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The NeoGAF Poetry Corner - Challenge #47: Brave New World

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The NeoGAF Poetry Corner - Challenge #47: Brave New World

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Theme: Brave New World

O, wonder!
How many goodly creatures are there here!
How beauteous mankind is! O brave new world,
That has such people in't!


Optional Secondary Objective:Found Poetry

Found poetry is a type of poetry created by taking words, phrases, and sometimes whole passages from other sources and reframing them as poetry by making changes in spacing and/or lines (and consequently meaning), or by altering the text by additions and/or deletions. The resulting poem can be defined as either treated: changed in a profound and systematic manner; or untreated: virtually unchanged from the order, syntax and meaning of the original.

---

Submission Deadline; (PST)

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Voting Deadline; (PST)

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Poetry Thread Rules 2.0

For poets entering:

  • You are allowed one entry based on the theme; and an optional second entry, if it meets the secondary objective.
  • There are no word counts. Interpret the theme as you wish.
  • If you're a brave soul, there is a 'super secret' optional objective: performing the poem. Don't worry - we will only judge your official entry (the written version). Try it out. Poetry Slams are always cool. ;)
For voters:

  • You can vote even if you haven't posted a poem.
  • Vote for your three favourite poems. But remember that:
    • you can't vote for your self
    • you can't pick two poems from the same author
    • you can't vote for an entry labelled 'ineligible'
  • You cannot win unless you vote.
Competition:

  • The contest runs for two weeks.
  • The deadline is on the last Friday. Once the final entry list is up, the voting begins; it finishes at the end of the weekend.
  • How we count the votes:
    • 1st place is allocated 3 pts; 2nd is allocated 2pts; 3rd is allocated 1pt
    • If there is no outright winner, we add half a point to 1st place, so that the person with the most first place votes win. If we still don't have a winner, we then leave it up to the op to decide how to best go about it; or to choose the outright winner
  • The winner gets a round of applause. They are then in charge of the new thread. If you can't make a new thread, just ask somebody in the current thread, and they might do it for you.
General:

  • This thread is not merely for winning or losing, but for critiquing and improving your own craft.
  • We like to keep the finale on the alternative week to its sister thread: the creative writing thread. Every so often, we get interrupted, such as during E3, and/or Nanowrimo.
  • The archives and the op templates are managed by Bootaaay. If you have a question about it, you can pm him.
  • A big thank you to him, and everybody else who manages the thread week in and week out. We would be worse off without them.
  • Everybody is welcome to enjoy the poetry on offer, or just vote, or just critique.

Submission Deadline; (PST)

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Voting Deadline; (PST)

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The NeoGAF Poetry Society: Previous Challenges:

Poetry Challenge #01: Reflection
Poetry Challenge #02: Making the Blind See (+ 5W poems)
Poetry Challenge #03: Interior (+ Incorporate a song or album title)
Poetry Challenge #04: History (+ Dream Song poems)
Poetry Challenge #05: A View From Afar or Within (+ Clerihew poems)
Poetry Challenge #06: The Surreal and the Fantastical (+ Haikus)
Poetry Challenge #07: Expectations versus Reality (+ Ode)
Poetry Challenge #08: Mirror's Edge (+ Rhymes)
Poetry Challenge #09: Look on the Bright Side (+ poem must end with _________________ as it's last line)
Poetry Challenge #10: Obsolete (+ Ink)
Poetry Challenge #11: Pride (+ Kanye West)
Poetry Challenge #12: Passing By (+ Allegory)
Poetry Challenge #13: Take this Society (+ Ballards)
Poetry Challenge #14: The Dark (+ Add Zombies to taste)
Poetry Challenge #15: The Great Winter (+ Elegy)
Poetry Challenge #16: What Nature Reclaims (+ Lay)
Poetry Challenge #17: Storm Clouds Rising (+ First Person)
Poetry Challenge #18: The Phoenix (+ Enjambment)
Poetry Challenge #19: Psychopomps (+ Assonance)
Poetry Challenge #20: Death in the Family (+ Limericks)
Poetry Challenge #21: A Night on the Town (+ Didactic Poems)
Poetry Challenge #22: A Letter to the World (+ Inside Outside Poetry)
Poetry Challenge #23: The Blues
Poetry Challenge #24: Space, Above & Beyond (+ Prose Poetry)
Poetry Challenge #25: Futurism (+ Avoid Technology)
Poetry Challenge #26: Prove you Exist (+ Lyrical Poetry)
Poetry Challenge #27: Love, Happiness, Peace, Summer & Pixar! (+ Couplets)
Poetry Challenge #28: Dying Earth (+ Blank Verse)
Poetry Challenge #29: War (+ Narrative/Epic Poems)
Poetry Challenge #30: Dreams (+ the return of First Person)
Poetry Challenge #31: At Gunpoint (+ Epic Poetry/Broetry)
Poetry Challenge #32: Two Sides of an Epic Coin Toss (+ Metre & Rhythm)
Poetry Challenge #33: Lust (+ Poetry Slam)
Poetry Challenge #34: Fear (+ Lyric Poetry *To Accompaniment)
Poetry Challenge #35: Detachment (+ A return to allegory)
Poetry Challenge #36: Open (+ Throw Paint on the Wall, See What Sticks!)
Poetry Challenge #37: Chained (+ Cinquain poetry)
Poetry Challenge #38: The Human Experience
Poetry Challenge #39: Of Plants & Trees (+ The return of the Limerick)
Poetry Challenge #40: Homelessness (+ Etheree)
Poetry Challenge #41: Escape
Poetry Challenge #42: Eve of Destruction (+ Chōka)
Poetry Challenge #43: A life worth keeping (+ Anger)
Poetry Challenge #44: Out of Reach (+ Storytelling)
Poetry Challenge #45: Grave (+ Alliteration)
Poetry Challenge #46: SteamPunk (+ Sonnets)
 
The NeoGAF Poetry Society: Alumni's Archive

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LiQuid!

I proudly and openly admit to wishing death upon the mothers of people I don't like
Gold Rush

Yon blade of grass b'low footstep trode
No reason to go back again
For from my destination bode
Good fortune's crying call

Westward jaunt o'er waves of plains
And staring at the setting sun
While 'Fornia rests b'yond winds and rains
Rich bounty there for all

Though death has come and spake my name
The twilight world in blue and white
All's said and done I'll stake no claim
And rest shall be my haul


Borrowed lines from Thursday's Understanding in a Car Crash, which I haven't heard in almost a decade and popped into my head for absolutely no reason. I know it's grim but I still think it fits the theme. Hope it doesn't suck.
 

LiQuid!

I proudly and openly admit to wishing death upon the mothers of people I don't like
Oh, lol, this is themed after a specific book. Oh well, so much for that. I suppose next time I'll try not being dumb.
 
Sorry for the confusion guys, the topic is NOT intended to be themed to the book Brave New World, and as always you are free to interpret the theme however you see fit.

The quote I posted under the theme is from Shakespeare's 'The Tempest', and where Aldous Huxley got the title of his famous book. In the play, Miranda, who has spent her entire life isolated from humanity, says that quote upon seeing other people for the first time, and although she sees these people as 'beauteous' and 'goodly', they are in fact drunken sailors, staggering from the wreckage of their ship. The wonder that comes from Miranda's innocence and ignorance clouds her first impression of humanity, and likewise in Huxley's Brave New World the 'savage' John is at first overwhelmed by the beautiful and awe-inspiring city that is so different from the world he has known, yet comes to find much to dislike beneath the city's futuristic veneer.
 

LiQuid!

I proudly and openly admit to wishing death upon the mothers of people I don't like
Ok, I'll pretend like I knew all that before I wrote my shit!
 
Lol, sorry - I wasn't expecting everyone to know the quote or have read Brave New World, but rather just write a piece based off whatever the title itself evoked, as you did. The quote is just what gave me the idea for the theme.
 

FelixOrion

Poet Centuriate
Oceanic

Shining like a work of art.
Leave behind your fears
Are you what I think you are?
There's no danger here.

Elevator to the moon
You can breathe
Trying to get a closer view
You will not falter

Maybe you will always be
In clear blue water
Just a little out of reach
Please believe

Well, I swear we were in limited landscapes
But I've found a world where I am free.
The ocean swells; the ocean keeps me safe.
Presently, I've found I am not alone.

Breathe in, reach out
and perceive beyond the seam

-----

Bonus points to whoever can figure out what I constructed this out of. No google, boys and girls.
 

Red

Member
Such Bugs

"What's in a name?"
she asked me.
We were just eighteen then,
in faded polaroid memory,
ambered skies and the lake,
wheat breaking the frame of our
post-high school summer.

I lay with her in that field and stared
at the same sky she stared at,
but saw it differently.
I couldn't tell how.
The clouds are gold now when I think of them, but then? --
white.
And I studied those white clouds in laconic, spiral thoughts,
and I felt the few words come to mind press blankly through my veins like
beetles
crawling through the dirt,
all turgid and rough,
many-legged,
pulsing so slowly I was sure she'd feel them bulging through my fingers.

And I knew I would never decode those obscene words.
I couldn't tell her
of my new baptism
even as the rain began to fall,
couldn't tell her
I wanted all of her,
I wanted that summer (that moment!) eternally,
and in ten years I'd feel the same.

All I could do was squeeze her hand,
to try and feel her thoughts the same way I did mine.
I searched her.
I touched her palms
and had her touch mine,
tracing wrinkles in our skin to feel alive.

But:
nothing.
Placidity, cold.
Truth and inevitability.

My heart sank,
I could feel it sucking down my eyes.
Gaunt-skinned and flushed and furious
with her,
myself,
history.

It's only now I hear the whistling in the reeds:

Above all else,
One thing she knows:
A rose by any name's
A rose.




Recording.
 

iavi

Member
I had to restart from the beginning, but ran the mental block into an awesome idea that just so happens to span threads ;) Not much time left, bros. Get em in, if you haven't already.
 

AnkitT

Member
Well, switching anti-depressants has me losing my mind tonight. Might as well channel that suicidal force into poetry.
 

AnkitT

Member
We were promised more looking at the lore
The soreness ignored won’t be restored
Forefathers spoke of it some odd years and four scores
Yet the horizon ends before the shore

The picked bone of contention on the picket lines
The declarations that the wicked signed
Made the rest bend over like they had rickets hinds
We sat voluntarily blind, decadent tickets that bind

Reality shows on a big screen, reality plotted swift schemes
But the eyes stuck on the gleam, fuck admitting what really seems!
Rather the cold comfort of fridge creams and enriched genes
Than the warmth of a nuclear singe beam and cringe screams

The twilight years of our species, median IQ hits peak
Brain drain to cranium leak and lexicon modern newspeak
No crossover class leak, no mingling the fated poor and elite
No last ditch concerted eke, life’s good, so to speak

No rebel, no cause made, no planted trees of which you won’t see shade
Minds made to mentally masturbate, into the periphery, problems fade
The greys have no shade, morally bankrupt hedonistic head crown placed
A thin line between bravery and foolishness, that is now blurred and frayed

Promise you won't laugh at my accent? :( Look below lol

Recording of Frayed
 
Worn by years that slowly passed
they sat, side by side,
making meaningless small talk,
as if reading from a script,
one dull and lifeless,
learned by rote,
a device to pass the time,
those aching, endless moments
between one event and the next,
all dressed up to the nines
when, but for an evening,
they left behind their tarnished lives,
the stress, the anger,
the bitter resentment
that festered and gnawed,
and that, with forced exuberance,
they tried their best to ignore,
with best years long since spent,
broken dreams and longing regret,
afraid to do a thing
but make best of what's left.
 

iavi

Member
Ludgar

I may be slain tomorrow,
With the guillotine and sorrow,
But will smile, still, as I’ll, no doubt, feel
The scowls of the hecklers, them unknowing
That I grin not with a love of sin,
But an innocent man.
May my silence come swift.
And, The Heavens, if I may.
 

Ashes

Banned
The City is too big; I want to go home

Walk alone,
through the brave new world,
without a friend,
nor a soul.

Falling soot,
falling rain, falling snow,
hear the piano song,
hear the church bells toll.

No bread, no water, no petrol,
no light till dawn,
no words to comfort me over dusk,
no coversation over cards till morn.

Walk alone,
through the brave new world,
without a friend,
without a soul,
the city is too big; I want to go home.
 

LiQuid!

I proudly and openly admit to wishing death upon the mothers of people I don't like
1. Frayed
2. Such Bugs
3. *

*
The rest of them go here but I think I'm gonna save it/think on it and wait to see who needs some vote love. I don't care if this is fair. Cope
 

Truth101

Banned
I know I just pop in time to time, and don't really participate in the contests.

But though I generally just wind up throwing all my writing away, lately I feel like sharing. This isn't for any contests or anything, but here is something I just wrote.

In the day I was blinded
Not even you, could break through the darkness
That enveloped my soul

As I sat there waiting,
I saw flames a fallin'

As night turned to light,
Darkness receded

And there you were
Waiting, by my side

All through the night
You held me tight
Till I saw the light

It's nice to share every once in a while rather than just throw stuff away.
 

Ashes

Banned
We're just about done for this one, feel free to enter the next one. ;)

Which reminds me... have to count the votes up. Results coming shortly...
 

Ashes

Banned
Results

  1. AnkitT - Frayed [12pts***]
  2. Bootaaay - Tarnished and Torn [11pts***]
  3. Crunched - Such Bugs [7pts *]
  4. LiQuid! - Gold Rush [4pts]
  5. Ashes - The City is too big; I want to go home [3pts]
  6. Miri - Ludgar [2pts]
  7. FelixOrion - Oceanic [1pt]
  8. Tim the Wiz - Conquistador [1pt]
hms: no hms, everyone made it safely to the shore! :p

Congrats AnkitT. Lead us into the brave new world oh great one. ;0
 
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