The Poets' Place

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***Remember: Anyone who wins three challenges in a row also wins a book!***

October 2008 Word Challenge

*Use 7 to all 10 of the following words (word variations allowed) in a poem:

just, labyrinth, mess, night, fog, stay, not, switch, early, teeth.

*Discussion/Voting will begin 10/23 and end 10/28 (deadline for entry: 10/22 midnight EDT). Please have your poem posted to this thread by October 22nd midnight (that's by 12:00 AM of the 23rd) EASTERN DAYLIGHT TIME for selection of The Word Artist(s). Your poem will be featured for the month of November, 2008 if selected.

All members may participate in the opinion poll & voting phase. This is being done to stimulate participation. Again: The Voting phase will be open to All Members, whether or not you have posted a poem.

We do our best here to reach a consensus fairly, therefore please rank the poems you choose: #1 (4 points), #2 (3 points), and #3 (2 points). After you vote, all other poems will receive 1 point each. Poets who post a poem but do not vote, will have their poems eliminated. Poets who post a poem may not vote for themselves in any of the top three rankings.

Once the "voting" is finished and the votes are counted, the Word Challenge winner(s)'s poem will be reposted. I will also append this thread with the poem from which the words were taken, with some additional links.

The Word Challenge winner(s) will be featured on the Word Artist page starting on the first of the month. In addition - Links to:
The Word Artist appear on What's New, the Home page, and the Calendar.

Previous challenges and word artists are posted in our Documents area. Please feel free to start your own Documents Folder with your prior entries.

Award Feature October

Grayling

The Poets' Place Word Artist

September Word Challenge!
block print portraits by Justin Kempton

Looking forward to some great reading as always!
And lots, LOTS & LOTS of participation!!!

Susan

Twilight

It must be the twilight,
when night is indecisive,
leading me through labyrinths
away from the mess I made
so early in the fog of love.

Its teeth,
sharp blades cutting through the chest
with guilt, confuse me,
for all I did was stay.

Not knowing how to switch off
feelings grown over the years
in the rose garden,
I just wear thorns and grow red pearls
where fingers pressed
around my neck.

Mazes breathe: accordions play
songs we used to dance
in different twilight
when days faded in embrace.

gypsy

(sorry, I kept pasting the wrong one, and then it pasted wrong)

Daedalus, architect of my labyrinth—
where each corner of the path begins, ends, on the same note;
stay, hear me well, Which edge gave you the most trouble?
Oh, it was a classic mosaic you crafted just for me.

I saw images through your eyes during many restless nights.
I saw my queen give birth to that monster, Minotaur,
and at that moment: thought, at once nebulous, unfocused,
turned. It switched the fog in my mouth to a bestial scream.

My teeth gnashed, grinded together;
many ideas passed in a current and turned vengeful.
My sacred city at Knossos had been reviled.
For years, I demanded the bloody mess of sacrifice in return.

Then early one day, my daughter fell in love with Theseus.
He came to kill the Minotaur—
you did not help him to fail; you helped him to succeed.
Therefore, I will sit and be judge of your punishment:

You, your son, will be held captive in your own invention;
for I have lost my daughter by a mere sculptor's hands.

©Susan Katz
10/11/2008

too tired tonight to try to read/reply.

so i'll just ask all you lazy-ass people to get on the stick and post a poem for the challenge.

thank you one and all.

even my smile fell asleep.

Landscape

here is not a place.
it is a blank against color
where she strokes feathers
until the rabid phoenix tips sideways,
embers in his teeth,
belches sand-dune fog
and chokes when he smiles.

it wants her to stay in season
though she cannot find voice inside
this figure of speech.
it needs her to breathe summer
again.

a fragment flashes light,
suspiciously like laughter
or a vague ricochet;
so she screams that she does not like birds,
that his foamy night-driven mouth
is not even real.

her form is without focus,
an underdeveloped photograph.
can it not see that her speech patterns falter
now and again?

she absorbs the shiver
just beyond the labyrinth
where his fire extinguished early;
where he caught his death of cold.
just beyond where he molted
leaving the mess in her startled hands.

~gypsiwind~

HEY! some o' ya'lls need to enter this joint!

Too early the moon rises this night,
not to reflect ancient suns but to illuminate
the fog hovering over sleep.
Teeth parted and breath labored, switch
from left to right to left again,
blankets bunched and sweated, searching.
Just one more turn to fall from
the labyrinth of black gray shadows;
damnable moon interrupting endless night.

Hold off on the Word Challenge for a couple of days. Thanks.

You can now go over to our group at Multiply and vote.

The Challenge is on Page 2 of the Blog.

Do not vote here, because that's too much back & forth for me,

so I won't even be looking at the board.

PLEASE BOOKMARK/FAVORITE THIS PAGE:

Important Announcement The MSN Groups service will close in February 2009. You can move your group to Multiply, MSN’s partner for online groups. Learn More
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