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Sunday, July 20, 2008
Poetry winners
(Complete list)
BEST OF SHOW
"A Tale Revisited" by Susan M. Iwinski
It may have been a mistake
To characterize as profligate and
Irresponsible, the grasshopper,
Because he failed to winterize
And lay in stores of food.
It is possible that while he sun basked
And hip-hopped around the 'hood, the grasshopper
Was, as they say, being mindful of the moment,
And storing up sustenance for his
Spirit to see him through
The unyielding months ahead.
If the ant would invite him in
And share a bit of warmth and food,
She would more than be repaid in
Moist green memories, clover
Scented, and sung to the tune
Of a cricket song.
YOUTH
"If Anyone Asks" by Mary Eisenhauter
If anyone asks, I'm in my room studying,
If anyone asks, I'm outside kicking the ball against the wall,
If anyone asks, I'm scrubbing plates clean.
Though you know where I really am,
I'm off sailing the seas,
I'm off battling dragons and befriending wizards,
I'm off soaring over mountain tops, stroking the clouds, brushing the moon, caressing the sun, and moving the stars.
But if anyone asks, I walking the dog,
If anyone asks, I'm playing my music,
If anyone asks, I'm writing this poem.
Though you know where I really am.
YOUTH
"The Big Blue Ocean" by Shoval Manosevitch
The big blue ocean;
Sharks on their fish hunt.
The big blue ocean;
Whales swimming through the ocean.
The big blue ocean;
Jellyfish stinging fish.
The big blue ocean;
Octopuses going everywhere.
The big blue ocean;
What an actiony place.
The big blue ocean;
What a dangerous place.
The big blue ocean;
What an amazing place.
The big blue ocean;
What a cool place.
The big blue ocean;
What a humongo place.
YOUTH
"Cannot" by Mary Mykytka
I want to write
But there are no words
I want to sing
But there are no birds
I want to dance
But there are no steps
I want to sleep
But I cannot rest
I want to sing
But I have no voice
I want to scream
But I have no choice
I want to cry
But there are no tears
I want to live
But there are no years
I want to laugh
But I cannot breathe
I want to go
But I cannot leave.
YOUTH
"Night Wish" by Emily Reeve
Sing to the stars,
Enlighten the night.
Sing to the moon,
So strong and bright.
Wait for the sun
To bring the day.
Wait for the sun
Then be on your way.
Open your eyes,
Greet the day.
Morning has come,
Now be on your way.
The creatures emerge,
The shadows recede.
Go out and find life,
The life we receive.
Life and love,
Our family gives.
Courage, support,
In our friends live.
But what we give back
Is our own.
Give back your love
To your home.
YOUTH
"The Cicada Song" by Ishaan Sandhir
Two different kinds of cicadas
Stay underground
For 13 or 17 years
With scary, bright red eyes.
Nests in tree slits
Larva smaller then a grain of rice
Noisiest insect
In the insect world.
Black, chubby body
Exoskeleton sheds as it grows
Digging deep into the ground
To stay a long, long time.
YOUTH
"A Filthy Life" by Emily E. Williams
There's a stale banana peel resting at my toes.
A half-eaten hamburger tickles my nose.
My mouth is full of tissues, a sickening taste.
My stomach is all sticky from gooey white paste.
Some dirty paper towels are creeping down my throat.
A milk carton puddle is forming a moat.
My ears are stuffed with cotton that's strangely wet.
Could that fur at my feet have been someone's pet?
The hair on my head is certainly not mine.
My breakfast this morning was far from divine.
The lump on my head is a moldy old shoe.
A three-month-old apple core rests on me too.
An orange juice carton here, some broccoli there,
At my waist a soda can and the leg of a chair.
I am surrounded by an enormous wall of trash.
My grandest outfit is an old newspaper sash.
A person's lost homework presses to my side.
I hold many secrets, things people wish to hide.
Yet I also hold many things disgusting and smelly,
A band aid, a stale loaf of bread, or last week's deli.
Children's diapers have been shoved in my face.
The things that I hold are such a disgrace!
Why do you throw your trash inside of me?
You could recycle, be green, save a tree!
I wish I could flee from this dirt and grime.
But that won't happen, though I try all the time.
I must change this state of filth, I need a plan!
But that won't work, 'cause I'm just a trash can.
TEEN
"Reflections from a Balcony in Benares" by Tyler Benedict
On the streets of Shiva
six million sleep
shrouded in Ganges fog
under waning moon
On the streets of Shiva
six million sleep
dreaming of...who can say...
holeless clothes and brand-new shoes
Ivory soap and fresh shampoo
under the billboards
that flash out Coke and shiny cars
Guinness beer and movie stars
with supernova smiles and satin skin.
On the streets of Shiva
six million sleep
as light-shafts waft through alleyways
and corrugated hideaways
Piecemeal steel and cracking earth
children's toys and misplaced mirth
Kingfisher glass in jagged shards
stalemated dust over scattered cards
and laundry hung on knotted twine
single candles lit for concrete shrines
Tobacco packs
Bottle caps
And wire wares in burlap sacks
on the streets of Shiva.
Six million sleep
heartbeats chime in perfect time
to autorickshaw lullaby
street symphony
soothing their souls.
Beautiful child
darling child
with the begging-bowl
and the marigold
hand to her lips as the haze burns off
in the mud of the ghats
she now slumbers...who knows where
hawker man
his case of elephants
for his pillow
dreams.
On the streets of Shiva
six million sleep
their even breath
blows over my brow
On the streets of Shiva
six million sleep
and what they dream of
who can say...
TEEN
"Overpass" by John Chen
highway slid away beneath me,
obese,, Raindrops,, assaulted my windshield,,
tiny Explosives upon the roof of my car,,,
I could not Escape.
up ahead Overpass
my car ducked underneath an ,
and for precious ephemeral Moments
all was a silent__frictionless__dimensionless (void)
of Space—Peace—Breath
and I was Secure.
I want to be There now.
TEEN
"Dust Storm" by Doug Edwards
The wind
can't see the way
the hills rise to meet her.
She doesn't know she's dancing with
the earth.
The earth
can feel the wind,
but is always falling
behind, as she gently kisses
the soil.
The soil
longs to follow
and begins to rise to
the sky, locked in the embrace of
the wind.
TEEN
"Donut Haiku" by Colleen Kochensparger
If all my wishes
Fit in my bedroom and were
Doughnuts, I'd be fat.
TEEN
"Spring" by Allison McFaddin
Spring brings many things
The taste of camel lights and vodka tonics
One the porch
In the heat
With friends
It brings dresses with light jackets
It brings wavy free hair
Because it's too humid to mind
And lilac
The smell of lilac
And bonfire
Spring tastes like lemon
Like fizz
Spring feels warm
And content
Spring brings warm rain
And cool grass
Spring brings many things.
TEEN
"Every Single Darn Day" by Christopher Menart
Every day a sinner sins,
every day a war begins
Every night the reaper creeps,
every night the widow weeps
Every day the dreamer dreams,
every day a priest redeems
Every night some safely lie,
every night, the stars are high
Every day a newborn cries,
every day a good man dies
TEEN
"My Life" by Emily Nelson
Several places been,
None remained.
Not from one place,
But many.
Meeting people,
Leaving friends.
Confused
Where is my place in this world?
Sometimes shy,
Others not.
For people to see what I have seen,
Done what I've done,
People to connect with.
Searching
Moving, missing, meeting, and making,
My life.
TEEN
"The Sweetest Sound" by Jake Pfahl
circles brushed against my hands at the flick of my wrist
feet hanging in the air over the tough ground
time slowed down
sun shining
sky cloudless
glass breaking the rays into yellow streaks
green blades covered the soil surrounding the concrete
white nylon reflecting the sun
a hand lay before my face in contest
friends watching ... waiting
the ball hung in mid-air
spinning
my eyes sharpening
spring breeze
traveling through my hair
feet slamming against the ground
the ball inches nearer
my hand still raised
my friends still waiting
my heart still pounding
"swoosh"
TEEN
"The Rain Falls Lightly" by Jennifer Talbott
The rain falls lightly on my face
The darker clouds now murky lace
I see the sun begin to fall
The rising moon makes her first call
The wind, now harsh, begins to bite
Thick shadows come no longer light
The storm is coming and it knows
It sees me watching and it knows
The shelter's far, I try to race
As rain falls lightly on my face
TEEN
"Delirium" by Heather VanHoose
She says nothing.
Every morning her mother dresses her
because the alternative is not to touch her, ever
and her mother even talks to her
although she never says a word in reply
Everyday her mother walks her across the room
and sits her in a chair
puts on the music she liked best before it happened
Nothing changes.
And somewhere in the back of her head...
She can hear herself screaming
TEEN
"World by the Numbers" by Bradley Zynda
Dictated
By
Something simple
Just
A world of numbers
To live according to statistics
Journey
Companioned with percents
How many? How much?
Will succeed?
A simple ballot
Is electing a president
But behind those votes lies just numbers
Because this is a numbered
Place grown by ratios and percents
Little facts
Can be
The center
Of what we do and what we think
Ruled by numbers
Is all that I can say
ADULT
"Taking Leave" by Barbara Astor
The sun bows early
to an indifferent moon;
resignation is on the wind.
A digressive leaf descends
again
and
again
weeping.
ADULT
"Hank" by Herbert Jerry Baker
Through the fog of a man-made Hell,
smoke thick with a dark whiskey smell
A twangy voice sings a twangy song
to a love that does not belong,
And his heart is finally swept away
to drift forever upon the night—
The voice is sadly now long-gone
yet the songs linger ever on,
Their poignant truths still as strong:
Time merely strengthens these songs;
And his voice shall forever play,
To drift forever upon the night —
ADULT
"A Softness About You" by Michael Eldridge
There is a softness about you that lingers in the air as you pass by
There is a light in your eyes, when you smile
It shows your intelligence of thought
Your confidence as a woman
And the fears you try to hide
You tasted the sweet and sour morsels of love
know the pains and passions
And felt the warmth of being needed
You are a rain person, aware of the seasons of the year
the crispness of a winter morning
the sweet smell of a spring rain
a summer sunset over the mountains
and
the myriad of colors of an autumn day
You like touching and being touched
You are to yourself not always what you are to others
And yet
You are reaching out, as are we all, to share-
ADULT
"Baton Girl" by Enoch Fannin
That trumpet you see
there on the stand
that old, dented trumpet
once marched and pointed
to the heavens, that trumpet
screamed in the dark
at half-time, at alma mater time
while your flaming batons
twirled skyward smoking
black red spinning caught
always caught then lights on
high stepping white-booted
knees high, toes pointed Space
Odyssey Two-Thousand and One
timpani's booming across
the field straight at you
as Richard Strauss did
thus speak
ADULT
"The Boy And The Turtle" by Anthony R. Fanning
"One day I looked into the sky,
That soaring field of blue,
I saw it with my own two eyes,
I know that this is true.
"How does it look to one so young?"
The turtle asked of me.
"Take a look yourself," I said,
"It looks just like the sea."
The turtle told me I was wrong,
He said it looked like hay.
I knew the turtle could not see,
'Cause on his back he lay.
I looked around, I saw the ground,
Like waves the earth rolled on.
Like seas of blue and oceans too,
But green and trod upon.
I turned the turtle on his feet,
And told him what I saw.
He eyed me quite audaciously,
And pointed out a flaw.
"How can," the turtle slowly spoke,
"A young man be so lame?
To think the roaring, crashing sea,
Could ever be so tame?"
"Just think of this," I said to him,
"And let me speak my mind.
Roll the earth onto its back,
And fish are birds you'll find."
"A fish will always be," he said,
"More equal than a bird!
To think of seagulls as my peers,
Is simply quite absurd!"
"Put yourself in others shoes,
Why separate by class?
There is no need to live your life,
An arrogant, pompous ass!"
The turtle pulled into his shell,
He said I was a dupe.
His last insult was over when,
I put him in my soup."
ADULT
"Playing the Cards" by Robert Flavin
Play the cards dealt to you,
a cliché,
although often meaningful,
reserved especially for the most dismal of times,
when the hands are weak
and the aces are scarce.
Yet sometimes the cards are strong.
Your bids must then be aggressive,
else your play earns minor victories
rather than the major triumphs
implicit within the hands.
Playing the cards dealt to you
now means something new.
The excuse is now a challenge,
a responsibility.
The cliché no longer gives comfort,
but now demands
the most vigorous of actions.
Yes, always play the cards,
but also please remember
you are occasionally dealt
the most fantastic of hands.
ADULT
"Honorable Mention" by Susan M. Iwinski
There is a circle of hell overlooked
By Dante but familiar to entrants
Of literary contests, called
Honorable Mention.
It is an amorphous zone
Below third prize where
Close-but-not cigars reside
And gaze with envy across the abyss
That separates them from
Bronze, Silver and Gold.
There they anguish over forced
Metaphors or alliterative phrases
That kept them from the podium.
They are endlessly tormented
By the burning question of whether
Honorable Mention is better than
No mention at all.
ADULT
"On Dying" by Josephine M. Jahoda
Grieve for me quickly.
Remember the good times, laugh together
And cry together.
If we are lucky, and there is time
Before it happens,
Perhaps we can grieve together.
It is a little scary
To face the unknown.
I have always had great curiosity.
At times now
I am almost eager
To discover what is beyond.
Being old when one dies has its advantages.
Inevitably is not so hard to bear.
Friends have already gone before.
One almost becomes accustomed to it.
ADULT
"The Has Been" by Paul Meyer
I'd rather be a could be
If I couldn't be an are.
For a could be is a maybe
With a chance of touching par.
I'd rather be a has been
Than a might have been, by far.
For a might have been has never been
But a has been was once an are.
ADULT
"Death of a Church" by Robert Miller
Deep in the Morgan County hills and hollows, heaven calls out.
Children splash in galvanized wash tubs in the shade of the old tobacco barn,
dreaming of cream-covered strawberries and blackberry cobbler.
Mercy, it's hotter than blazes.
But as the sun peeks over the ridges at noon, the church remains deep in shadow.
No one seeks Jesus there — not for decades.
Strains of sacred hymns still echo off hard poplar pews, faint and reverent.
Or may be it's just the sound of the walls peeling and ceilings flaking?
Like the "civilized" missionary women who came to save them,
they all left, one by one, until no one came at all.
Abandoned and forgotten, the church sits in lonely silence, a victim of the coal bust.
Oh, in these Eastern Kentucky foothills, heaven still calls,
but there is no one in the church to answer.
Mute and impotent, the union church faces death with bitter grace.
For most of all, it misses the children.
ADULT
"The Silent Grass" by Ruth Ann Peck
The wind
whispers and moans
as it moves across
the green grass of Ohio
sharing ancient secrets
with hills and valleys
the white man cannot know.
Where billows bend
the face of earth
in silent, grassy furrows
the Hopewell shaped their rituals
in mound and serpent forms
discarding remarkable fragments of flutes
and shards of earthen jars
consigning them
to Ohio's clay.
Who can stand
at the site of Wapakoneta
see the same stars
glitter in the Great Miami
and not hear the echoes
of the Shawnee in the shadows?
When the fingers of dawn
caress Ohio's hills,
the soft grass
hides hard secrets
of the silent, native dead.
Their spirits rise
like morning smoke
sighing faintly, and
the wind holds its breath.
The grass conceals
their council fires
and hides the place
where Mingo villages sleep
undisturbed.
The indifferent grass
the compassionate grass
sways and swells in the Ohio wind
healing the wounds
of Tecumseh's tribe
covering the bones
of the silent dead
hiding civilizations
I yearn to know.
ADULT
"September in Colorado" by Crystal Silver
I was there
the only one cold
meeting in bars
along winding, bumpy sidewalks
go down the stairs
flannels on chairs
coaster patterns I made.
We warm up, warm in
laugh and dance
pink cheeks
fingertips wet from frosted beer.
We leave, hands in pockets
street lights too far to feel.
I walk with him drunk
a fast walk
breathing deep
head in my shoulders
too cold for me to smoke.
Down alleys
up drives
behind pink wooden houses
snow draped roofs
boots upon tiny parts of the mountain
gravel kicked up by me.
No cars, no stars
walking cold in black.
Inside I desire
to sleep in my clothes
like sitting bare on the toilet
porcelain gets in you.
I undress, climb up
remembering as a child
red satin sheets
icing over me from the air conditioning
when the cover was left down,
red satin deep inside.
Lay still, small breaths in wintered beds.
Finally I feel him,
"Come closer, closer, closer."
In his dark room
with cold pillows
and outside air coming thru.
This was the third night
of my thirty days
and of the eleven nights with him,
it was always the same
there in his cold.
ADULT
"This Too Shall Pass" by Jerry Wayne Snowden
Dreams, goodbyes, and fallen skies,
Conclusive memoirs lie in my eyes,
One hand full of love would be enough,
When times get hard, when times get rough ...
My heart skips aloud and repeats a beat,
My voice cries so proud but silently speaks,
Denying what hurts more than anything before,
This oppressive essence and what I adore ...
Alone with a memory of emotions atrophied,
Today is yesterday, tomorrow is last week and Winter is Spring,
Fabricated optimism soft as velveteen,
Stuck in a rut, but yet I feel clean ...
A lot has changed, a lot for the worse,
But I keep pushing through this lavished curse,
What will it take to stop reaching out my hand,
It's something in time I know I'll understand ...
I see visions of beauty that give me hope,
Picking up all of the pieces that were broke,
Coming to another fork in the road,
I walk in patience, I walk alone ...
ADULT
"In This Uncolored Picture" by Bill Vernon
Dad looks as dark as the coal
he stole from old tipples.
The day is 6 years after
he quit 8th grade at 13,
and there being no jobs,
he's earning his keep
from a still set up
in a hidden mine shaft.
His baseball team's cap is
jammed inside a back pocket
of shapeless black pants,
the bill flopping down
wrong side up on a hip.
He wears a gray, wrinkled
polo shirt. Dusty clodhoppers.
His head is cocked
as if listening for guidance,
posing so the woman he loves
can focus her Brownie.
Marriage is a month ahead.
His arrest for moonshining
is two years away. He will
be imprisoned while his wife
gives birth and while those
he works for, his father
and brothers, stay safely
holed up in the hills
in the background. Me?
I'm wondering about the man,
finding his image here
80 years later.
