Day 7: Marathon - Fragments of Poetry

Rules/guidelines:

- Use this thread to post your poems. Don't post anything other than poems in it please. Only start when the hour starts: Poems posted before or after the hour (PnQ time) won't be counted!

- You can only take one option/time slot.

- You cannot post a poem until 2 OTHERS member have posted before you. Work it out in your clubs what poems you are doing each.
NOTE: If you want to use your simplify lifeline this round, you can use it so that only 1 person has to post before you, so that way the contest will be achievable with 2 people. Obviously though the more people you have the easier/faster it is, (so long as everybody is organised!)

- 1 point per poem (out of 50 points total, bonus points for more than 50 poems) 50pts for average quality, 100pts total (before bonuses)

- Use the 30 or so minutes before to organise who will take what poem and get writing, ready to hit the ground running when the hour starts. Organisation and teamwork is key here.

Once you have done one lap, you start again! Note: Start at prompt 1 and go in order. If you are doing prompt 3, you can't post that until somebody has posted prompt 2.

*Updated times for the challenge (please pick one to use):

Option 1: Sunday, 7.15-8.15 PnQ time
Option 2: Sunday, 15.00-16.00 PnQ time
Option 3 (NEW): Sunday, 19.00-20.00 PnQ time
Option 4: Monday, 19.00-20.00 PnQ time

EDIT:

Option 2: Sunday, 15.00-16.00 PnQ time - STARTS IN 30MINS.

The prompts for clubs using this time slot are posted below. Remember, make sure you are aware of the rules before starting as there will not be time to start asking questions once the hour starts!

- Remember you can use your simplify lifeline, you don't have to inform me beforehand. For example, if halfway through the hour you find yourselves down to 2 online members, use it. If you feel you don't have enough members to do justice, you can postpone it until one of the other hours, but once you start posting you can't change your time slot.

Prompts/themes for option 2:

1. Five line poem
2. Fish
3. Poem based on a book title
4. Senryu
5. aabb rhyming scheme, 2 verses
6. Summer
7. Include the word 'paper'
8. 7 line poem
9. Ducks
10. Wild card (pick any theme)
11. About/to a PnQ member
12. 30-32 syllables
13. Alcohol

Lap 1, Round 1- five line poem

The hourglass is merciless.
A cruel mistress;
No friend of mine.
Seconds, minutes, or hours,
She counts them all; none remain behind.

Lap 1 - round 1 - fish

Sailormen have cast their nets today,
'twas storming ashore, black thighs
in rhythm with the ocean, but fishes
slip and keep slipping, like hands
on bodies, and bodies on shores,
slipping fishes until the morn.

Lap 1 - round - 3 - Poem based on a book title

A Walk To Remember

Into the dappled,
deploring darkness,
I explore what remains...

an image of
solitude and beauty.

And, as I carved my way
through the tangle
of memories

there, I found him,
a face until now,
I could not name.

Lap 1, round 1-senyru

Forever rushing-
Ignoring precious moments
For lesser pursuits.

Lap 1 - round 2 - aabb, 2 verse

I've been dreaming about death all day
wondering if love, like life, would end midway
I mean, what if a trainwreck crashes right into my heart
what if the ocean grows and keeps us further apart?

I'd curse the gods just to keep danger at bay
flick a witchery finger just to make you stay,
for you I'd play my sinful card,
for you I'd let the skeleton's dance start.

Lap 1 - round - 6- Summer

Summer comes
like a cinnamon
flavored tea,

like a river of searing
heat, gushing out
from my tongue
flowing down
right to my
weathered
throat.

Lap 1 round 7 - include the word paper

Empty pages-
Waiting for ink.
Craving the feel
of ink flowing onto paper.
-Life's story waiting
to be written.

Lap 1 - round 8 - 7 lines

Little Fool

Whenever I tilted my head you'd interpret
this mechanical movement as finding hope
within your eyes, while I was merely
distracted by the bright bulb of mockery
that hung from the ceiling like a
clean-shaven chain of animal skin.

You've always been a blind reader of body language.

Lap 1 - round 9 - Ducks

Snail clouds dancing
to whistling mountain
pines

rainbows of butterflies,
gleefully waltzing
in-line

pale blue eggs cracking
as baby duck's
emerging.

Lap 1 - round 10 - wild card (include the word 'paper')

Madness grows in grass,
he crawls between blades and
into
bare feet of children. He waits
patiently, until child is old
enough to feel sadness
and the colours of
lunacy.

Madness swims in sea, he floods
ships and changes shades in the wind.
He steals the nails
keeping vessels together - boats,
bodies - and gives them to
hysteria.

He found Shakespeare on paper
ghosts, fell
into Macbeth in the storm,
murdered the king. The king is
dead, lost in a grave of blood and
aberration.

I found delirium on the hills today,
he was whispering to the ocean while
I spun into
unbalance.
Madness never knew what madness was
until he lived in
me.

Lap 1 - round 11 - about/to pnq member

For Cassidy

I held your skeleton close to me, every
junction or gap, but like an unstable bridge
all collapsed in a pile of broken
hope within my arms.

You were fragile and I'd kill your pain
if only I could, if only
I had the love to take
revenge and all that hurts.

But I hadn't learnt of love
in the process of burying my own bones.
I never knew what it felt like
skull against skull, fragments
of regret crashing against
a deathbed.

Edit

Edit

Lap 1 - round 12 - 30-32 syllables

the music seeped in
not slowly through ears or eyes
or light
but loud enough to pour
like an avalanche
through skin and bones
and heart

Z please edit away your poem, sorry :(

LIFELINE PLEASE

Lap 1 - round 13 - alcohol

I was an eighteen year old girl
who's never gone to a bar, never knew
that wine could taste so very bittersweet,
just because she despised everything
with the fragrance of alcohol, that decaying smell
of broken hearts, desperation, and
blur ... the burglar of nostalgia, just waiting
for the right moment to enter
her every vein, every fragment
of the brain, every figment and
reality, memory
and hallucination.

So upon her first taste of white wine
and a bartender with the semi-spitting image
of her first buddy, first crush, first
universe, she was sold. Didn't care
it was a sequence of her past-love;
his black hair, tanned skin, his history
of half-blood was good enough to imagine
it was -him-, smoking a cigarette
even though his breath was much less tainted
in her dreams, -him-, whose small talk
was enough to capture her, just to stare
at the angle of his jawline, that small ear
barely exposed for her to whisper in ...

And it's happened before, at the hairdresser
when the good man ruffled her hair, came
a little bit too close to her face, with his
shy mouth, she could imagine him saying
the words he never said, words as bright
as the scarlet cusp in his hair ...
just like the first time they met.

And everytime she would drown
in the colour of a stranger's skin,
the ebony of his hair, not quite sure
which -him- she was talking to
in her head, not quite sure
whether butterflies were released
into that cold cave of a ribcage
or whether moths were just
too attracted to that flickery flame
of her heart, so much
that desire became delusion ...
for nothing inside this body
has ever been so bright.

And I'll admit, there's no I
or her, no him or -him-,
I've lost track of the times
I told myself there was any resemblance
or difference, I've lost track of the days of soberness,
the days in which I wasn't drunk on nostalgia,
tapping that tune of heartbreak on my knee,
tapping against wine glasses, waiting
for another walking imitation
to offer me a new drink,
offer me
a new hallucination.

Lap 2 - round 1 - Five line poem

Watch me dance beneath the monochrome
moonlight as the silhouette beneath your eyelid
burns, does my lustrous hair attract you?
Or is it the ruffled mid-rib lace
that tempts you the most?

Edit

Lap 2 - round 2 - fish

We're all just dead fish
within the fishermen's net,
between shark tails and dolphin skin
another product of the day

Lap 2 - round 3 - poem based on a book title

Holes

I swear I was a healthy child -
I didn't scream all night, all my organs
were there and I learnt to talk after
my first word. But something's been digging
at me, tearing my skin slowly
and pulling out my life.

(I think it's me.)

I am covered in holes,
searching for treasure but finding
only rot. You're digging too but
finding treasure I didn't think
was ever there. It fills me up.

Lap 2 - round 4 - senryu

To be Art

naughty, and nervous
creeping against the naked
curve of a soul

Lap 2 - round 5 - aabb rhyming scheme, 2 verses

Foliage speaks of decaying beneath a cerulean FALL sky
August gusts--stuck between rivers, searing yet fleeting by

Leaves turn deep auburn, ceaselessly falling onto the ground
Lorn stalks seeking solitude, numb to loneliness so profound

Lap 2 - round 6 - summer

I never liked the sun -
too thick and sickly and turning my skin.
I was a ghost and a vampire with a moonlight
glow from my paper skin. But sun turns me
to fire and anger and I am no longer moonlight
but sheets of fierceness
but cannot even move my limbs
out of pain.

Lap 2 - round 7 - Include the word 'paper'

Finger lickin' good
on ivory paper and plastic plates,
these flavorful salmon dishes
really shine,
only if they have been
organically
farmed.

Lap 2 - round 8 - seven line poem

I was born with wings in my hands.
After all these years I still didn't know
how to fly. Chained to to a bedroom cell
as I learnt to read music. It was the calling
of the trees who applauded with wind
and hurricane storms for my singing
that finally brought me to the sky.

Lap 2 - round 9 - ducks

Paper cranes? swan lake? too cliche
for me to grasp, I'd rather stand obsessed
by diving ducks, green heads melting
with the murky water as I throw bread crumbs
their way, as if granting them coins
for their performance

Lap 2 - round 10 - wild card (senryu)

it's cold inside
i use blankets to cover
my mother's cruel gaze

Lap 2 - round 11 - PnQ member

Colm, oh Colm, where art thou Colm
our royalty is dying before portals
of our own, this asylum has become
a heaven for children running out
at midnight, please kidnap some more
little kids once you're home

Well that was one epic failure lol ...

Good luck everyone else. :)

*bows and leaves the stage*

I disagree, well done

some good poems written under pressure.

Thanks darren ... That helps a bit. :)

Some organisation problems and lack of members here ... Oh well what to do. Looking forward to the rest of you!