The Gladiator Workshop

The Gladiator Workshop

A place for wordsmith combatants to test their mettle. Will you be the next champion?

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  • Created Fri Feb 05, 2016 3:06 am

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CYOT Round 1: Ellstar vs Lightsong

5 posts in this topic.

  1. A brief explanation: It's 1 AM where I am and I'm feeling a range of emotions involving my mother. It's almost Freudian, I know. I should've taken the extension, but then Pompadour reminded me that poetry existed.

    I don't expect this to pass, but at the very least I got it in.

    A Coffin is a Chrysalis

    Spoiler

    “I don’t need your sympathy,” she should’ve told me,
    Weaving herself with blood and saliva.
    She had wet her bed for the second time,
    The oxygen tanks clink as we cleaned her mess.

    “I don’t need your inspiration,” she should’ve told me,
    Throwing away the wigs she bought last summer,
    The only things that made her think
    She could live a normal life.

    “I don’t need your prayers,” she should’ve told me,
    As an ambulance drove her to a hospital
    She’s thrown up in the nurse’s lap,
    If hell existed, they would’ve wished it for her.

    “I need the truth.” she should’ve told me,
    Tubes shoved up her running nose,
    Artificial lungs my father couldn’t afford
    Lengthening her misery.

    But she never told me any of those things.

    She never said a word.

    I hated my mother
    Like I hated the doctors that gave her brochures
    And the priests that gave her false hopes.

    For she was a caterpillar,
    Hiding herself in a wooden chrysalis
    Burying herself six feet underground
    Before emerging a winged gift to God.

    Her silence made me a worm,
    A young heretic with no purpose, no life,
    The only wings I would grow,
    Would be of hollow blasphemy.

    I am a worm,

    And I’ll tell people what my mother
    Should’ve told me,
    Before I build my coffin,

    And become a moth.
  2. dressed like a nightmare

    Spoiler
    he pushed the blanket over his head
    to protect himself from those things--
    those merciless sticks--
    that would--that would--

    he shut his eyes so tight
    but the tears managed to escape
    from a brief remembrance
    of the past--he didn't want to,
    don't go there
    --
    haunting him as a
    nightmare should

    but he had the scars already
    on his back. they would never
    leave him--whywhywhy--
    they were a part of him--

    every night, when it was time
    to sleep with darkness, he heard
    the beating, the swift beatings--
    Father beat me so hard--
    unrelented, worse than
    the howls of a monster.

    that was what he said to himself
    about what scared him
    when it was time to sleep.
    it was the harsh visits
    of the ghost from his past.

    stop it stop stop it
    he thought relentlessly
    but it was futile. it was
    a part of him

    always
  3. (I'm assuming anyone can vote, if not, then my apologies and feel free to ignore this.)

    Hm, this is difficult. I like both, and while I feel that Ellstar's had some unique ideas, it didn't inspire that much emotion for me. Lightsong's is more cliche and has some awkward lines, but I really appreciate how he used the dashes and the character's thoughts to convey that haunted feeling, a feeling I can definitely relate to.

    So, I think I'm voting Lightsong.
  4. Ellstar's got me good.
  5. For great language and wonderful imagery that definitely rocked me, my vote goes to Ellstar.


The good ended happily, and the bad unhappily. That is what Fiction means.
— Oscar Wilde, The Importance of Being Earnest