2011 ILE poetry CONTEST! sleepers: living the dream

4 - 40 lines. That doesn't include empty lines or the title. One entry per person. Post your entry here. I'll move them all later when the poll starts

Bonus: 4 - 20 line joke poem. One entry per person. Post your entry here. Joke poems will be voted upon in a separate poll

Deadline: November 22nd

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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9YGL3amPmyc

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I was just thinking of starting a poetry thread earlier today. It seemed like time for one. thanks, Cap'n for beating me to the punch. I will get going on my entry.

If for some reason this thread doesn't take hold, maybe I'll try to drum up a different approach to see if ilx can get its creative juices going again. Then again, if one entry seems too confining for ilx's poetizing folks, maybe we could open an annex to this thread, like an overflow parking lot.

oi,
I'll try to notch this thread up to the top so that englanders can see it when they emerge victoriously from the night

All those chaps have fallen... upon their beds, like so many slavering beasts. No doubt they are dreaming of poems as they gnaw their pillows.

my favorite poem I've written this year (untitled):

people who live in glass houses
are letting them go
all to seed,
wisely allowing the ivy to grow up and over
and, hopefully, cover them totally
(chimneys excepted);
pruning back only those vines that entangle the downspouts,
that threaten the gunholes
and air-intake vents

people who live in glass houses
have stopped getting stoned,
but still they grow paranoid; often
the feeling of somebody watching,
of being sealed up in a coffin,
steals on them softly and awfully;
they pause in the kitchen,
stare into the distance,
and stir at their coffee

people who live in glass houses
jar their own jams,
preserves that remain in the basement
—and from an adjacent hillside,
on a stormy night, sometimes,
one sees through the floors,
dramatically lit from behind under thunder,
laid out in rows like an army of pottery soldiers,
the syrupy fruits of their labors

and people who live in glass houses keep lamps lit
well after transacting their day's worth of business;
for people who live in glass houses alone
know that sound is to water
as ghost is to window

and my joke entry:

SIMPLE LOVE SONGS

I saw her stood there,
long and lonely
as a french horn note

that sounded in some
sentimental symphony,
selling out
the concert halls of life

before an audience
already growing restless
with this prettiness
relentlessly advancing on them,

minute after minute;
with the terrible acoustics;
with the insecure conductor,
his flamboyant mannerisms,
and the thoughtless youthful couple
who had brought their screaming child

—in spite of which, she hardly even smiled
when asked, “Why don’t we
do it in the aisles?”

I look forward to reading these after I wake up tomorrow

I look forward to waking up tomorrow.

2009 Poetry Contest & Contest Poll
2010 Poetry Contest & Contest Poll

did aimless ever wake up

O Captain my Captain Lorax

(stands on desk)

I've got a thing

actually two things, need to decide

measure them

ooh this is exciting!

my poem is going to be about the 11th May 2010-

-David Cameron became PM
-I met LJ for the first time as we went to go see
-BOADRUM
-Train delays meant I missed the last train and had to walk/hitchhike the last 5 hours home during the middle of the night.

I have not started the poem, I just thought I'd pick a topic first. Weird day.

and you shall title it "Jesus Wept".

i will now :D

https://fbcdn-sphotos-a.akamaihd.net/hphotos-ak-snc7/s720x720/298896_602006257514_4302681_32522577_1989224814_n.jpg

dare i google what a virga is?

it has to do with clouds and precipitation. get wet, google it.

also mazing poem vmic

thx!

yay

get wet, google it.

^^ boom.

bernard, i dig yrs a lot!

The Haunted Mansion in the Haunted Forest

One day Billy and Sally got
lost in the haunted forest.

Sally said, That’s ridiculous,
there’s no such thing as monsters
and there’s no such thing
as a haunted forest.
So in they went.

The sun set slowly
as they lost their way.
The bare branches of trees
rattled in the wind.
Billy got scared.

Maybe Mom and Dad
will come and save us.
Don’t be silly, she said.
They’re busy at home
on their computers.

Deep inside the haunted forest
there was a haunted mansion.

Billy and Sally knocked
on its heavy oaken door
and hoped for the best.

In the mansion there
lived an old, old man
but he looked like a
young, handsome man.
This was one of his tricks.

He offered them wine.
It tasted just like soda,
so they drank it.
This was another of his tricks.

Have a seat, he purred.
Stay a while.

And they did.

come on, ya poets.

Poets,
How do you come up with a poem? Sometimes I have ideas but they are usually disjointed. I have trouble fleshing out an idea. Help?

CaptainLorex,

I begin by focusing on my innermost thoughts and feelings. I achieve this by meditation. I will take a long stroll around the neighborhood, or sit in a park, or a beach, and reflect on the sun light's rays. Often times I will draw a bath, and relax in the bath tub, and feel the warm water cleansing and revitalizing my body, simultaneously. Every poet has their own method, but this is really integral to the creative process...

While meditating and freeing my mind from "clutter," I obtain a lined note book and ball point pen, and I organize what I identify as my inner most thought and feelings into an outline. I ask myself: what am I most feeling? What thoughts do I find are most occupying what I think? I write these down inside the note bad.

Then, and this is my own personal method that I find works best for me, I think about my thought and feeling criteria as filtered through what I think of as my own four-way "radial spectrum" of mental interpretation. It sounds silly, but in my youth the comic book character television cartoon show The Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles= those four characters best represent the four major "domains" of this radial spectrum. From the center, or core (aka me "the ID"), my thoughts/feelings project out in FOUR (4) ways. They are:

1) Michelangeloe, the "Party Dude." Orange color M. is hedonistic, and loves the partying life. He is irresponsible and craves short-term gratification such as scarfing pizza, and having a good-time with his friends.

2) Leonardo, the "Leader of the Pack." Blue color. 'Leo' has an iron will, and is solid, and craves leadership and decision-making skills. Father figure of group. Downsides are: arrogance, excessive pride, reluctance to acknowledge shortcomings.

3) Donatello, the "Technician/Science-oriented." Purple color. Pros: Scientific analysis, fixing and repairing small-scale problems, advanced grasp of technical abilities and methodologies. Cons: myopic, prone to failures of misrecognizing the "big picture"/autisim. Hard to understand love and humanities

4) Raphael, "the Funny Guy". Red color. Pros = Cares about the mood of the pack, is chiefly concerned with the emotional state/happiness thorugh laughter of himself and those around him. Often cool and fun to be around (like Michelangeloe). Cons = crude

Using the four Turtles personality attributes, I create a diagram schematic of how my own thoughts and feelings most central to myself are filtered through these schema. I write these results into lines on the paper. As many lines as necessary for 100% communication. Finally, I arrange the lines into a rhymtic order (iambic pentimeter, limerick, e.g.) and pay special attention to the rhyming (verbal/oral "sound" on the word in language), paying extra special attention to EVENLY AND MATHEMATICALLY ORDER THE DIFFERENT TMNT-PERSONALITIES WITHIN THE POEM so that no one personality (radial quadrant) dominates the other.

This even and smooth distribution of my poem's mental/physical/emotional content INSURES a BALANCED result. This I believe is the one key issue that most poets do not address with their poems. Countless times they have written poems of variety length and subjects (love, loss, longing, etc - all valid human topics) but are not done with an effective, proven, well-engineered method using something that they truly CARE about, which in my case is Eastman & Laird's Ninja Turtles.

So, Lorex, so sum up... everyone does It differently.. the beauty of poetry is finding ur own way ;)

del

Stellar post

I've started writing a poem about Wilco. Yall need to start coming up with ideas

i am reading on November 12th!

and have two chapbooks coming out soon.

(this is all new news to me, too, sorry for my excitement)

congrats!

Yay, congrats! Who's publishing it?

whoa tabs!

since this seems as good a place as any to share our poetry: http://bloodletters.tumblr.com/post/12265894161/prophesy

(that one's a prose-poem actually but I've been writingn some okay verse lately imo)

getting this all out in one coz of conceptual username limitations -

snowy - taking a simple metaphysical/linguistical theme and working on the details rather than the opus you've turned out easily the loveliest thing i've ever seen outta you - well, the last 2 stanzas anyway (in an episodic poem parts are bound to receive qualitative comparison, sry) - keep it up -

table - as usual, the voice is extremely powerful and lucid, and i'm delighted to see so much energy devoted to fragments which self-avowedly shouldn't be allowed (given a traditional, authoritative, bureaucratic poet-laureate aesthetic) into a state-of-the-nation appraisal -

edward - the bait-and-switch introduction of exaggerated kid's-book voice in the last 3rd of the poem followed by horror-movie white-out is wonderfully managed - appreciate yr deep affection for the poetic punchline -

here's mine, written today.

The Pissing, Beware

If one must thieve, do it elsewhere
- The plain-clothes common-coursers could be close
And should your bladder shake and heave
The implication is – you too beware
Caught bestride a holly sapling, full gush
Or down, doggish by a hollow log
Discreetly risen, only seen by
Mother crisp frowning afternoon waistline jog
Better this than a breach of the peace in somebody’s home
Better this than a spoilt child’s coy spray report
Best to piss where it can be controlled
In fading rivulets of what could be the clouds’ work, or a dog’s,
Offending only those yet worse aggrieved by fat
Or those who make sport of that fatal compact –
Drake-gang shun runt flyaway pylon-fizz flat –
“Our floury trash to victors’ gizzards!”
Algae spreads and uric acid
Spills remorselessly through soil sewers
Brown water turns yellow,
Fish strangle each other, Old Man Heron ruptures,
Park-keeper – O undone park-keeper!
Forty years you’d bathe in your bathing-hat –
Kids’d fling chips, or quoits –
Like a dolphin –
Now he weeps in the control-centre
Hammers the panic button dyspeptically
As in the jogger-mother’s earpiece
Beep after beep after beep –
Here he is
Unambitiously behind a plane tree
Guilty cock in hand
Thief

yay!
I didn't notice that a new poem has been posted

---

time to write a poem people
chop to it!

because of the lack of entries so far, all joke poems will be placed in the same poll as regular poems

we need to start pumping these out ninja style

CaptainLorex: How do you come up with a poem?

del griffeth: So, Lorex, so sum up... everyone does It differently.. the beauty of poetry is finding ur own way ;)

How do you pump out a poem ILX?

I'm thinking that I might take something I care about and write about it

i wrote on the envelope
Frode Grodås
with a heart over the a

i never saw him again

tears that soaked english soil
fell as rain in norway
and wet his face

Poetry contest is now 2011/2012. Deadline in April because April is national poetry month

hence, relume

when's the deadline?

so is this ever gonna happen?

yes, deadline is the 15th of smarch

the ides of smersh