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  • Locked thread
supermikhail
Nov 17, 2012


"It's video games, Scully."
Video games?"
"He enlists the help of strangers to make his perfect video game. When he gets bored of an idea, he murders them and moves on to the next, learning nothing in the process."
"Hmm... interesting."
Sure.

Non-western burial. 141 :fuckoff:'s

Her death was a release.
And everybody knew it.
Her face had its last crease.
The last sock had been knit.

The fam'ly reunited.
All petty grudges swept
Under, on fire lighted.
Two of the women wept.

Her waxen face tranquil.
Black lustre wooden coffin.
The chapel solemn, still.
Priest on familiar routine.

He mumbled from his tome
Farewells said, and tears cried.
Launched almost home
With boredom guilty ride.

A fresh hole in the ground
On the edge of the path.
We went around and round
Dropped handfuls of gray earth.

The grave filled by workmen.
A squabble over head
Or feet cross placement.
Communally constructed flower bed.

A homeward awkward walk
Resentful reminiscence
Over a decanter of vodka
Teetotaling quiescence.

Uneasy brooding under moon.
An odd bucket of earth
To dump onto the oozing dune.
A couple plastic roses.

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Symptomless Coma
Mar 30, 2007
for shock value

Etherwind posted:

Betrayed they both had been, and now the beast
Might burn the towns and kill again. Yet first

There's even some (Heaney) Beowulf in there. You are some kind of crazy poetic juggernaut, man. I think you should take this down to your nearest Spoken Work night and show them real talk.

On Thunderbrawls: My tuppence is that they only really 'work' if they're special, and that's only if you get the sense that the thread is watching. If they're not, we might as well play email chess. Same goes for a sub-thread, I don't think everyone would check it. Sure, it's good to find more excuses to write, but this thread can only provide so many at a time. My vote would be one brawl allowed per week, one round maximum, in this thread.

sebmojo
Oct 23, 2010


Legit Cyberpunk









Symptomless Coma posted:


On Thunderbrawls: My tuppence is that they only really 'work' if they're special, and that's only if you get the sense that the thread is watching. If they're not, we might as well play email chess. Same goes for a sub-thread, I don't think everyone would check it. Sure, it's good to find more excuses to write, but this thread can only provide so many at a time. My vote would be one brawl allowed per week, one round maximum, in this thread.

This has a good ring to it. I also like the idea that anyone can leap forward to judge, unless the contestants want someone specific. Judging is fun.

Erik Shawn-Bohner
Mar 21, 2010

by XyloJW
I think thunderbrawls should be in-thread, and there should be no limit to how many you can do. You just have to pay X money to do them. A tab is kept until the end of the month, and you must donate that amount to a charity of our choosing (must provide screenshot proof) at the end of the month or face a ban from TD. Maybe forever, maybe for the next month. Something along the lines of $1 USD to challenge someone, and they can pay $1 to accept on their tab or you can pay $2 to cover their tab and yours (along with picking the prompt), and they're the dick for not writing for charity. If someone wants to sponsor a fight, they can put it on their tab.

It's a great idea because it's FOR THE CHILDREN, you greedy hacks.

Capntastic
Jan 13, 2005

A dog begins eating a dusty old coil of rope but there's a nail in it.

Hahahaha writers having money.

Erik Shawn-Bohner
Mar 21, 2010

by XyloJW
The successful ones do :smuggo:

But if you can't spare a dollar to feed a starving African child for two days because you'll have to drink a glass of purified, delicious tap water instead of Mt. Dew...

I don't know what to tell you :(

The Saddest Rhino
Apr 29, 2009

Put it all together.
Solve the world.
One conversation at a time.



Dammit I forgot there was going to be a new Thunderdome thread and never checked beyond my bookmarks. I'm not a poetry person anyway so I guess I'll wait for the next prompt. :shobon:

SurreptitiousMuffin posted:

"I THINK THE SADDEST RHINO IS A BAD RHINO AND I CHALLENGE HIM TO A LOVECRAFT-HORROR-3-PART-OFF"

Etherwind posted:

Saddest Rhino, you gonna take that poo poo? He's calling you out!

WHAT IS THIS :ssj:

Benagain
Oct 10, 2007

Can you see that I am serious?
Fun Shoe

Fanky Malloons
Aug 21, 2010

Is your social worker inside that horse?

HiddenGecko posted:

GeckoBrawl Round II

On a Branch in the Bordeaux
(141 Words)

Iroel I'm awake now, so you basically have until I get tired of trying to get my TD submission to 350 words to get in here and post your Thunderbrawl response.

Fanky Malloons
Aug 21, 2010

Is your social worker inside that horse?
Alright, this poem is bumming me the gently caress out, so I'm posting it now even though it's only 267 words. Eat it, Benagain, you monster.


267 words - Flash Rule: can't use the word "death"
Every Day After

I was drunk at your funeral
strung out at half-mast while your brother
administered the eulogy,
as dry and creased as the maple
leaves that hung, limp
around the memorial garden.
After the service the others
wouldn’t look at me, their eyes fluttering
away from mine like frightened sparrows
as if the loss were contagious,
a widowhood of the soul and
your urn a strange trophy of my survival.

At home in the bed I don’t sleep in
I press my body into your outline
pretending I can still smell your scent
on the sheets,searching out every last
particle and pressing them into my skin
for safekeeping.

And now the phone bring
brings an anniversary every time someone calls
up; the memory of that Monday and the
measured tones pouring bad news down the line
followed by the steady drip
drip of condolences, like an icepick between the eyes.

I didn’t cancel your newspaper subscription,
kept your name next to mine on the mailbox
as if the entity called you and me still exists.
I only keep the crosswords though,
filled in and folded into paper cranes
that roost with ghosts of your cup on the coffee table.

The last note that you wrote me lives
in my wallet, folded like stray DNA
your essence pressed into the paper so that
as I stand on the shoreline and watch
yesterday’s sand sink back in,
and even as the wind separates
your ashes from my hands and
the last strands of you unwind
and disappear into the substrate
I can still pretend
that I’ll see you again
in the morning.

Etherwind
Apr 22, 2008
Probation
Can't post for 117 days!
Soiled Meat

Erik Shawn-Bohner posted:

I think thunderbrawls should be in-thread, and there should be no limit to how many you can do. You just have to pay X money to do them. A tab is kept until the end of the month, and you must donate that amount to a charity of our choosing (must provide screenshot proof) at the end of the month or face a ban from TD. Maybe forever, maybe for the next month. Something along the lines of $1 USD to challenge someone, and they can pay $1 to accept on their tab or you can pay $2 to cover their tab and yours (along with picking the prompt), and they're the dick for not writing for charity. If someone wants to sponsor a fight, they can put it on their tab.

No offence, but I honestly think this is a terrible idea for a whole variety of reasons. Bullshit ahoy:

Firstly, who picks the charities? What if the ethics or institutions underlying the charity conflict with those held by one of the writers? This is more likely than you think, especially the more one knows about the charities in question (Amnesty International springs to mind as an example).

Secondly, introducing money to things complicates them really quickly, as with it you introduce the inherent social imbalance on which capital is predicated. While I could afford to pay that, I know people who couldn't afford it given how tight their margins are (enough money for simple food, rent, gas, electricity and Internet and little else). It puts an opportunity cost - no matter how minor to you and me - on what should be undertaken freely.

Thirdly, it distorts the competition. It's one thing to let the contestants sort out the details, and quite another to say "He who writes the cheque picks the prompt."

Fourthly, as foreign as it may seem, some of us prefer not to talk about our charitable donations publicly as a matter of principle, and participation would force that.

Fifthly, I'd be prepared to bet it'll put new people off participating in Thunderdome. Last I heard, that was still a concern.

Lastly, there's the issue of monetising what should be a conflict of honour. :black101:

All of this seems reason enough to not do it, especially since there's nothing stopping a pair of brawlers from agreeing to do charitable donations. They could even agree to make it a wager!

Etherwind fucked around with this message at 20:14 on Jan 13, 2013

toanoradian
May 31, 2011


The happiest waffligator
I think that's a joke. I know it from seeing quite a few jokes in my time.

Etherwind
Apr 22, 2008
Probation
Can't post for 117 days!
Soiled Meat
Humour will not be permitted after the revolution, comrade. :saddowns:

Erik Shawn-Bohner
Mar 21, 2010

by XyloJW

These are all petty concerns considering the massive cash flow it would generate. We could point it at a world problem, and this thread could have it solved in a couple months.

But for the sake of arguing in good faith, I'll address your points:

1) It shouldn't be hard to pick one organization that everyone can agree on. Something that wouldn't cause any moral conflicts like donating to the IDF.

2/3) While I see your side, it's simply the way of the world that the fiscally responsible have put themselves in the position where they have the best resources to make informed decisions.

4) I wouldn't consider it so much a donation as a tax on the privilege of self-expression.

5) To groom a proper community, it is necessary to keep certain types from jumping into the middle of things without having first proven themselves capable. Much like keeping a country club running smoothly, it's best to let them serve the community so they can have an up-close view of how everything works. In reality, it's offering them a grand opportunity.

I hope I have answered your questions fully and we've come to an understanding.

budgieinspector
Mar 24, 2006

According to my research,
these would appear to be
Budgerigars.

And now, the Ceremony of Ascension. Begin the Sausage Tossing Ritual!

toanoradian
May 31, 2011


The happiest waffligator
Twice now did the prompt and challenge defeated me.

Death on Death (351 words)
Goodbye to you
Yes, hello, hello I am here
I’m sorry to bear bad news:
You’re no more, you’ve passed,
You’ve gone and spent your last
Moments of life.

No, there aren’t any games
Miracles or second chances
Once you died you remain
In that state, forever
lifeless, forever over!

Don’t start to cry now
You’re many years too late!
Look, there isn’t anything
I can do to help, I am just
Carrying you to the next
World of wonders
Probably.

I have had enough of this
Crying and sobbing
At time around death
Why can’t you smile for
Once when you die
Or be happy
As I welcome you

I hate that you’ve feared
Me; I hate that you have
Feared a force of nature
With a personality
Likes and needs
So much that you named
‘It’ the ‘Grim Reaper’
I much prefer ‘Death’!

I didn’t start off reaping
I didn’t start off grim!
I started off picking
I started off grinning!

I am sick of you
Being scared of death
When it is only the briefest
Seconds at the end.
People resist being taken
As if moving on will hurt
As if I will hurt

No, I don’t have
A loving scythe.
I don’t cut you off
Your own body did that!
I just pick you up
So you get on
To the next world!

I don’t have a steed
Of burning skulls
I don’t need a ride
Of magic bones
To bring you out
From this place.

Do you want to stay
Here in this void?
The sizzling, swirling,
Swaying darkness?
Didn’t think so!
So shut up and walk
With me.

No, there is no light,
No tunnels either.
It’s easy to get lost
In the realm of after
Death.

What’s in the world beyond
This realm? I do not know
Nor do I care
Notice I handle deaths
What’s before,
What’s after,
What do I care.

Here at last we reached
The end of our team
Just give a step
Now go on then!
Move past!
Your life had ended
Your death had too

twinkle cave
Dec 20, 2012

THUNDERBRAWL LOSER
EPISODE: XXIII: DIE FOR YOUR POETRY

assigned mission-
twinkle cave: have at least 5% of their final wordcount (do the math yourself, gumling) comprised of neologisms, or newly coined words. Think Jabberwocky and nonsense verse.
AND+ I originally started the wrong prompt so also "written from the perspective of a dying man" which actually belonged to Your Sledgehammer.

(word count: 826 including inextricably intertwined header statement)

=

Pedro’s is a real place. It’s located in North Carolina along I-95 off Exit 1, just south of the Virginia border. A way-point since 1950 for Northerners vacationing to Florida, it isn’t what it used to be. Ben Bernanke is said to have worked there as a carney in his youth, though officially he was a poncho wearing waiter.


Exit 1

Pedro’s South of the Border looks like poo poo.
Class warfare prints were found at the scene, and suspected.
as in gender warfare, as in substance warfare, as in ideologue warfare, as in
junkies will forevermore go there to die.

But once Bernanke worked there,
and VCR repairman conferenced
three days vacation away,
sniffing over-chlorinated pools
wasted next to the interstate.

Where station wagon’s trolled the super lots
to embattle in mediocre joy and check-in
to future-now’s past radtainment of the new.

Envision Pedro’s asiatic stereo-caricature
apologetic retarded buckteeth greeting,
inviting to make sepia toned humor,
as skin sticks to synthetic upholstery,
debonding upon arrival,
wife slowly fantasizing
lonely suicide in floral prints
against a like floral print patio chair cushion
against like floral print highway scrub
and all the silent dually cruel
squelched dramatic night sex
squeezed out in the otherness
of tin-pan boxed AC motel leisure.

The coarse enunciation of racial slights
before we had a black president would qualify,
“People who have nothing don’t know how hard it is,”
unpacking excessive compression from the modeled weight
a husband wore in the days when they came with hats and women gloves.

Above Virginia there is gene mutation from richy
people overfucking expressed in adults with small childly white teeth
belonging to vampish ravenous empowered ingrates.
Below is evidenced gene overlap/cancellation resulting in wide-set eyes
letting-it-all-hang-out-to-never-be-put-back-in.

“I-95 is an accelerated axis of mutation polarized with opposing filthy indulgences”,
I mutter to floorboard,
and break slowly into the only stripmall stripperclub I might ever
hope for, shouldered to a “Spa” with blacked-out windows.

In my room are
cardboard furniture melted by nicotine,
silhouette-thin walls,
(The real barrier; mutually assured horror
of counter-occupant’s addle)
skeeve carpet like a deficiency rash on the lower abdomen etching downward.

Out the window, past skin peel curtains,
lot lizards slouch into their next mouthful,
(walleyed high-headed backwoods snake church scags with a little t and a big A
corralled into motorcade spooge glamour by determined trust in humanity
and a tingle in their cooters no amount of hair-tightening bun twists ever dampened)
wiping up whore bucks from whore masters, having the full rompleshit,
cause no attractive woman has parted pedro’s grime non-ironically in a lifetime
except the death seekers flogging for ruin porn.

Me, deep now, beyond raising, plumed in Pedro’s musky crotch
where the heat is ripping sweat from my rear end
(that crease of fallow housing where the MD crammled the nuke).

Half-life. What bullshit. What an rear end in a top hat.
The garbage human race lives too long,
with dick-to-rear end cancer the leading edge of quickly deluding machinery.
No need to patch a wounded wound,
while the aged rape the young by clutching the vine
withering it downard, soaking nutrients,
from salve to succubus they change,
and I saw the magazine face of our 43nd and knew
“He’s praying to the devil, that shitteration.”

I hear the trees boughing and black, down
to swat me from the stage.
No parlor tricking to a lower level to duck
pre:
/man 
   descending 
            stair 
                behind 
                     couch/
yet head still yapping displayed.

And I’ve seen the eyes of gently caress buckets
that breed the world with stains.
Eyes that will love no one ever,
the same I waited for but never paused on me.

Gasolining the room brings to mind that first beaterbox
propelled by my spit and ingenuity,
and I pause, but no, this show will close.
There are always reasons for the weak to grasp;
I want to spread a few minutes across Pedro’s face,
swat pinballs into twitchy arcing elements
pocketed in his sombrero topped arcade,
run a hand along a poolside wrought iron fence,
bumble through the fuckwits and doofus hoarders.
But the fire is hot already,
laid up licking
at the fungled shower board
as if it where the cancer
coring my vitals.

Suicides crouch in a dark corner festering
like harmed animals, but I stare at the mirror,
extending the distance between my vertebrae,
and look at this blue eyed sack of creature,
and no nothing of it.

Life meant nothing;
less than the crumpled black edge of a dead leaf pasted to a storm sewer wall.

Leaving behind only rear end in a top hat’s tainted radiation pellet,
which will rapidly approach zero but never zilch,
outlasting this earth and all in it.

Organism vapid and dispersed beneath
the trailing edge of poo poo drug futureward.
Disgusted by ceremony, the handbag of sociopaths,
I’m torching the evidence.
Pedro’s going with me.

I burn this mother fucker to the ground.

twinkle cave fucked around with this message at 22:15 on Jan 13, 2013

Fanky Malloons
Aug 21, 2010

Is your social worker inside that horse?
Welp, Iroel didn't post anything yet, and it's like 20 hours after I said you guys had 14-16 to get it done, so I'm awarding HiddenGecko the sweetest victory of all, a win by default. Hooray for you! :toot:

Zack_Gochuck
Jan 4, 2007

Stupid Wrestling People
Admiral's Grove (358)

By the sea is where I was born,
In a saltbox house, battered and worn.

My home, my life, around the bay,
The gulls swoop through the ocean spray.

There I lived since I was young,
Til a sickness seeped into my lung.

Though I lay in a hospital bed,
My thoughts travel back home instead.

I don't think of the smell of the sea,
Or the wood stove or a warm cup of tea

Not my family, wife or even my son,
Of all the moments, I think about one.

I cannot help myself but think,
Of the time I bought that girl a drink.

It was up the bay, Little Grouse Cove,
In a run-down bar called Admiral's Grove.

A pretty young thing, up on a stool,
Watching Big Paddy playin' some pool.

She was almost done the last of her beer,
So I sings out, “Another one here!”

Dark brown skin, her hair all black,
None like her up the shore and back.

She danced with Dick and John and Rod,
But she had me hooked like a jig in a cod.

So I stands up and asks her for a scuff,
And she sticks with me till she has enough.

We dances around, b'y I spose tis a crime,
But can't a married man have a good time?

I takes her up the hill and onto the head,
And treated it like a wedding bed.

Never felt better me entire life,
But I had to go home, cause I had a wife.

Didn't seen her atall after that night,
I got her address, but I never did write.


I thought about her, week to week,
But I got me doubts we'll ever speak.

I figured that fate must be unkind,
I'm married, so I puts her out of me mind.

Never did tell me missus the truth,
I 'spose if I did she'd knock out me tooth.

But I tells ya, on me way to the grave,
I'm not thinkin' of Jesus or if he can save.

I thinks of the girl with dark-brown skin,
And cries cause I'll never see her again.

BlackFrost
Feb 6, 2008

Have you figured it out yet?
Oh god what have I done. I have constructed a poem. I have not even attempted this, ever, at all, in any serious fashion.

But it's done. After two separate rewrites, it's done. I hope you're happy, Thunderdome. This is what your have wrought from my mind. I had to do it, though. I knew if I chickened out on poetry week that I'd chicken out on every week thereafter, and I can't have that. I was born to be here, in the Thunderdome. If nothing else, this experience has given me newfound respect for those who try to write poetry seriously.

Enjoy. Jerks.

Flash Rule: Poem must be an acrostic poem that spells out "ONLY DEATH IS REAL"
Word Count: 377

Mountain Climber
code:
Over the mountaintop, I gaze down below me at the rocky path below,
  a gentle breeze rises up to greet me, and it beckons me to press on.
Never have I considered that the hard part would ever reach an end, and that 
  now the rest of the way would be as gentle as that breeze; a faster path, for sure.
Looking over my shoulder before making my descent, I wonder about the paths I could
  have taken before; the ones that could have lead to much more elegant peaks.
Yet I cannot turn back now, for once a path is decided it must then be completed,
  for as you climb the rocky path, it becomes trickier; retreat is nigh impossible.
Descending is indeed much easier than the climb, yet I try not to get too confident,
  getting a little reckless could make me fall; yet I cannot help but hurry downward.
Even as I start to falter, I do not skip a beat, for I know the journey will soon be  
                                                        over; I’ll finally get to rest. 

At last, the end appears to be coming: I can see some trees; I’m almost there!
Trotting downward evermore, the path gets steeper as I go.
Hurry downward, hurry on, I must return home very soon.
Incredibly, the path is flattening now, but soon it ends abruptly with a cliff.
Stopping at the edge, I take a glance down below, into the trees that now seem 
                                                                                                

                                                                        further away than ever.

Realizing that this is the end, the path I have chosen has indeed
  led to this, the final descent, the easiest part of the climb but also
  the hardest, I ponder: was there another path that went for longer?

Everywhere I could have gone, every choice I could have made, they
  swim in my mind as I gaze below, but alas, there’s no turning back;
  besides, they all have the same end, no matter how short the path.
  
After everything is done with, after every choice is made, there is only
  one point where the path is always the same; they all lead to this very
  cliff; I realize, then, as I hurl to the ground, that the old adage is true:

Life’s a bitch, 
                                                                                                   

                                                                       and then you die. 

sebmojo
Oct 23, 2010


Legit Cyberpunk









6 hours to go. Get crankin', versifiers.

Bad Seafood
Dec 10, 2010


If you must blink, do it now.

Erik Shawn-Bohner posted:

1) It shouldn't be hard to pick one organization that everyone can agree on. Something that wouldn't cause any moral conflicts like donating to the IDF.
I for one cannot sleep until Ireland is free once again.

Bad Seafood fucked around with this message at 00:26 on Jan 14, 2013

SurreptitiousMuffin
Mar 21, 2010
:siren: THUNDERBRAWL ROUND 2 :siren:




on the rooftop we found new names for old stars

We're smoking cloves and roses high above
the city streets. She says “We're out of beer
and love. We did our best and that's enough.”
My monsoon girl is in a drought. No fear
my son! I stop to measure weather and
lose track of time. My head is spinning now-
the tremor moving down from head to hands.
“It's Audenesque, almost,” she says. Her frown
is catching. poo poo, I'm losing track again:
it's something about oceans or bad dreams-
I never read the books she liked. A shame
but time is what you make of it. It seems

I've spent what little time I had with her
on hurricanes, poems, tremors and sleep.

HiddenGecko
Apr 15, 2007

You think I'm really going
to read this shit?
Dem Bones, Dem Dry Boners

Flash Rule: Must be a limerick
(197 words)

And on that tawdry night ran the skeleton
Through the abbey and right into the fountain.
Pardon me ma’am I've lost my head
But I think that’s better left unsaid.
Oh my, what a scamp, that little demon!

Right down the road ran that tawdry skeleton
Every pub in town was made to hearken.
Ma’am! Pleasure to see you on the stool
A lady of your caliber is no fool.
I’m just lonely, can’t a lady get a swig of bourbon?

A bone white finger signaled the barman
The skeleton acted the part of a bachelor.
Oh this ring? We’re divorced ma’am
Stay those heaving bosoms.
Why I never, barman! another oily toucan!

Somewhere in the night a hat appears
On top of the bone white head it leers.
Come home with me tonight my lady
And don’t think me creepy
I’m leaving, I’m calling the police! Stop those jeers!

The skeleton left alone that night, back to his grave
Feeling right pauper and a little bit knave.
The morning is upon me, it beams and smokes!
I guess I’ll go lay down with my kinfolks.
He just wasn't my type officer, and he just wouldn't behave!

budgieinspector
Mar 24, 2006

According to my research,
these would appear to be
Budgerigars.

HiddenGecko posted:

Dem Bones, Dem Dry Boners

Flash Rule: Must be a limerick
(197 words)

The Nantucket Tourism Mafia wants a word about not paying them their due--especially in a piece with the word "boners" in the title.

HiddenGecko
Apr 15, 2007

You think I'm really going
to read this shit?

budgieinspector posted:

The Nantucket Tourism Mafia wants a word about not paying them their due--especially in a piece with the word "boners" in the title.

That's my boner story and I'm boner sticking to it, boner.

Martello
Apr 29, 2012

by XyloJW
Everyone shut the gently caress up about American dollars and Catholic charities and I don't know what the gently caress, thanks in advance.

monkeyboydc
Dec 3, 2007

Unfortunately, we had to kut the English budget at the Ivalice Magick Ackcademy.
Man, gently caress iambic pentameter. My stressed, unstressed are off probably. It's not pretty, but here it is.

Flash Rule: Iambic Pentameter

Word Count: 415


Death's Door

"There's a way to split your soul from body"
the note I found inside my text book said.
"It's a simple trick that anyone can learn.
If you would like I will show you the way."

"As you begin to drift to sleep tonight,
you'll need to look for an immense, dark door.
Passing through will hurt, but then you'll be free.
Going through will be just like a death."

I found the door - walking up its shadow.
To reach the knob, I had to climb its front.
Splinters, slivers, cut my fingers and toes.
The knob numbed me like my hands were in snow.

It opened like a wake in deep water.
My chest opened then too and I poured out.
My being, thoughts, feelings like a long piss -
dilute, expand and drift to find more souls.

We sit with our coffees warming our hands.
The street out the window is quiet still.
Only we're up - not even the baker.
Our eyes are low in the heavy morning.

Water runs warm, heated by the bonfire
that makes dashes into the dark forest.
Dirt and stones stick to our many bare feet.
We're up when the night bleeds to day, like souls.

For a moment it's day during the night.
Lightning falls down on the valley below.
We point up and light splits sky like black cloth
on white screen that shears and shines from behind.

Sometimes I shrink, condense - droplets on glass.
I funnel to my source, to my body
to see how it's doing without me there.
It must be hard living without a soul.

Soon I find it sitting in a sleek building.
It has a crease etched in its brow line now.
Its tie cuts off air from reaching its lungs.
It's bent over a screen that I can't read now.

It forgets what day it is - they're the same.
It wakes with a girl who's name he doesn't
know and wonders as he walks home, what her
days are like and if she still has her soul.

Books sit, lonely now. "I don't have the time
anymore." I heard it say, Even that text book
lies uncracked, spine unbent, words unread.
This was something we used to do as one.

It sleeps on a couch, bathed in blue light from
the TV deep in a beer-sleep, snoring.
I should be sad for it, but then I think:
If this is life, then I'll choose death.

EDIT: Word Count

monkeyboydc fucked around with this message at 00:55 on Jan 14, 2013

budgieinspector
Mar 24, 2006

According to my research,
these would appear to be
Budgerigars.

monkeyboydc posted:

Man, gently caress iambic pentameter.

Everyone always says that it's Babby's First Meter, but for some reason I'm wired to default to tetrameter. Adding that extra foot makes everything sound off, to me.

Etherwind
Apr 22, 2008
Probation
Can't post for 117 days!
Soiled Meat

budgieinspector posted:

Everyone always says that it's Babby's First Meter, but for some reason I'm wired to default to tetrameter. Adding that extra foot makes everything sound off, to me.

I think most people are wired to tetrameter, but that's what makes Iambic Pentameter so strong: it forces you to think hard about what you're writing, and to include enjambment. The real difficulty lies in making sure the regional stress pattern you follow when speaking actually corresponds to English proper, since there's substantial variation between how stresses are placed on words regionally and how they're supposed to be placed.

Case in point, "frequently". FRE-quent-LY, right? Turns out that it's meant to be pronounced fre-QUENT-ly: the confusion comes from different accents elongating the first "e", which makes people pronounce the "y" to match. This is apparently incorrect.

You can imagine what a pain it is for a Scottish English speaker (from near Glasgow) to write stressed poetry: we pronounce "computer" as "c-mpu-r." Means loving going over that poo poo with a fine-toothed comb.

Etherwind fucked around with this message at 01:14 on Jan 14, 2013

swaziloo
Aug 29, 2012
Flash Rule: Must contain the words "Mouth-friend" and "Frigorific."
Extra Rule: Do not use the same word twice.
Word Count: 288 (It took on a meaning and I wasn't willing to pad it just for a number.)
Commentary: Poetry is hard.

I Cannot Say

Shifty persuasive mouth-friend
Selfish bold striped candy cane
Wanton gulping Thorazine
Homemade sub sea jellybean

Sickly hormone rocket rise
Judgment backing terrify
Perversion cunning evident
Blaspheme courted malcontent

Highlight reel regarded box
Gypsy teepee floodlight thoughts
Silver desperate trusting thread
Passive sugar freckle red

Pheromone doorway strangulate
Needless belief captivate
Corded constant transferring
Regarding dammit blasphemy

Soaking disregard hard press
Early stealthy slight suggest
Danger lingual cool direct
Defying thoughtful wrong select

Gimmick satin classic split
Discover mashing cushion trick
Frenzied failure obvious
Cursing freeing never reach

Thumping concerned mockery
Prone compulsive sweeping string
Overdoing confession
Clawing fighting keeping none

Musky bronze indigo eyes
Decided cherry pie surmise
Deep eternal glint headway
Willing fight enduring play

Murder conscience heavy rain
Placate affable one way
Illusion scaffolding deny
Consumption decayed butterfly

Verbal hold anticipate
Instinct intellect explain
Gifted unappreciative
Duration qualify believe

Conquer obstacle despite
Thorny dedicated light
Stubborn envy peer around
Devotion static swinging trowel

Twinkle furnace genuflect
Groping buoyant curling tech
Crustacean symbol integrate
Solid burnish granting weight

Fitting boundary overlap
Dark wire frozen windblown slant
Decisive cold diminishing
Extend persuade long filigree

Crispy darting submerge slick
Costly upright misplaced script
Dogged dangerous display
Distance fogging andalé

Echo bourbon takeout pop
Anti-fugal airborne drug
Mysterious soliloquy
Summit chest belittling

Surprising bolster masticate
Languid oral deafening
Frigorific seas shut it down
Amusing punishments astound

Ten ton onslaught in the wings
Hair trigger golden mecanique
Gerrymander cross-stitched thighs 
Supported flesh thick white zip tie

Collapsing space infinity
Pockmarked distant tragedy
Gasping only shrieking clown
Context rules crushing abound

Mourning fabric disappear
Tenuous skinny prudence beer
Handful sheep proselytize
Deceit construction netting lies

Depth charge invitation true
Milky ordered posse queue
Coaxing flight path genuine
Careless caustic end of line

toanoradian
May 31, 2011


The happiest waffligator
Oh, crud. Requesting permission to add my flash rule to my submission.

sebmojo
Oct 23, 2010


Legit Cyberpunk









toanoradian posted:

Oh, crud. Requesting permission to add my flash rule to my submission.

DENIED.

toanoradian
May 31, 2011


The happiest waffligator
Okay then.

toanoradian posted:

Death on Death

Flash rule: Free verse in very short lines divided into stanzas of 4 to 8 lines each Make it absolutely poo poo.

Bad Seafood
Dec 10, 2010


If you must blink, do it now.
2 hours remain.

Mojoman, shoot me your email in case Benagain disappears for another thousand years.

STONE OF MADNESS
Dec 28, 2012

PVTREFACTIO

Etherwind posted:

The real difficulty lies in making sure the regional stress pattern you follow when speaking actually corresponds to English proper, since there's substantial variation between how stresses are placed on words regionally and how they're supposed to be placed.

Really, though, why would you do this? It's not like any of us is born region-less, and though I'm hardly well-versed (Ha! Ha!) in prominent poets, I imagine a great loving many of them write to a local idiom and gain recognition as a poet from x.

Sure what you describe may be the correctest possible approach to English, but at the same time it suggests that only English speakers of a certain region and class are capable of natural, fluid self-expression and everyone else must imagine their words spoken in such a tongue, and that can't possibly be right, can it?

Sitting Here
Dec 31, 2007
This was much harder than it ought to have been. Poetry is the elephant in my room.

Flash rule: Must contain a geologist

I didn't kill mine, instead I took inspiration from a founding father of modern geology and the idea of deep time.

Time Vaster than Death
~385 words

Death waits like the jaws
of a shark at the bottom of a rowboat
tipped on end.
Between sweat-soaked sheets at night,
you contemplate
how everyone you know will die.
Their neurons will go dim
and the latticework shadow that makes up their very selves
will dissolve and run like ink
into a drain beneath the great faucet of inevitability.

But lest ye despair:
James Hutton was a man
who's long since met that dark and endless end.
First a farmer, then a turner of stones,
he found death in the bed of every creek, river and gorge.
Man thought the world young
in James Hutton's day, young enough to fit inside
our pocketbook minds.
It was off the coast of Berwickshire that a different tale was told,
not a tale of man but that of stone
and detritus
and ruin
and decay.

Once, a continent bled mud and sand
onto the floor of an ancient sea, sedentary grit
like so much sloughed off skin,
a slurry of things not living and things deceased.
James Hutton,
when he looked upon the rocky shore,
saw a wrinkle
in the gown of great mother earth, one wrinkle
from one swirl
of her green and blue ball gown and stole of clouds,
one turn in her long and stately dance.

Deep time,
James Hutton named the rhythm of the planet's slow song,
and he traced her steps backward
through plodding, calamitous prehistory. Whole lands
swallowed back into mother's skirts,
children called home by the light of her fiery core
to pay the debt of their birth.

And so there you sweat, and there you agonize
in a world of concrete, wood and petrol,
that your essence will someday not be your own,
that your life is so sacred,
that your love is so profound, that you should continue
where all else is given back
into mother earth's fold. One hundred thousand pictures embroidered
in the pattern of her dress,
and you've been them, you'll be them
as strata in stone,
as lichen and moss; as the mud between a child's toes
in generations to come,
and sandstone in sublime and majestic cliffs.

Living and dying, we feed the dance
and as James Hutton penned: We find no vestige of a beginning,
no prospect of an end.

Etherwind
Apr 22, 2008
Probation
Can't post for 117 days!
Soiled Meat

STONE OF MADNESS posted:

Really, though, why would you do this? It's not like any of us is born region-less, and though I'm hardly well-versed (Ha! Ha!) in prominent poets, I imagine a great loving many of them write to a local idiom and gain recognition as a poet from x.

Sure what you describe may be the correctest possible approach to English, but at the same time it suggests that only English speakers of a certain region and class are capable of natural, fluid self-expression and everyone else must imagine their words spoken in such a tongue, and that can't possibly be right, can it?

Well, it's for this reason (among many others) that I prefer a descriptivist view of language.

Unfortunately that presupposes an audience familiar with the patois with which you are writing, and unless you're fortunate to start with one that's very widely known, you're necessarily restricting your audience or otherwise rendering your work parochial. Like, for my poem, if I'd gone with the rhymes and rhythms that feel natural under Scottish English I'd probably alienate most of the readers in this thread unless I also specifically adopted a Scottish style or setting to contextualise it.

Like, how many Scottish novelists or poets are you familiar with? Now, of those, how many's work does not predominantly involve Scotland in some form? Of those remaining, how Scottish is the voice they employ?

sebmojo
Oct 23, 2010


Legit Cyberpunk









Bad Seafood posted:

2 hours remain.

Mojoman, shoot me your email in case Benagain disappears for another thousand years.

BONUS HAIKU

sleep is a tunnel
a shortcut we take through the
ever-dreaming earth

sebmojo fucked around with this message at 22:35 on Jan 14, 2013

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STONE OF MADNESS
Dec 28, 2012

PVTREFACTIO

Etherwind posted:

Points, all of them valid

But still, what is the point of being a poet? Is it
a) being a conduit for the automatic speech of the culture (your culture)
b) casting a spell of words to lend your speech a mystical, hypnotic effect (see above)
c) adhering to the rules so that you technically achieve a recognised form of poetry
d) success

I mean, there have to be heaps of American poets that don't give a poo poo about proper English stresses, right?

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