Contest for the next fortnight, beginning now. Deadline 6/4 at midnight. (Should've posted
this last night...)
The theme is a little bit different, suggested by Isis. (Thank you Isis!)

http://www.dictionaryofobscuresorrows.com/
Write a poem based on the name and description of an obscure sorrow.

Run for it.

Spoiler:

Contest skeleton for those who don't know:
1. Any YWO member can enter.
2. Judges are myself, Arty, and Peppermental; entries should be private-messaged to one or all of us.
3. Every entry receives a crit!
4. Three places: first place gets 5 thank points, 2nd place 3, and 3rd place one. Also enduring recognition

WINNERS

First place: Clove

Spoiler:

Clay

How strange for the cherry trees
to have survived this year;

clear paths meant the few
first seconds of snow did not settle

and so my image of you, at the close
of Easter, finds itself unearthed.

I warn you though, this terrarium
is nothing like the Sakura

park we witnessed hot and
together: sticky rice budding

in the pockets of my mind,
as a branch in a photograph

that, found now, its tree
I could not wholly name. I hope

you'll love these paler things
more than their twins of the East.

Like your skin before a blush
their bark can hide that same pink

deep in the nape of their boughs,
made raw, made soft from the flours

of rice. So with caution,
I dust all the words you might say

with my pace of breath.
We will meet slowly

so that your words might fit
in the soft mud with my every bootprint.

How strange to think
of your voice as holding power now,

or as deep as interrupting roots;
all the life

your voice can churn,
like toes pressed into the urban clay.

Second place: mfarr1992

Spoiler:

Discovering the American Dream

“By prevailing over all obstacles and distractions, one may unfailingly arrive at his chosen goal or destination.”

– Christopher Columbus

They_____________________________________________________________have
o
u
c
h
e
d__v
______e
_________ r
____________ y


__________________________part of this
_____________________________page


___________________________________________________________way
_____________________________some__________________________that I don’t
in

k
n
o
what to explore

_____ anymore.
I keep searching for the perfect structure___that hasn’t been formed___only to lose

my reader in the process
and find myself
back at what

I’ve always known.
What is my goal?
Maybe it’s better

not to discover
each way to form
a dream.[/QUOTE]

Third place: bookworm

Spoiler:

A few things I should straighten out before reading:

letanie= Russian for flying
dasvidania= Russian for goodbye
all Louers young all Louers must/Consigne to thee and come to dust= quote from Shakespeare's Cymbeline

Please pay attention to the first letter of each line, as I know what I've done isn't obvious at once.
__________________

1. premahpiohanzia

Maybe beautiful
Beautiful May
Maybe she


Maybelle was her name always when she rose from the flowerbed into the rain, or winded herself up like a bird out of the window and left.

All was about leaving, in the end, betraying puddles by never crying but flying, leaving merciless imprints of her wellies in each road.

Here her faults all lay on the tarmac under the mists she was rising in-- they kept telling her that only down to earth women can ever be good enough to cook soup and be feminists.

Probably the only way to find out is grab a cloud and marry yourself too it, but Maybelle, though not barren, was young.

Icarus was prince charming-- inside her plastic-walled heart he fluttered his wings every time beauty passed by and away for always, but she would fly even out of the heart.

On Sundays she'd sit by the fire reading Marx; Maybelle&Marx&muttering flamewarmth, though her Russian ended on letanie, dasvidania.

Hailing was the hard time, though she hailed all water-- it hit her like graves of micro-organisms, the wounds never healing, hair never dry.

All in her world consisted of oxygen; oxygen suited the O she let out each morning when she found herself in the bed under eiderdown not raincloud, melting from warmth.

Night of true sleep never came, only wandering above the silence of sheets that formed the air, one layer above the other, spheres of consciousness of the unconscious.

Zenith was her goal as she lay in the nadir, stretching as a cat on her windowsill.

Inside her flesh were only the feathers of an illusion, plucked from starwaste; all Louers young all Louers must/Consigne to thee and come to dust, and that is the true stars.

Around the earth strolled Icarus, looking down into the puddles that seemed her eyes, but maybe were real.

2. kairosclerosis

Kandinsky was Maybelle's favourite artist, because she could never understand (so much like astronomy), and the chaos drew her wings closer together than shoulder blades ever could-- Kadinsky the happiness.

Anxiety arose around her only when he knocked on her door which was a painting of a door-- leaving a hole in the shape of wings.

Icarus walked in, The Manual of Not Turning Into Dust under his arm, 'I want to give you flying lessons' 'No my Russian Angel'., and her fear swept him out like a cleaning lady dust from the mantelpiece.

Round and round her memories circled, trying to define the joy of a chair and sharing it with no-one, until the blur brought sickness into her and guarded the hole in the door.

O, she said in breath, reaching a zenith in which her eyelids were the basements of puddles-- this was going to be an ode to love, but crept into the air and stayed there in hiding.

Streams as eyelashes led to an ocean, maybe the one Icarus would fall into, or had fallen into, and indeed he had.

Clearly they were meant for each other, her sorrow below him, his obscure breath towering over but bent like Piza without its shine.

Let her undress every emotion one by one, pluck its feathers and fly naked of dream.

Even this chimeral body may rise.

Rose her beauty.

On and on waltz in a snowy Moscow, every evening more of the back exposed to the ball gown public.

'Sit down on my knees and fly to the floor' 'Why should I be there?' 'Why should you be anywhere else?'

Intellect rises because it is warm up in the stratosphere (just below zero), leaving dream in (-55 C) troposphere without waving goodbye.

Sorrow won't remember sunshine or letanie, only Marx and dasvidania.



--------------------------------------------------Maybelle hailed on.

Other entry

xtargazer69

Spoiler:

Sorrows of a Dreamer

Trails adorned with flowers tainted by darkness
as shadows overwhelmed joy
in the hours of silence.

Pathway of yellow roses surrounded by thorns.
Tear drops slashed across the windows.
Memory painful, but never forgotten.

Pastel colors mired with gray hue.
Aspirations burned beyond recognition.
Dreams longed to be heard, but could not be seen.

Radiant laceration entered the field
with arduous clamor defying
tranquillity, coherence, and fortitude.

Formidable scars slitted across the skin,
but no tear was shed in their honor
as dreams were sealed into flames.

Calendula enshrouded by dark barriers.
Rosemary petals forever chained
to photographs that were once vital.

Intangible dreams covered by fireflies
that had been yearning for captivity
in the possession of diligence.

Faith bled and became lost to the grieving
after trailing the stars at night.
A dreamer...forever gone.

Thank you all so much!

Love this so much. Got an exam this week which I do intend to revise for, and also my friend's visiting me, so I dunno if I'll have time this week, but I definitely want to run with these even if I miss this comp.

May give this a shot, even though I haven't the foggiest what an obscure sorrow is...

That's part of the point - unlike asking someone to write a poem about sorrow in general or about a feeling with a name that we all use, writing about an obscure sorrow forces you to be creative and stretch your emotional imagination to convey the complexities of the feeling.

Excited. Can I enter a contest I suggested? I can't wait to write a few of these.

I love this--count me in. Plus, my 'hard' exams end the 30th, so yeah!

Extra points if we manage to get the title of our sorrow into our poem?

Some of the descriptions could be poems in their own right.

Originally Posted by Isis Excited. Can I enter a contest I suggested? I can't wait to write a few of these.

You better. I mean, Please. I mean, yeah.
Glad you're all as happy about this as I am I absolutely love this theme.
Extra points if you do multiple parts on different sorrows? (These points aren't tangible, really.)

Entering.

Originally Posted by lostbookworm Entering.

despite exams and excuses?

Despite my pitiful attempts for your last poetry contest (resulted in a title and a lot of crumpled paper) I will be entering this one... hopefully.