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 Entries to The Daily Poem Contest. |
It makes sense to keep them all in one place. 
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| Ambition To be the best that I can be is not so easy as you’d think, for Awkward is my middle name and cussedness my fav’rite game. So if I struggle to be good, my nature turns it to the bad, and if you think I’m doing well, I’ll turn around and run like hell. The problem is that I am cool, so cool that I must rebel be, and turn each virtue on its head and do the opposite instead. Too cool for school, ignore the rules, my motto thwarts me ev’rytime. I can be best but only when for bad boy’s crown I have a yen. Line count: 16 Trochaic tetrameter, rhymed abcc For The Daily Poem, Sept 04 2022 Prompt: To be. Your poem must begin with the words "To be". No other restrictions. |
| Life Alone The man of the night bows to the light of day, has no hope of peace, his heart in the winter’s end, burning for heaven as home, he lives as injured bird, bears a reason to ache alone, man of vacant eyes. Line count: 8 Free verse For The Daily Poem, 2022 Prompt: Lyrics to five different songs listed. Choose ONE song. Write a poem using ONLY the words contained in the lyrics. Note: Song chosen was Heaven’s No Place by Horsefeatthers. |
| For the Attention of King Hades Dear Boss Been a while since our paths did cross (it’s all on file); I thought it better, in our busy days, to write a letter the old fashioned way, this being by designation my letter of resignation. So, by way of explanation, and after long contemplation, this matter of souls has worn me thin, I’m growing old can no longer grin, increasingly my clients ask about the shadows in my eyes, and the daily task gives no cheer but only sighs. Retirement beckons, few millennia remain to me my doctor reckons, and I’d like to see these aching bones in Bora Bora, not to usher home some other sainted snorer, but to lie upon the beach and catch a tan from tropic sun, some cooling cocktail in my reach, all tasks complete and races run. So pity me, my age old friend, and grant me this, a needed boon, pronounce my work at final end, let leisure take me real soon. (here’s the keeper) Yours, G. Reaper Line count: 38 Rhymed abab For The Daily Poem, September 3 2022 Prompt: Death has decided he hates his job. Write his poetic resignation. You must use at least one of the following poetic devices somewhere in your poem: alliteration, assonance or consonance. You must not use: death, dead, dying or any variations of these words. |
| Question Moments measured in the sands of time falling from globe to sphere, or step of the catchment wheel in clockwork mechanical dance, the circling sun’s shadow traced, and crystal squeezed for pips, so we count the endless stream, instants numbered, classified, the tally of lives and much beyond, to eras, ages, epochs, all, and mortal or eternal stand, unanswered question still remains, How did it get so late so soon? Line count: 13 Free verse For The Daily Poem, (Second) 09.01.22 Prompt: Illustration of clock, sand and hourglass. Do not use the words tick, tock, minute(s), hour(s), year(s), or birthday. |
| The Day Near Ended Morning I always wanted to be older, the grey hair sprouting from the timeless mind, and wisdom pouring from my pen in accomplished ease, the years piling up in the corner to be picked over with a jaundiced eye, your gathered experience selecting and rejecting with expert insight, and practice allowing the words to flow upon the page. Evening And now you think me too far gone to remember? It’s short term memory I’m supposed to lose, not tales of long ago and dreams unbound, though you weren’t wrong and some facility belongs in these gnarled old fingers, this tired brain. You have your wish and I am older than imagination could have dreamed with all that signifies in painful mornings when the bones protest, and aches in places you never knew, some the mortgage for the things you did, still unpaid and interest mounting as the days grow short. Yet I’ll not blame you and I regret nothing, every day and every deed being fodder for reflection, and so I fill the hours with thoughts and tales, stories of the ages gone, with dreams of times to come, playing in God’s waiting room, closer, my God, to Thee, just as you wished. Line count: The Day Near Ended - 32 Morning - 15 Evening - 17 Free verse For The Daily Poem, 11.07.21 (Second Place) Prompt: INTROSPECTION IN TWO PARTS Write a 9-15 line poem to your older self from your younger self about the kind of person you did or didn't want to be when you grew up. THEN Write an 11-20 line poem response from your older self to your younger self about the challenges you faced that shaped who you are today. Did you meet your younger self's expectations? |
| On Looking Back 2 Though wise men at their end know dark is right, when their bones are picked clean and the clean bones gone, I see the boys of summer in their ruin. My youth is bent by the same wintry fever. Nothing I cared, in the lamb white days, of birth and death, the two sad knaves of thieves file through the flesh where no flesh decks the bones to hide the wolves of sleep. In my craft or sullen art, after the first death, there is no other. Line count: 10 Free verse cento using the poems of Dylan Thomas For The Daily Poem, 11.06.21 (Winner) Prompt: CHOOSE YOUR FAVORITE POET AND WRITE A CENTO. Lines chosen from (in order): Do Not Go Gentle Into That Dark Night And Death Shall Have No Dominion I See The Boys Of Summer The Force That Through The Green Fuse Drives The Flower Fern Hill My Hero Bares His Nerves Light Breaks Where No Sun Shines Poem (Your Breath Was Shed) In My Craft Or Sullen Art A Refusal To Mourn The Death, By Fire, Of A Child In London. |
| Farmyard The farm lies, basking in the summer heat, the sounds of life woven into the still air, the buzz of bees, busy in the orchard, the murmur of the sheep on the far hillside, muttered discussions of green grass and hay, the snuffling pigs, rooting in their sties, soft noises of rude and enticing discovery, the donkey’s bray of whistle and release, sharp in the somnolent afternoon, peaceful clucking of the wistful hens, scratching in the courtyard dust and dirt, off duty collie twitching in her sun-drenched sleep. Line count: 12 Free verse For The Daily Poem, 11.06.21, entered for Shadows and Light Poetry Contest, Round 120 - 2nd place Prompt: ONOMATOPOEIA Do not use drip, drop, pitter, patter, tick, tock, ding, dong, splish or splash, use at least one of the following: fizz, gulp, murmur, hush, or jangle. |
 Vermeer’s Girl With a Pearl Earring She turns to look over her shoulder, the light in her eyes and on her slightly-parted lips (we glimpse the perfect teeth), and she looks deep into us as we are captured too. Her blue turban with topknot streaming down covers her hair to leave her face open to the light, and gazing at us, holding us, across five centuries, with a look, a glance. A servant girl by her clothes, nothing fancy, materials thick and coarse, only the earring, bright with light and depth to rival her eyes, no smile, no frown, just regarding and innocent. And she holds us rapt from that dark background; she appears as fresh and new as today, a whisper of eternity from long ago and yet alive, still living. Line count: 24 Free verse For The Daily Poem, 11.04.21 Prompt: EKPHRASIS Note: Link to the painting: https://artsandculture.google.com/asset/girl-with-a-pearl-earring/3QFHLJgXCmQm2Q... Which I thought rather long but all examples seem to have similarly ridiculous addresses. So I gave you a small pic in addition. Johannes Vermeer lived from 1632 to 1675. In my humble opinion, he was the greatest of all artists, having an ability to paint things with amazing clarity and attention to detail, while somehow including a demand for response that no photograph can manage. His handling of light was almost magical, and this is what, more than anything else, makes his paintings live. All of this is demonstrated in his painting, The Girl With a Pearl Earring. |
| Fruitses 2 Aubergine broods in the dark, dreaming of moussaka and the bright fields of Greece, its noble cloak of deepest purple, a promise to palette and palate. Avocado shines in mottled shell, bulge-bellied bounty of the tree, rough green greeting to the touch, smooth green softness at the heart, oils and balms and sustenance. Apple boasts in rose and golden, proud of shape and firm of flesh, thoughts of cinnamon and pastry, browned and redolent bouquet, autumn on the eye and tongue. A-fruits all and just beginning an alphabet of tastes and savours, drowning us in sensate wreaths of hue and feel, tone and scent, centrepiece of painted still life. Line count: 20 Free verse For The Daily Poem, 11.03.21 (placed second) Prompt: Colours. Irrelevant note: “Fruitses 2” because I wrote another poem in the language of Gollum of LOTR fame and called it “Fruitses.” It seemed fitting that this one should have the same name. |
| Murder Most Gentle The kill in the kindness? Surely you are bereft if you think I’m blessed by the knife pressed so gently between ribs and constantly it still finds the heart later or sooner - words do not matter the intent is cruelty it’s not that you fool me there’s no care in the deed and blood’s the same you see loosed with a smile or by slashes so wild even if veiled. Line count: 14 Rhyme scheme: aaabbccddeefff For The Daily Poem: November Edition, 11.02.21 (Winner) Prompt: THE KILL IN THE KINDNESS/THE KINDNESS IN THE KILL -Use either, or both, but you must use the entire phrase -you MUST use ONLY near rhymes (no exact rhymes) -rhyming scheme is your choice -poem must be a minimum 11 lines. |
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