Poetry Challenge!
Chatterbox: Pudding's Place
Poetry Challenge!
Poetry Challenge!
So, last summer, I made this thread called the Poetry Challenge. Lots of people joined, and it really took off. It died eventually, but since so many of you are interested in doing it again, I’m rebooting it!
For those of you who haven’t participated, here’s how it works:
Each round will have a main theme and an optional prompt. The theme should be a broader topic since we’ll all be writing a lot of poetry about that one theme. The prompt can be anything, really; a topic, a poetry technique, a random sentence that pops into your head. The person who posts the theme and prompt will be the ‘announcer’ for that round. They can participate in the challenge as well.
Each round lasts a week. Once the theme and prompt have been posted, everyone starts writing. The goal is to write and post a poem a day, but if you miss a day or two, or even six or seven, it’s okay. The purpose of this is to challenge ourselves and improve our writing, and of course, to have fun. So no stress. :-) Of course, if you're extra inspired one day, you can write and post more than one poem.
At the end of the week, everyone will place a vote for the most inspiring poem. Once everyone has voted, the announcer will count the votes and announce the winner, who will then become the announcer for the next round.
Make sense?
The first person to post is the Announcer for the first round. As soon as they post the theme and prompt, we can start.
(August 8, 2018 - 9:18 am)
peace is in the crinkles at the edges of the old man's eyes
as he sits on the beach chair in the middle of the sidewalk
watching the Mediterranean
peace is in the fluttering of the white linen on the clothesline
the lacy dress a woman wears when she's found her perfect life
dipping your face in the water with no goggles on and feeling the cool space on your eyelids
peace is almost suffocating in the Baroque church
candles flickering under the statue of St. Sophia, with perfect innocence in her eyes
the quiet in my soul making it easy to be open
peace is in the fluid movements of a person who knows they've made it
to where they wanted to be
(August 16, 2018 - 5:53 pm)
I really really like this poem. The imagery is spectacular! Seems like you took a lot of different things and tied them all together, which I love.
(August 18, 2018 - 8:34 am)
Thanks! I love all of your poetry so it means a lot to me. This poem was actually inspired by a visit to a place in the Mediterranean. (sorry to be so secretive, internet safety stuff)
(August 19, 2018 - 6:19 pm)
Due to confusion on my part and going to my grandparents' house for a day, I didn't write any poetry until yesterday! I'll try to write some more poetry to make up for it. But anyways, I have two right now...
For peace--
closed eyes
the grass grows thick and green here
in the middle of somewhere that's not important
where there are deep blue skies and nothing has borders
lie on your back. shut your eyes and breath in deep
smell the fresh-cut grass that everyone loves and
keep your eyes closed, listen because
there are memories here--forget the patterns
that the grass is making on your skin,
stay still and breathe, and smile
-------
she uses noise-cancelling headphones to calm herself
and drown out the world until she
can hear herself think
in the empty space left behind--
a void of no background sound
(August 17, 2018 - 12:25 pm)
riding on the subway to the tune of silence
only the air conditioners humming and the tunnel flashing by give any semblance of noise
the car is almost empty
like a giant fishtank with only 3 fish
i look around
the muscular man across from me
the women in work clothes
how many of you are in love?
how many worried about tomorrow?
i think this is peaceful but
how many of you have storms in your minds?
(August 17, 2018 - 6:05 pm)
my senses have been stripped
faceless, nameless, titanium, monochromacy
this prayer is for everyone who died young
all i want to know is this-
do you feel things
deep in your soul?
sometimes i
feel more alone than i can put into words
but i promise
never to sink so deep i can't resurface
and to fight
until all life leaves my
body
(August 17, 2018 - 7:31 pm)
I'm not involved on this thread, but I decided to pop in and read some poems and I was not disappointed. You all are wonderful poets, full of moving words and emotion filled lines. I'm still a bit speechless from a few of them that stuck a chord with me. I'm not really sure what the appropriate thing to say here is. Bravo? Good job? Thank you? I don't know. What I do know is that I will revisit the poems on this thread many times. Thank you.
I feel like that was slightly more dramatic than I intended... XD
(August 17, 2018 - 10:34 pm)
and take me disappearing through the smoke rings of my mind
so i'll stay up all night
trying to find purpose in the things i create
i want to paint all the cacophonies of my psyche,
the colors of my mind
to sing melodies of my fears
and weave tapestries of my dreams
there is a quiet longing in all of our hearts
to be understood
and peace
when we finally are
(August 18, 2018 - 8:32 am)
Agh, I keep forgetting about this! I haven’t written poetry in forever, and I suppose I didn’t know where to start. I did finally write something, though, for the peace prompt.
untitled
let’s
look up at the sky
close our
eyes
breath in the rain air
delicious and refreshing
let the cold jade droplets kiss our
faces
stand still while the wind ruffles our
hair
and raises chill bumps on our
arms
don’t mind the thunder
or the way the trees bend
we always enjoyed
summer thunderstorms
(August 18, 2018 - 11:06 am)
I'm going to be camping from tomorrow to Wednesday or Thursday, so I won't be able to post after today or tomorrow. But here are two more poems:
wishes (for the peace theme)
to write about peace
i could put myself into someone else's world
someone who feels that sometimes
because i
don't
----
pain beneath the surface--(for the beauty is only skin deep prompt)
i've heard that it's
what's inside that is the real beauty
but i still can't help envying girls with
prettier faces than mine and deeper
hearts
----
Hazel sayd kfkf. I don't know what that means.
(August 19, 2018 - 12:08 pm)
Wow, these are both beautiful, Leafpool. The second one I can relate to so much.
(August 19, 2018 - 6:57 pm)
one day I will find peace
but right now,
stuck between the sunshiny, stupid, lovely innocence of childhood
and the stability of adulthood,
it seems like I'll never find it.
how do you grow up?
do you become like one of my friends
numbing yourself so that at the age of ten
you can recite curse words without recoiling
or do you become like another
13 years old and already responsible
never experimenting with clothes
and especially not with your morals
or do you give up trying
just stay a kid and let your body and mind do their own thing
while you suck 7 sticks of cotton candy at a carnival
how does a stressed out teenager best find peace?
(August 19, 2018 - 6:26 pm)
to dance beneath the diamond sky, with one hand waving free
i'll rise with the new day
with the red sun
and the mourning doves, singing sorrows
to leave the pain in yesterday
the cloudless sky, sapphiric
softening to blue
reaches to the ends of the earth
as i find myself content
with the life
i was given
(August 19, 2018 - 7:17 pm)
I haven't been writing much poetry lately, but here's one for the peace theme. I don't know if it goes exactly with the theme, but I got sort of a bitter peace vibe while I was writing it, and it's something, so here we go.
Untitled
Nobody goes to bookstores anymore.
Nobody relishes the feeling of brittle pages beneath their fingers.
Nobody craves the smell of the tiny coffee shop next door.
Nobody sinks into the cozy armchairs in the corners.
Nobody lives for the thrill of going on a new adventure every day.
Nobody trails their fingers through the dust on the shelves.
Nbody hugs a book tight as though it's their salvation.
Nobody finds peace among the words seemingly written just for them.
Nobody goes to bookstores anymore.
(August 20, 2018 - 1:54 pm)
These two I wrote last night, the first for the ‘beauty only goes skin deep’ prompt, and the second for perseverance.
pretty girl
they’ve told me i’m beautiful
so many times i’m starting not
to believe them
whatever they see must be invisible
in mirrors
or maybe i’m just blind
they’ve told me i’m beautiful
on the inside, too
and that that’s what really matters
but somehow
i can’t quite believe that either
i still find myself wishing
that i had a perfect figure
and a kinder heart
like the pretty girl across the room
and i think that proves them
wrong
both ways
~
untitled
it’s easy to say you won’t quit before you’ve ever started
but when you’re there in the middle of it all
fighting, struggling, wishing it would all just
end and you could be done sometimes
you don’t have time to give yourself a
pep talk
or think through the reasons why you’re doing
whatever it is you’re doing (and
more often than not
giving up seems much more
logical
than putting yourself through more pain
right?)
sometimes i ask myself
why i
keep going
when it would be so much easier to just
lie down on the floor
close my eyes and
give up
(yet i find that
somehow
i always keep going anyway)
(August 20, 2018 - 5:09 pm)