VOTING for 2014 ILX Poetry Contest: The Captain Lorax Prize

Adieu Monsieur Coyote!

Night falls like a curtain,
a gentle veil, the merciful
obscurities of love.

Daylight drops from the sky
like a piano. Boom.
The schadenfreudic boom.
A nation's thirst for justified
comeuppance.

Heaven's anvil renders your
Repose,

But hold your applause till
I affirm your sense of victimhood.

Boom.

― Treeship

irresolute

in your voice i hear
your petulant, put-upon pout

you’re talking about food;
i’m starving

pursed lips hold firm
from the brink of solipsism

if i screamed right now
we’d alight

embers dissipating, atomistic
fluttering on the breeze as fireflakes

but, irresolute,
our slumped shoulders, arms akimbo

body of evidence suggests
division

pinching hairs out from their sockets
peeling thin layers of skin

the hastening of regeneration
a digital delay knob spun to maturity/martyrdom

upon repeat, your note sounds flat
against the foreground of new voices

― m bison

I Don't Know Why It Does This

My brain comes up with
weird nicknames
for famous people
Hartison Fortison
Robben Wibben
I don't know why it does this

Yet I have no such names
for the people
I see everyday

― Tuomas

Tamping

the stewardess
in morning asks
my drinklike
and I

say
“please’m Turkey,
of
the Wild.”

“oh and um”
adding
“not an ice,
for pleasing.”

she eyebrow raise
think low of me.
me is and am,
and are to be.

― BIG HOOS aka the steendriver

Evil Doppelganger

Since my first day here
you've made it very clear
that you think I'm incompetent
a pointless peasant pissant
I don't know what I've done
to bring your hatred on
Except remind you of yourself
when you were in better health

Maybe it's because you're my evil doppelganger

Despite our broad similarity
You're lacking in empathy
Woefully deficient in intellect
Difficult questions you deflect
Maybe I should feel sorry for you
and all the nasty schemes you do
But then I catch my sympathy
because you're lacking humanity

Maybe it's because you're my evil doppelganger

This job is a compromise for me
but it's the best you'll ever see

― snoball

The Hippogriff Builds Its Nest

You know (you must!) that well-known unknown tree,
so tall and straight within its inspecific woods,
that fell one unnamed day, as we, absorbed
in other things, perfected our fine ignorance,
inapt to say it made the noiseless noise
it made.

O, most provoking tree!
Suggestive, hintful, plausible tree,
inhabiting an anteroom of my aesthetic
I cannot enter without shame, fear and hope.
Why can't you be a hippogriff?

A garbled monster, easily laughed down,
or sidled away from, consigned to low unreality,
your condign home, where I as a child
wiggled my several toes in the paradise
of fools?

Stubborn tree, unflinching, doubtless dead,
You're still the stuff of houses, home of nests,
that cannot be built, though built they are
and lived in, as I seem to do, imperfectly,
as well befits an ignorance not perfected.

― Aimless

The Aftertaste of Birth

Witness magnificent viaducts!
stuttered I while she I
scissorfucked aimlessly.

You should have started elsewhere, oversharer.

Senators open letters chockablock with ricin but
why not mandrake, or wolfsbane?
Mark E. Smith knew his haruspex from his anthrax
though admittedly a great
flabby flapping cunt was he.

Am I not a man? Do I not LOL?
Maybe Father was right.
It's a numbers game, and:
I should just stick to my cards.

True miracles happen every day
but now you're insisting
everything's already been said
and said better by others.

Why denigrate what you do not understand?
It's preferable to understand nothing.
That's what works for most people.

Some people won't stop saying
in today's world.

In today's world
some people are always the problem.
In today's world
some people never learn

and those are the ones we hate.

Give us Barabbas
they cry out in the darkness
dragging curdled faces
behind the twilight
like cold masks in the park.

Forsooth. Forsooth.
I bet you don't even know what that means.

It means close your browser.
We're done here.

― Edward III

anodyne

anodyne, alkaloids convalescing, thebaine there but for the grace of god
at night we dream of enola gay, irradiated chemtrails and your touch when we
grasp one another gasping locutionary acts: hold me,
i find peace in your touch.

shifting through transparent silica broadcasting battered missives,
checking our tissues for ebola, foreheads for hemorrhagic fever
our kidneys shut down lazy Sunday afternoons as we grapple
for one another slowly going blind.

katyusha fireworks, we read each other formal verse punctuated
by fajr-5 and the endless hours while we were just shadows your
body is prose and i place my nose against your neck seeking eupnea,
giggling, we forget our names.

― Mordy

note: i mistitled this poll option as "stay there," by dmac--here it sits with the correct title. vote "stay there" to vote for this poem by dmac.

plot/denouement

shouldering each a burden of a sixth of the lost at the last
through mosses, crosses, grasses, reeds, crooked concrete passes
cursing famine graveyards' slant and the stony famine hills they haunt
and stony village faces mouthing stony funeral masses
down fifteen cruel and damned degrees in wet and sliding borrowed soles
pulled and pushed and crushed by weight and haunted by the funeral tolls
and every second thinking that no matter how we go
we'd one then all fall, trip or slip on hidden cillini rocks
and the every man-jack one of us, in downhill-tumbling show
would end with a ring of broken crowns and jill sprung out the box

two minutes, two hours, a lifetime, then earth
lowered, prayed, stayed, thanked diggers and crew
shook hands by the side of the dark single berth
and then left, having done the least we could do

― darraghmac

The Poetry of ILX

The poetry of ILX reviles mayonaise,
and flings its zings cornucopiously,
wears warts, sings, jigs, exhales a fetid haze,
advances ever onward, seldom flees.

The poetry of ILX honors the fire,
finds chickenbears where before none were,
seeks some sad solace in glimming The Wire,
and all around projects a sharp-edged blur.

The poetry of ILX would eulogize dead slebs,
or castigate them just as much as you might please;
it oft rejects the quiddities of debs
and cheerfully wallows in ironic sleeze.

So doth our ILX bestride this silly world
a daddy-long-legs of collosal thoughts.
But if the truth were truthfully unfurled,
it was much more poetic in The Aughts.

― Aimless

September 24, 2014

it is 2014 and i am in philadelphia.
but in a more profound sense i am on the internet
with you, and it is 2009, because i am not with you,
and can't be, because i lack inner resources.

wise men know when to let go,
their poems are not this frantic and enjambed.
their minds are like still reflective ponds and not
like herds of sentimental elephants, contradicting and
trampling all over what's important. but wait

i want to share something with you. it's
very stupid. it's about love. and time is a palimpsest
but it's me who's fading

into you like the song or else
i'm the one who's here.

― Treeship

Against Complete Withdrawal

negotiation phase

on soft sunny fading days
and through people
cling on, sour godhead

but in frantic aspiration
and to these events
feign lively boredom

for the mill-ground teeth
of conversations declined
frame instability a corrective

crisis phase

categorical suicide
zones and their gerundive
'must be withdrawn from'

however hover kneebent
for dysphoric relapse:
fire wilts at the joint

thrown down in
my own ash
unwoven loving

renegotiation phase

a little further back
from corneal immediacy
spaceless ambitions

recover absent breath
leave sensors responsive
heart sceneries dead slow

i am here but
there are conditions
and a terminal door

-- imago

Darling We Are Aging

darling we are aging in mornings
wrapped around each other at dawn
like a car embracing a tree trunk.
we wander through the forests of our
barking dreams, walking off whiskey
and thirsting in our sleep as the
day bleeds in through the incense window.
an owl cries out and i open my eyes.

you immaculate lit by the stereo glow,
eyes closed and searching, searching.
the needle stuck in a loop on the
record player. the songs have
ended and now there is only your
breathing and a click, click, click.

― BIG HOOS aka the steendriver

I like most of these and have voted for one of them

Rolling Poetry Buttheads '14

ya I also voted, will reveal for whom after results

shame this is male-only btw

rrrrm

yeah.

what is the sound of one face palming

wait i only entered this for the cash prize, i am not a part of your he-man woman haters club, spanky

(aimless slaps his "I voted" sticker on his shirt front and parades it about smugly)

pfft our male-only rule for entry worked a treat surely

womenfolk probably smart to stay out of alt-lit internet scenes atm

plot/denouement

Really really good, imo.

rub it in

heh the title or the poem... thanks

are we free to discuss these BTW

I don't have the patience to (re)read any of these on my day off when I'm drunk but i voted for u darra

unless The Faerie Queen was an option, in which case--

tough drunk votes count, tammany hall rules

are we free to discuss these BTW

― zero content albums (darraghmac), Monday, October 6, 2014 7:46 PM (20 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

don't see why not unless anyone objects? people have discussed in the past iirc

like treeships with the booms and the freestyle staccato a lot

I can't see that discussion would harm anything. The Captain Lorax Prize Rules Committee is in permanent adjournment, iirc, so all we really have to go on are these illegible scrawls on a paper napkin.

http://awealthofexperience.files.wordpress.com/2013/07/business-plan-on-a-napkin.jpg

like tuomas' Ogden Nash

like hoos easy slide off the barstool

like I have to do some study now back later

me in that poem

http://gifrific.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/01/Tina-Belcher-Ugh-Slides-Down-Off-of-Chair.gif

heh the title or the poem... thanks

I like the title too.

I had to look up what cillini rocks are. In your poem there's this eerie sense of them being witnesses and interveners in the procession.

....idk? I've an infant brother there, its a thing, but not to the forefront of my mind tbh. basically....idk?

gonna read over the others today. regardless of the ones I liked in no particular order yday (mainly the couple I digested most easily while sitting in class) I think that, as always, the standard is p high and I'm as likely to read an ilx compendium of this stuff as I am anything else these days, bravo all

the hippogriff builds its nest is for better or worse exactly the sort of thing that would always get my vote, tho I'm not entirely sure what the shameful/hopeful room of your aesthetic might be

AMC, treeship: I'm not sure exactly what's happening but that's OK I liked the styles the rhythms, the runs and the stops. the schadenfreudic boom is a great run of sounds/syllables I'm gonna say tick.jpg

irresolute- m bison: wanted to take more time to go through this one than I had so far. I like the efficiency, the sparseness really works. I struggled to find the beats tbh but the middle section really nails the microcosm of a suppressed argument and anything that puts manga rage imagery in my head whilst reading it gets a tick from me

tuomas: short, sweet, already said Ogden Nash, much better than anything I've written in Finnish tick.jpg

steendriver: bukowski via Seuss maybe, idk? I'm in favour cos I like the sounds and the easiness of it, I think it captures exactly what its going for. I'm not sure if Im laughing at our with our protagonists overworking of his turkey language etc but I'm in favour

snobes: I didn't really like this IM SORRY for my taste ababab scheme is a little wearing and the scansion isn't coming out as I read through it nb I'm all about rhythm its a taste thing IM SORRY

I'm not entirely sure what the shameful/hopeful room of your aesthetic might be

Explanation is usually fatal in such cases, but since you bring it up I'll share what was hazily floating at the edge of my mind when I wrote that line.

The basic idea I was glancing at is that imagination is a two-edged sword. It can enhance insight and reveal an obscured truth or it can feed you delusions, fears, and baseless rosy fantasies. The imaginative person lives by this sword and most often dies by this sword.

btw, I thought Edward III's poem had a nice impromptu humorous quality that repeatedly puffed itself up and then deflated amusingly. it worked for me on that level.

addendum to ogmor: the particular anteroom the unheard tree inhabits is one where it is impossible to say whether imagination is supplying insight or nonsense.

there. now I've stabbed it through the heart for you.

ya if im the only one reviewing im stopping so there

HOOS your Berryman is showing
(not a bad thing!)

every second thinking that no matter how we go
we'd one then all fall, trip or slip on hidden cillini rocks
and the every man-jack one of us, in downhill-tumbling show
would end with a ring of broken crowns and jill sprung out the box

this is a stunner

ty, imago. that is what I should have said, too

:)

ed 3 representing the antagonism of the online experience q well; mordy representing the blurred intersection of geopolitical & personal q well; dmac representing the spry vernacular of stoic rural eire q well

these were my favourites & i voted for one of them

reading the others again.

treeship's second is good. kids got style.

I always enjoy aimless poems, tho this year I wasn't grabbed by the underlying metaphor before it was explained and therefore found myself doing little more than admiring the lyricisms nb in my book this is not a problem

Ed iii's is a year old and I shouldnt even deign to bother but its got nice back around clauses and flow, tho scissorfucked is never not gonna over demand attention in a short piece, IMO to detriment of the rest of it

our male-only rule for entry worked a treat surely

we had to adopt that rule after it became clear that Beth Parker could come in at any moment, post a gem, and wipe the floor with us

These are some enjoyable poems

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

ty, System

I like mordys and imago's both but I'm not abfan of stuff that's so self consciously 'poetry' iykwim, words in there that are begging for serious attention. personal pref is all.

thats absurdly rushed and unfair to those efforts but im submitting assignments and havent had time to as much as fart in leisure today so apols

absurdly rushed and unfair attention paid to one's humble poems is better than no one paying the slightest bit of attention

Automatic thread bump. This poll's results are now in.

the right poem won

concur

I tried to make a bet that dmac's poem would win, but my bookie couldn't carry the action, because no one was betting the long odds against him.

that's seems a bit strong but v gratified ty ty

it was a really good poem

Treeship badly served by the one poster- one vote system, I'd like to think that a single transferable vote setup would have seen both of his efforts get a few more nods

voted Mordy btw, the damn thing hit me amidships

outraged

aw thank you imago :)

dmac it was a close fight & I voted you last time out. knew u'd clean up tbh

i was just a pity vote

no, I preferred your one, am mollifying the outraged here

ur both horrible trolls obv lol

don't want to interrupt the pity poetry

^ that's why deems gets the big bucks

"party" and "poetry" actually are homophones in deems' dialect

we're all just poetry in his hands

I throw poetry maybe you do too?

this is poetry, poetry fare

whereas in my dialect poetry and paltry are homophones

it's almost like you didn't parse the preceding post (parse and post can be drawled the same!!)

i'd like you all to know i spent a solid 10 minutes trying to photoshop a captain's hat onto a lorax for the sake of dmac's prize but alas

Actually, I had parsed the prior post as 'this is πορφυρίτη, πορφυρίτη fare'.

timely http://www.irishtimes.com/culture/art-and-design/troubling-memories-of-achill-on-display-in-bonn-1.1963554

looking back I'd vote for missingNO now

mine was damned overlooked & i feel comfortable saying as much now

what are you on about now?

Weeping willow

Weeping willow
you don't impress me much

could we have a moment
where you don't have a moment yourself

Creeping willow
Dragging down the stalking grounds as usual
Hunched in a bunch
pathetic

Cracking willow
cankered whore, shilly-shally bitch
you're not hard to spot
there'll be no more lurking
when i get in my saw-mobile
and cut you up

― The Once-ler

otm

quoted "schadenfreudic boom" today midst Fifa 14 tournament fyi trís

tho admittedly prob pronounced incorrectly

:-)

If it weren't the dead of summer here in the northern hemisphere, I'd suggest it was time for another go round of the ILX Poetry Contest. ILX needs the refreshment it offers.

Late in the year to start now, but...

I would love to do this again. Always humbled by the competition but that's the fun of it

yes! would not be competitor but would be enthusiastic audience member

http://www.ydtalk.com/chatter/wp-content/uploads/old/leefansmountprospect1.jpg

up for this, why not

it's almost like you didn't parse the preceding post (parse and post can be drawled the same!!)

― Ƹ༑Ʒ (imago), Monday, 13 October 2014 23:55 (three years ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

missed a 'first parse the post' racing/electoral system opportunity here folks

that's huge

its enough to carry brexit imo if true