ILX Poetry Competition | 2020 Edition

In plots regaled by flippant vandals

In plots regaled by flippant vandals
any sparrow sings then halts as you approach.
What of sloppy tubes running, rearing their legs
given what some call the past a diurnal memorial
wearing a brick smock, thus in appearance:
year of the stripped screw,
one jagged finger
in the pail catching roof water,
six subject titles of ongoing threads.
Less an inch from my damn face
is air or a reasonable alternative.
I would love a bite of your lava cake
afflicted as I am by ongoing cycles of spew
and cool in sun.

We are ultimately flimsy

We are ultimately flimsy
hotdogs getcher hotdogs
foreclosed in that sense
stuck in the ravines
we constructed but unable to cry
or comprehend our lack of marrow,
how we once scooped it out of ourselves like little canoes in a wilderness
where to cry was lit and we were undressed.
My pouty lips made you sad and we were without clothes, laconic,
ready to strafe our notions of will in our birthday suits.
Birthmark on my inner thigh, a healthy ration
of scars inedible despite your tonguing
that makes for laughter, shaking
my memory will waste its sweetness always
on misallocation of my senses rising
toward outer orbs and you, damned
like me in a bush wiping
sweat from neck down.

Solons solemn as camels pass

Solons solemn as camels pass
Makers slammed in car door flap
Cigar box contents crux of suit
Toothsome mincemeat big surprise

Tension breaks as rafter spotted
Tiny schoolgirl dominates bee
Benches empty as bean thrown
Kingpin snared in syrup sting

Rates rebound as bears retreat
Bridge snafu is laid to cable
Hapless hurler driven from mound
Cannon honored in Lions' fete

Teens nabbed in secret goofball ring
Love birds dip in thermal spring

Like that, Aimless

It's a sonnet. Sorta. I just wanted to catch treesh's sleeve.

i land

the waves roll in
from newfoundland
and hit oldfoundland
and head. away again
from cathedral cliffs and even keel
do wha, do girt, do we ga?
do never!

the sound of the bridge at the sound
big hill and big stone and old town and little me
simple names have simple truths
a bull's mouth thats a tide and a valley thats a hill
sure what's literature anyway
but translation that stuck
because it sticks or because it works
burnish til its ours, its what we got, its all we'll get
names and language and history

still and all
I miss the bloody place
what it is, and what it is to me

what i am to it remains a mystery

I'm thinking I'll hijack this, if treeship doesn't take over in the next few days. In the meantime, new entries are invited, because, why not?

I had plootered here so often
That I had become a sleepwalker,
A solemn investigator of futile things. 
But this afternoon the land tilted
Moving like a sleeping cat;
I was disembogued, come again to an old place.
It was like I had re-learned language
Or grown my eyes anew,
Reading, as if for the first time,
A secret I'd years ago hidden within myself.

I'd stood here in winter's abeyance,
Immured in a quilted bedchamber
And written 'love' in the dusting of snow,
Taking a photo with your camera.
I'd wanted you to midwife its thin pale birthing,
But need or ceremony or obligation
Took hold and now it lies in the dark
A geometry in an absence,
A peace treaty signed in secret
By only one side.

^pain of absence, distilled

It's looking more obvious every day that treeship has orphaned this thread, so I am proposing I take it to completion. Under the new regime, entries will be welcomed with enthusiasm until sometime roughly on or about midnight on January 31, 2021. Just figure on your local time, plus a bit of fudging. I'll assemble the ceremonial poll of ilx (mostly just the poets, if tradition holds) soon afterward.

Thanks for taking this on Aimless

Its a brutal business, Big Poetry, and only the toughest survive

thanks for taking this on, aimless. i haven been busy with things, new job and getting married, and this just kind of dropped. not cool of me but glad the vote will still go through.

new job and getting married

well, since you put it that way, I guess you're forgiven

Pfft ive seen the announcement snuck in slyer than that around here tbh

(grats)

love your saints piece Aimless

you can tell it is old because it mentions phone booths, which were still a thing when I wrote it

Reminder: only a short time left to the Jan 31, midnight (or thereabouts) deadline.

"Différance"

The take you shared, the hot one,
the one that’s roaring through the corridors of discourse
lopping off heads and limbs in a frenzy of
Enlightenment —

The take that’s taken you away from me,
carried you on a wave of blood
into the arms of a swarthy Frenchman —

Should I even say it?
Would you believe me if I said
that I'd arrived at this take before,
completely independently?

It came into my line of vision,
a burning star, a supernova:
I turned and ran and escaped.

But now, my love, it’s caught you by the ankles
and sucked you under the door.

rip

last stop before the end of the line

The competition is now officially closed. I'll prepare a poll thread later today for the voting. Because poets crave recognition, even if only from each other.

Thanks for your work here, Aimless

Poll thread here:

2020 ILX Poetry Competition: VOTE HERE

Please note I screwed up in transcribing the entries, failing to separate the end of imago's second poem and the start of JHM's second poem. The true copies are included here in this thread.