem above, this is an example of what I was writing in 1978:

For Sally

Knock me on the head, you’re pretty!
Call me Joe or Pete or Dan,
and I’ll nod and not stir
from fiddling with your hand,
preparatory to kissing the same.

Behold! I am sane – just a dash –
and bashful, too. Test me.
Close your eyes, unguard your lips,
and you’ll see just how shy I am
beyond the far edge of a doubt.

My chick! My chin-mate! Pretty one!
Knock me on the noggin with a brick,
I’m numb at the sight of you.
Delighted, too, if ever a man was.
Strong tonic for healthy,
that’s you, Sally,
poured into a right fine bottle.

nb: I don't intend that to be a second entry or a substitute for my earlier poem. I just thought reading them side by side was an interesting exercise.

these are/were good poems BTW I come back to read em

like it might be time again I'm sayin

IT HAS BEGUN

2014 ILX Poetry Contest: The Captain Lorax Prize (Submissions Thread)