ILX Poetry Competition | 2020 Edition

Saxmundham to Ipswich

By night, returning now, there are three trains:
We, our left reflection and our right,
And after that two more. Five trains I see,
And all of us together through the dark.

I sit and so my four companions do.
I think of all the glory of the reeds,
But do they think likewise? Or do they pass
In blissful ghostly joy through glorious air?

Those reeds. They have a melancholy too,
They have a way of teasing out the space,
That lies between a human and their soul
And binding fondly wish to hope to loss.

Out there, my pale companions must be brushed
By tree and hedge. By soil and gorse and frond,
And yet - oh, hell - impaled by the beam
Athwart a level crossing, pealing loud!

Perhaps it's safer here, where all is warm,
Where sound is simple, light is simpler still,
Where someone leaves their trashes for the staff,
Where nothing dark or fictional intrudes.

https://i.ibb.co/zG2Dzjv/IMG-20201028-203052.jpg

At Woodbridge now. I feel we're closing in;
The platform, lit, reveals a world beyond
The simple train. A place where one might be,
And yet a place that must remain unknown.

And here's the thing. Five trains I ever saw,
Five sets of seats. Five columns, swift and bright,
And yet I never saw the outer me
On either side, obscured by those between.

I know they're there. I know they pass through more;
I know they feel the wilder things of Earth
Upon their face and arms. And should they die,
I know for sure that I will do alike.

So at the destination, they will come
And follow me onto the train to home.
And when I leave that train, they'll follow yet,
And once returned to bed, they'll be my salve.

And in the days to come, and months, and years,
We five, with two unseen, will strive and find.
Yet only in the night, on wheels of iron,
Shall we emerge to mortal, hooded sight.

Why stop at five? A seventh! O, a ninth,
Nay, limitless recursion, be my tribe!
But five was all I saw, so five I'll have;
A tribe of five's enough to build my way.

^this verse clearly non-canon as I wrote it on a different train

Everyone, get writing!

Love both equally as much, for what they are and aren’t <3

Nice Sebaldian touch with the photos!

oof, that first thing I wrote months ago is very poor, I WOULD LIKE TO WITHDRAW IT FROM COMPETITION PLEASE.

Yis can have this instead if yis want, it is about train trips and listening to the Mountain Goats:

I was living on the west coast of Sweden when my grandfather died
In a caravan
But I was not in a caravan when I heard my grandfather died
I was on a train
but waitwaitWAIT, let's back up a bit

I was living on the west coast of Sweden when I heard my grandfather was dying
In a caravan
But I was not in a caravan when I heard my grandfather was dying
I was in Her father's house
Of course, I had been getting phonecalls from my family for days
But that's the way we deal with family, right?
Ignore the phonecalls
And concentrate on the caravan
And Her
Inside the caravan

But in Her father's house
Where my mother called
On Her father's house phone
(cos I'd been ignoring the phonecalls)
Her father was nice to me for once
(cos my grandfather was dying)
How old is he?
(her father asked)
I didn't know...
Well, is he older than me?
(her father asked)
I didn't know...
I took a guess
Said... "yes?"
(in Swedish, obviously)
Turned out I was right
(I mean, OBVIOUSLY)

I was (YES) in a caravan later that night
(the night when I heard my grandfather was dying)
When I decided to play some songs for my grandfather
It was meant to be a joke
(before this, I mean)
When She asked me to bring music for the caravan
And (YES) I brought music
But only Mountain Goats records
Haha, funny, right?
RIGHT?
(I now forget the specifics of why that was meant to be funny,
But still)

Is this a good idea?
(She said)
Hell YES!
(I said)
And so we played Mountain Goats records all night
(maybe we did other stuff, but that is NONE OF YOUR DAMN BUSINESS)

Anyway
That night is when I realised The Coroner's Gambit is an album all about DEATH
NO SHIT
(you say)
but yeah, I'm not overly smart
and specificity tends to pass me by
(until pointed out to me)

Anyway
I could tell you about the train ride
(the train ride when my grandfather died)
but that would involve telling you about a whole bunch of other stuff
Which I am not well equipped to deal with right now
But then, i'm not very well equipped generally
(I am talking about LIFE SKILLS here, not GENITALIA
Which is NONE OF YOUR DAMN BUSINESS)

Anyway
The point is
(YES, there's a point)
Now
I listen to The Mountain Goats
And I think of DEATH
And my grandfather
And also a caravan
And also Her
And yeah, I cry
(WHAT OF IT?)

oof, that first thing I wrote months ago is very poor, I WOULD LIKE TO WITHDRAW IT FROM COMPETITION PLEASE.

I mean I feel this way about the one I wrote this morning! But I'm afraid everything submitted must remain. Them's the rules

This is an old poem and therefore it is something of a ringer, but I thought it better to submit this and see if I can get off my duff and write a new poem before treeship declares this competition closed.

Looking For Saints

When the rain-whelmed sky
drove the birds in low flight
I decided
I would search for saints.

In coffee shops I kept my ear cocked
for the bell poised over the door
to bounce,
in case a saint came in with
a wet umbrella.
On the street my eyes ran after
the backs of walkers.

All winter
I entered empty phone booths
to read the penciled messages.
I tried alleys
where bottle glass, webbed on labels
sat, limp,
lashed in related green bits.
But always the saints were
elsewhere just then,
or I'd have noticed them standing about.

Holy figures billowed through my dreams
as vanes, their faces grey-veiled,
holding staves tall as themselves,
drifting away as day began.

I would have settled for one black eyelash,
any holy mite as evidence.
But the city emptied where I looked.

Eating cold bread on a bench one day
a paltry truth popped into my head.
As the bread mess rested in my teeth
I thought,
a saint can have no saintly life
until his bones are shaved of flesh.
I ran my tongue along my hard crowns
about an hour
before I decided
to spend the spring
running with dogs in the park.

I totally missed this. I'll not manage an entry but I'll vote for sure.

Uncloaking Device

What if venom kept the skin plump?
Hypervigilance the hollows from sinking
into Deeper Acceptance™?
The sullen pallor of the blandly defenceless
levels a reckoning within that won’t make the headlines
much less the promised land

Defanged, a worm

The systematic shedding of technicolour armoury’s so bourgeois
Am I to believe
beige is more nutrient-rich?
It’s a tough sell, but I’ll invest in it
if there’s a reflection to be found in the yeast

The baked escapism of real conglomerate superheroics
can vibe in my insides
I loved the bit when the character knew what everyone was thinking with infallible certainty and
also how they kissed in the air
And my love is a facsimile?
Fuck you all
No, hush gauche ghost
We see what we want in whatever’s in front of us
A mirror, yes,
not always the hammer turned inwards to pound
and pound and

Flagrantly contravening the deadline here, but if more entries are to be accepted then I thought I might as well submit. Always happy to read everyone’s efforts and vote either way.

Paging mister treeship. Your thread is on the phone.

If you'll have me I can also slip a poem in. I've written a lot this year.

Please do.

Just to be clear, btw, the extra stanza I wrote is absolutely NOT part of my second poem and shouldn't be included on the voting thread

Treeship should give stragglers another few days imo

Distances

I am of the generation that invented chillwave,
That stretched ironic distance into a chasm
And fell through.

Wistfulness is artfulness, we thought;
Through strobe light punctured darkness
We chased the memories of others,
But it was our own empty hands we cherished
A measure of profundity.

These days, though, I don’t need to look too far
To find the ground beneath my feet,
And I wonder what I hoped to find
Inside those quiet distances.

We can vote if you guys want. I’ll make the poll. How about I give people another week to submit, especially Mordy.

I enjoyed reading all of these entries by the way. There are very talented writers on this board.

more poems? anyone?

Will post later today

dreaming of the future

for the sake of grist we sift through detritus
landfills for archeological digs of alien species
so thoughtful they accumulated all these primary sources
get yer phd equivalent at habitable exoplanet gliese 667 Cc
trappist monks on trappist-1d and
tea time is 12 on teegarden c
remember when we used to dream of populating these galaxies and now
we dream of greenery and the time that mangey fox got into our background
and the dog scared him away and you were laughing
and calling “leave him alone the poor thing”
the kids noses on the glass windows
as the insect biomass dropped
birds falling from the sky prophesying our own imminent demise.
i scoured the news for hope and learned how to wire a generator
as dystopia insurance.
let them see our works I’ll ozymandias plastic bottles and
shreds of poetry written on the back of large sheets of childhood crayon scrawls
dearly beloved i write one day you may read this
in corporal flesh or spirit alone
my progeny who i’ve never met are you shuffling through grocery store bag wastelands
or setting up radar stations on Luyten b
nestled in Canis Minor
is there mangey anything where you live
or nothing at all -
does my voice call to you across these generations like my progenitors called to me
do you pray do you sing do you worry about your children
our legacy was less than an echo
or maybe you

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.