There was some super close competition this round! Here are the final results: Group A: Stringbean, AlmostImmortal Group B: SilverNight, Rook Group C: ForeverYoung299, Shady Group D: niteowl, lliyah
Round Two Poems must be posted by 04/18/2022 0:00 GMT! The results, as well as the next round's pairings, will be announced on April 19th. The poets who lost the first round will also write a poem for this second round, for the "redemption bracket", to compete against each other for a spot in the next (third) round.
Please submit one poem in this thread, as plain text or an image. You can spoiler it if you like, but you don't have to. At any point before the deadline, you can edit and/or switch your entry, but please make sure to indicate that it's been changed at the top of your post with something like "EDITED".
If you have any questions, ask them below! Good luck and happy poeting!
When you're faced with something you don't understand, I think the most natural thing but also least interesting thing you can be is afraid.
what is yours is mine too. somewhere along the fault-lines, i had internalized the vast vacancy and how it has made its space in you. honour takes its seat in my heart. if you will cry yourself a sea, fill my cup; a perpetuity of grief upon this soul.
be kind, but not to yourself.
tide has risen its heaving head -- give this a chance; these bodies of iron and salt are only borrowed. the tide will return, and the dead sea and its despair keep us making promises to the impression of company.
be kind. spare some for yourself.
there is something waiting in the depths for you; i will find you just as you find me.
In a shadow there is the blessing of a shadow. — Kuki Shūzō
I'm worried I'm going to forget to submit tomorrow, so posting this for now, might change later if need be, but will be sure to make a note if I edit. :]
Spoiler
tide pools
i feel sometimes like i was born in a tide pool; my whole existence carved out of an overzealous wave, maybe a perfectly timed hurricane that allowed my shallow world to form; an eco-system preserved from a perfect-unknowing of the deepness of the ocean, and an ignorance of every way that seawater can fill your lungs.
i have a habit of collecting photos of my parents like sea-shells still attached to hermit crabs, searching their faces for some sign they were in love or knew that they weren't. i think everyone with divorced parents, must at some point try to discern the exact moment their family seams started to become thread-bare, like someone retracing their steps to find out where they forgot their keys, only i'm walking in circles trying to retrace what love is or maybe only who i might be, but i am used to thinking the entire world could be contained in an oyster shell; so there's nothing familiar here. and these shells are always stirring, and i only know that memory is unreliable.
i wonder sometimes what a hatchling dove must feel as she plummets from her nest to the ground, is it only fear of falling that teaches birds to fly; just the push of gravity that reminds us to breathe – i worry that i’m still falling; drowning, drowning, drowning and wonder if all this echoed anxious-yearning disguised as treading water is a necessary instinct of survival or if one day i will learn to swim or fly properly, or if we all only live in resistance or longing to where we have been - the way that sea glass forms from year after year of spitting out the sand and finding home again.
(^ prose poem so where the line breaks fall do not matter, apart from there being 3 stanzas <3)
you should know i am a time traveler & there is no season as achingly temporary as now
I'm so excited to see the submissions for this round! This is just a reminder for people that there are approximately 12 hours left to submit your second poem for this round~ good luck, poets!
you light a match and the flame goes out: that’s what you get for turning back halfway to the stars and surrendering to fall into orbit instead.
we still somehow wake up to the smoke alarm thinking that everything’s burned down again, but it’s just the fire in my lungs living off my oxygen. now i’m dreaming about spontaneous combustion and indigo reflections in gasoline spills, everything covered in dust— you and i stay up to watch a sleeping world at the end of its life. (if i hold my breath, it’ll go out, right? right?)
i light a match and the flame goes out: that’s what i get for forgetting our rocket fuel and powering through with denial instead.
we have so many universes to go.
Democracy dies in darkness. Also at 4:30PM in Pacific Standard Time, apparently.
i watch the sun spit on the sky turning it red and golden and pink on the peripheral of my vision
crushed pine needles
i find a dead pigeon its wings crooked angles spread open its mouth gaping its eyes empty as sunlight turns its wings purple blue gold
crushed pine needles
i found pine needles scattered on the road like hair in kashmir first and i wonder if the needles paved a new road
crushed pine needles
eventually this poem has to end i tell myself as i lead you astray with too many pine needles making roads that lead to nowhere
crushed pine needles
my mother tells me about pakdandis as we comb the mountains hair with our feet she tells me they are forest paths places where the dust caves in and dandelions grow from the edges and pine needles like snow scatter
crushed pine needles
i find today that emotions ride down genetics and my fear of spiders isn’t my own i am made of my ancestors and i think all this as i comb through my hair watch them scatter on the floor like pine needles and my tongue rolls and lashes as i chew the word:
we love the sun and yet it kills us, we want kisses and yet they burn us.
i used SPF 70 sunscreen that summer, but of course, i'd burn anyway because i never had the foresight to re-apply often, or maybe i just wanted my outside to feel like my insides when i thought of you.
like sunshine, kisses look nice on the TV screen. i watch alone as the feisty heroine tames the handsome rogue and i sigh as i remember when i fancied myself the main character who would get that earth-shattering kiss.
but that summer, as i kissed so many not-you's in dark sweaty nightclubs my physiology drawing me in to anyone who would have me, (if only for a moment, if only until they're sober) my higher mind burned with rage --this is dirty, disloyal, wrong.
i haven't needed sunscreen in years because i've chosen to remain inside so as not to absorb the rays, the pain. likewise, i haven't kissed because i'm still that fool who wants more than she deserves so i'm better off leaving the kisses and sunshine on movie sets.
but maybe i can't stay unburnt forever. maybe it's time to buy sunscreen and lipstick again.
"You do ill if you praise, but worse if you censure, what you do not understand." Leonardo Da Vinci
"u and rina are systematically watering down the grammar of yws" - Atticus "From the fish mother to the fish death god." - lehmanf "A fish stole my identity. I blame shady" - Omni [they/he]
Sorry, I’m a couple of hours late! Here’s my submission. I understand if it doesn’t count.
Injecting Myself with Poison Again Warning! Mentions of injection, blood, and general unhappiness and pain. Spoiler
I’m injecting myself with poison again. I hold the needle in my dirty hands. The syringe is filled with silver, and my veins are filled with fire. Black eats away the edges of my vision. My knees sway in circles. When I fall, a vial slips from my fingers. It crashes to the floor, shattering, like a priceless porcelain vase from Hell. It forms a halo around my ashen face. The syringe sticks from my forearm, a conquering flag in my flesh.
That white flash takes over my stomach, crawling up the ladder of my esophagus, and building its morgue on my tongue. My hands won’t stop shaking. The cry of my muscles reaches a crescendo: “Take flight, little coward, find your home in a poisoned needle. Mourn all of the things you could be, all of the things you kill with your little glass vials.” I listen like I always do, I plunge the syringe and I scream as if I am the victim.
I ball my hands into tight fists and try to keep them in my pockets. I have tried handcuffs, shackles, and more, but my fingers ache for the weight of a needle. And my veins feel strangely hollow without the hurt. My mother cries beside me, clutching my hand. “What happened to you, my child? Your hair is falling out and your strength is fading. Why are you doing this to yourself?” My throat seals itself shut like a tomb.
Just as stars dot the woodland sky, track marks choke my bloody arms. My veins weep in my wrapping paper skin, and my lungs stutter under this assault. “What have we done to deserve this? Your heart has lost its voice, and your brain only dreams of its destruction.” I know this, I hear the way it begs for the end. And God, I can’t bear to stop it.
I tried locking my vials in a steel cabinet, and I threw away the cursed key. But only an hour later, I clawed at the metal doors until my fingernails clattered to the floor. I traced my desperation in blood and vomited my hysterical pleas. I dug up my roses, grabbing them by their thorns, but the key was lost to the roots and mulch.
"Thank God for losing your key," my logic and reason sang. "Now your heart has time to recover. Isn't this what you've always wanted?" And I wish I could agree, I truly do, but as I shave my fingertips to open the doors, I'm just glad to have my vials back in my hands.
And on my floor, bleeding and poisoned, Swimming in and out of a murky sea, ebbing and flowing consciousness, dragging me along the shore. I can feel my tongue swell, and my brain liquifies with ache.
And, in my moments of blinding pain, a sigh of bliss leaves my failing lungs, as I fall backwards onto my sweat-soaked carpet. And I feel terrible, in my arsenic-induced haze, because it feels awfully good to hurt.
And everyone who loves me mourns because of everything I've lost. I don't know how to tell them that I'm the one who destroyed it all.
How do I explain this twisted obsession when everyone else stares in horror? How do I stop craving self-mutilation?
But even so, I savor the burning in my veins and settle into the destructive familiarity.
I'm injecting myself with poison again.
They/he
“the wist i knew would never allow a straight boy in their stories” ~Omni “Hi Omni can I request wist get the role mom friend :]" ~winter “ah yes, fear Wist's smile :) <- speaks of layers and layers of secrets” ~mint
I'm sorry that this is a little late... I only just realized... I only just woke up and saw that the submission deadline was at 2 am. I understand if this can't be counted.
Spoiler
Bluebirds In The Rain
The Sun shines like a chariot drawn across the heavens above The sky bright and blue shimmers as birds fly through Clouds of white and stark little rosettes of light
But amid the peace a cackle fumes And the sunlight blooms a gloomy grey As big thunderheads tirade into the light's hallways
Like a hissing serpent lightning forks across the heavens And a single teardrop falls A glimmering raindrop plops
A child cries A cloud shivers and shouts a mighty whisper
"Teardrop, will you fall forevermore? Or will you be excited by the coming of the lightning?"
"Teardrop, will you come and find me? Or will you stay in hiding till your grasp is sliding?"
"Teardrop falling on the window, will you show me how to find a rainbow? Or will I keep crying?"
A gumdrop strewn from a packet A hailstone freezing inside layers of dusty water A happy child stares at
The bear's demise An old hag tumbling through the thundering skies
"Hailstone, will you always hurt me? Or will you come and find me, where could I be hiding?"
"Hailstone falling on my rooftop, will you always frighten me? Or will you come find me where I'm crying?"
"Hailstone, will you always hit the window, will you shatter like a widow? Or will you ever trill like a bird waiting for its mother?"
Crawling through the window The waterdrop is coming Flower, keeper of your petals, cupping tiny ponds
Will a teardrop ever slip out Don't let the blackbirds sip at what you've brought her
"Waterdrop, will you always lie still? Or will you come gliding down a thorny rose stalk?"
"Waterdrop from far above, have you hit the sill yet? Or are you sliding down the glass maw uninviting?"
"Waterdrop, have you seen how your brothers plop? Or are you the one watching how they pollinate the crop?"
“Can a magician kill a man by magic?” Lord Wellington asked Strange.
Strange frowned. He seemed to dislike the question. “I suppose a magician might,” he admitted, “but a gentleman never could.” — Susanna Clarke, Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell
