[Ward]

The NeoGAF Poetry Corner - Challenge #45: Grave



Theme:Grave

1. (noun) Any place that becomes the receptacle of what is dead, lost, or past.
2. (adjective) Momentous, serious or solemn; sober.
3. (verb) To fix firmly in the mind.

Optional Secondary Objective: Alliteration

The repetition of a particular sound in the first syllables of a series of words or phrases

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)



Voting Deadline; (PST)



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)

[Ward]

The NeoGAF Poetry Society: Alumni's Archive

• ahoyhoy - Freedom
  
• Alarif - Light Blue Reminds Her, Second Movement of Discordia Part 2, Uncanny, The Balloon, Untitled, A Game of Cat, Mouse & Fuck Bioware, Blessed
  
• Amir0x - A painful note, Battlefield Bliss
  
• AnkitT - Gray Areas, Point of View, I See, Internal Conflict, Sightsee, The Circlejerk, Be Pee, You Expected a Title? Really?, Development Hell, Cover Your Eyes, They Say I Talk in Obsoletes, Collective, Sensory Deprivation, Nuclear Winter, Deception, Cremation, Match Made in Heaven, Nobody Came to Mine, Hot Douche, Asylum, Deadbeat, Happenstance, It's Personal, Everyone becomes a philosopher after 40, Untitled, Fossil, Placeholder, If Only, Don't fight back, and see what happens., On again off again, Open to Interpretation, Open Your Mind, Dead;We, Life as a statistic, Cheap death
  
• Ashes1396 - Left and Right, Trouble Belongs to Me, The Head & Tails of it All, Blind Faith, The Brain, the Heart, the Kidneys, Mary Poppins vs. other classic musical sing-a-longs, Epoch encroaching mass atrocity: The Rwandan Genocide, und sex?, Golden Phoenix & River Thames, Nobody has time in the city of London for anyone else, Developers, or a poem written in one go in under ten minutes, Soft dreams treading on winter nights, Live, War Torn Machine, Taking Flight From the Nest, The Abominably Rich Man, Prison, A Pure Winter's Daughter, Mechanical Heart, Frightened Rabbits, The brevity of life, Valentines day is over; see you next year!, Don't be sad John., Speaking to the Bottom of a Bottle, Thief, High Seas, Why Believe in Hope?, Time, my best friend, What a Wonderful World, The path of the hitch hiker who doesn't give a f**k!, Lonesome Boat, Death Likes War, till we awake, Sleeping beauty, Rest amongst the lilies, Hometown Glory, Mindless violence? Fuck you! - A Youth Cut Rhapsody, Her Words, Walk Not Alone, The unkempt poet on Old Holloway road, We are in this together., Torn, Open for Business =/= The Cracks in the Ceiling, Spectator at a Fireworks Festival, A modern retelling of a Shakespearean tragedy, A Grandma upon hearing her dear friend was ill..., Of plants and trees., Broken Homes =/= Childhood dreams, Free Escape, Lacklustre Song, Ghost in the Rain, When the tea is cold, What's the point?, Murder, Turning to flames
  
• Beelzebozo - Letters
  
• Bootaaay - Untitled, "Happy" I muttered, trying to pin the word down, November Rain, Vuvuzela & Untitled, Delirium Tremens, Poor Gary Coleman, Nimbus Watching & Crocodile Tears, An Ode to Oscar (the former life of the party), Nerevarine, Trev & Bill's night out on the town, Bastogne, A Man Out of Time, A Dose of Reality, The Storm, The Tower, Smaug, Winter's Shroud, Gone to Ground, Live to Regret, The Sourceress & Current Affairs, Beneath the Waves, Morning Dew, Sea Spray, In the ink deep blackness of night-time's embrace., Ticker Tack, Vigil, Carousel, Death Rattle, Where the Wind Blows, The Road Yet Travelled, A Summer Death, From the ashes of empires we rose once more, Bloodied & Torn, Crows, Streets of London, A Wasp Among the Hoverflies, Either or Or?, Corpse Lights, Sea Wall, Unknown, Wake to See the Sun, Brimstone, Shroud, Whiled Turkey, Deceit, Caged, The Piecemeal Soldier, Sunny Disposition, Dawn, Untitled, Cold, Untitled, Seer, Sunset, Sailor, Spires
  
• Botolf - I Heard Something, The Lights, O Musician
  
• ChiefKief - He Carries On
  
• cory - I'm not that Fond of Ramen
  
• Crunched - Promise
  
• Cryptozoologist - Untitled
  
• Cyan - Goals, George Washington & Ashes1396, Adrian Brody, Untitled, Slow, the End
  
• Dartastic - Untitled, Untitled #2, Within - "Fear"
  
• Davedough - Concious Babblings of a Frail Psyche
  
• disappeared - January 27th, maybe tomorrow., Ape Shit, at last
  
• Divine - Life or Death
  
• Dresden - Chipping Away at the Statue, Old Callisto, See-Through Lenses, It's always within you, Cristiano Ronaldo & They Call it the Vuvuzela, Alarif, Said the Monkey to the Monk, Galactic Trooper, Expectations, Orange Everywhere In This Bitch, High & Low, Scuttle, Ferry, Untitled, Broetry, I ain't caring, just wondering, bind
  
• dvolovets - An Elegy for a Forgotten Artist
  
• FantasticMrFoxdie - The Ending*/, Our Binary Star
  
• Flink - Your Bed
  
• Freezie KO - My Flag
  
• goldlion054 - The Girl at the Grocery Store, The Abandonned Neighborhood, That Day
  
• Grakl - A New Beginning?, If it Pleases You, Fear of the Known
  
• half a moon - Untitled
  
• H.B. - I've been tired for a year and ten days
  
• hey_monkey - Afterward, In Summer, Chiggers: A Dream Song, Cyan Hobbes, Just One, Untitled, For Monica, Jeddah is Drowning

[Ward]

• Igoritza - Untitled
  
• Irish - Faint, Down the Street & Journeyman, What Have I Done?, B Covers Bread As Well, Never Always, Live the Life, Lock, Mud, Lack of Focus, How It Is..., Ever, Continued, Cement, Went Out, The View, Return
  
• Jangaroo - Tomorrow, Now
  
• John Dunbar - An Ordinary Chap, A Winter Wonderland, This Morning in the Kitchen, Wake Up
  
• kid ness - Me, Coin Flip, The Angry Man, Sandbox King, The Market, Somewhere a World, Lizard
  
• The Lamp - Melanoma
  
• MaxSteel - Poem #1, Interior
  
• Melchiah - Beneath the Flesh
  
• Mike Works - Desire
  
• Miri - Sheath, Entry With Ego, Saboteur. Society. Cycle, As the Sirens Sang in the Halls of He., The "Oh Lordy Lordy Few Forties & an Oz" Sex Mind, Warm, Wild, and Starving, I Am, Upon the Town of Red & Blue. Repeat, Fallen Angel Felled, Wander walks with Lucidia, I am Arlevana. I am Villain, Wander walks towards an Intro, Shallow Gouge, Old Man, Victros, Her Name, Vaccine., Safe with 2-ply, The messenger, laugh as he does tell, I've heard your wishes, woman, now -- let me sleep as I do., Goes my love,, don't dare nod, To be buried, Uke, Thorough. Through, Cowardice crafted Cowardice, For the scent and serenity of home
  
• Monocle - Untitled
  
• More Fun To Compute - Things and stuff
  
• Mudkips - Interior
  
• Nix - Bitter Dreams; Sweet Relief
  
• Neutrality - Goodbyes, Sunne, Vincent, Theo Baldwin's Final Entry, About a Queen, Smoke and the Feeling of Weightlessness, Forever Yours, Autumn in Empire
  
• Nightshade1765 - Reterning the key to the Rightful Gatekeeper
  
• NotTheGuyYouKill - Untitled
  
• OrangeGrayBlue - A Trip to the Moon
  
• PolarBearsClub - Forgetting Birthdays, Guest
  
• Plywood - The Masochist, Again
  
• Plumbob - Untitled, The Witches Wade South, Control, Untitled
  
• Raguel - Untitled
  
• RDreamer - Two Days Short of Forever
  
• Reneledarker - The Stolen Eternity
  
• ronito - Vespers
  
• Salvor.Hardin - A Weathered Man, A Virgin Afternoon in the Arabian Desert, Of Jungles and Lights, Beyond the Horizon, A Soldier For All
  
• Seam - The Tearful Moment/The Sane Moment, Located moment, senses poem.
  
• SoccerGoaliePro - Untitled
  
• soul creator - Overanalyze
  
• soultron - Untitled, Embodied in Copper
  
• Snowman Prophet - Indigestion, THE BOOK OF SEGA GENESIS
  
• tehrafe - She was the one
  
• ThLunarian - Untitled #1, Untitled #2
  
• ThoseDeafMutes - Tab Explosion
  
• Tim the Wiz - All We Humans, More Love, The Waning Earth, Glorious Field, Utoya, Stardust, You, Mother's Christmas Song, The Harbinger's Screams, Another Waking Soul, The Choice
  
• Timedog - Waves Hitting Rocks (Godfuck), Nothing
  
• Trip Warhawkins - A Meaningless Affair, The Coward Says Goodbye, Chained to the t.o.s.
  
• Truth101 - Partings, Alone we wonder
  
• ULTROS! - Room
  
• umop_3pisdn - Untitled, Cellular Matrix, Like sand drinks water
  
• WanderingWind - Untitled, Untitled
  
• Ward - Puffy Chicken Pickle Chips, A Muddled Puddle, A hymn for the Exploited, Born in 1921; Airborne in 1944
  
• Zamorro - Time Well Spent
  
• Zapages - Prince & Farah Meeting in the Two Thrones
  
• ZephyrFate - Dislocation, ZephyrFate, Niche in the Canyon, Left Behind, Untitled

[Ashes1396]

Congrats on the win. Death just won't let us be, eh? :)

[tehrafe]

Hero

Whilst tears were pouring from your eyes and heart,
you spoke the words I refused to believe.

The pain and anger rising up to hate you,
later making place for the pain I was about to receive.


You were my inspiration, my guide on the path called life,
currently a mere shadow of your former self.

How am I supposed to go on, continuing to pretend,
while all one wants to do is find himself.


Time ticks away your last moment, the final greet,
the ultimate goodbye.

Still in denial, refusing to see your lifeless body,
I pray for you an eternal lullaby.


One day, a hoarse voice whispered my name,
speaking from beyond the land of the living.

Telling me to stand proud in what I do,
since life tends to be unforgiving.


Now I keep my head up high,
battle any obstacle that's in my way.

Don't ask me how but you managed to do it,
you shaped me into the person that I am today.


(I dedicate this to my grandfather, who passed away 3 years ago today)

[Miizy F Baby]

Hmmm, from the thing you couldn't reach, to the grave, what a damning trajectory. This should make for some powerful poetry, poets. I've got an idea and a half, lol.

[AnkitT]

Great theme, Ward! Also, congrats on the win. I have some ideas for this one, should be interesting.

[Ward]

Words Want for More

[Ward]

Words Want for More: Creator Commentary (Read the entry first)

A write up if you're interested. I always wonder how my intentions match with perception, so here you go.

After creating the theme, I had this image/idea of words left to die on the speaker's tongue.

I didn't know where to take it, so today I just started writing. It quickly became a tale of love lost.
The last line changed my mind. What if the story was love that never existed. So much of the poem are things internal to the protagonist, that maybe they never happened at all. Instead of a tale of a failed relationship it was a tale of passing desire.
The poem had a feel of loneliness anyway, so I added some words to hopefully provide an alternate take once the reader reaches the conclusion. Now I wonder, did it work?

[Ashes1396]

For anybody else that is/were interested:

My sincere apologies. I don't explain my pieces any longer. This new period started as recently as the last few poetry and creative writing threads. I wrote up my reasoning in a thread or two back.

All I can say is what regular folks may already know. I write only fiction. Realistic fiction most of the time. Arm chair philosophically inclined sometimes. But fiction. Thank you for your interest anyway.

[disappeared]

For anybody else that is/were interested: My sincere apologies. I don't explain my pieces any longer. This new period started as recently as the last few poetry and creative writing threads. I wrote up my reasoning in a thread or two back. All I can say is what regular folks may already know. I write only fiction. Realistic fiction most of the time. Arm chair philosophically inclined sometimes. But fiction. Thank you for your interest anyway.

You don't have to explain yourself.

[Ashes1396]

I was asked via pm...

And I don't want it to come off like I'm different to this person or that person. It's not that I think less of this person or that person, etc...

I should add, that this is my own view, and not the thread's, plenty of people explain their stuff beautifully.

Edit: on topic, stuck with my piece. It'll come. I'm sure of it.

[Grakl]

Like the Stench from a Tomb

The little one sits in the car,
passing by a place
she has passed by
every day on her way home.
Long black hair whips in the wind
of air recycled
throughout the centuries,
and for the first time
the girl realizes what it is
she has been passing by
through her time
in this small town.

She asks her parents to stop at the place
long forgotten but always
stocked with new merchandise
that has gone rotten. Maybe another day,
they say,
on a week's end,
when we're off work,
and the day is nicer.

As they pass by,
she sees a man walking on
the hard cement
that lines the paths between the graves
of those who have passed on
to nothingness.

The girl brings her head
back in to the car,
holds her hair back,
and her parents roll the window up.

[Miizy F Baby]

You guys, on the way home from campus, I thought out a whole poem, and quite possibly the best one I ever would have written. Got home. Realized I remembered none of it. Give me a rope. Things are OVER.

Also, my better thought is with Ashes in that I believe that once a piece has left the author's hands, it's in yours to see whatever you want in it. My ego, on the other hand, wants you to see exactly what I want you to though, so you can always ask me. ;) Kidding. Not really.

[Tim the Wiz]

Always carry a small notebook with you. You'll guarantee that you have more ideas within your life than time to carry them out.

[Miizy F Baby]

Yeah, I hear you on that one. I actually have a notebook in Evernote for that exact purpose, and I use my phone to jot in it, but the ol fashioned way probably would be much better. Seeing as how I'm forgetting to get it in at the most important times anyway, lol. Something about having to use a touch-keyboard really hampers benefit there.

[Grakl]

Way too many entries this time.

[disappeared]

fuck I forgot again. I had something going on the typewriter last night.

[Grakl]

fuck I forgot again. I had something going on the typewriter last night.

I dunno, nobody has made a list of the entries yet...

[Miizy F Baby]

I'm pretty sure Ward set the timer to the wrong time. The deadline for entries usually falls on midnight, sat--12:00am P.S.T.

Still, not much time at all.

[Grakl]

Makes sense, considering that voting ends Sunday night.

[Ashes1396]

Lea Valley

Cold Wind swept marshes,
Nature's graveyard on the cusp of spring.

Naked trees, lifeless shrubberies,
the bog-land is sleeping, Winter's breath is king.

It'll be better in the summer, he says, you'll see,
she's wearing the wrong footwear, her heels are digging in.

March is here already, a quarter of the year gone,
where are we walking to? What will a change in season bring?

The roaming done, the darkness is coming, time to walk home,
whilst he takes photographs, she wonders how Lea Valley would look like if
one had a ringside seat on a Sky Lark's wing.

[Bootaaay]

Worm stripped fingers protrude,
pointing from muddied earth
at grey, hallowed skies,
those bony tips worn and bare
as they seem to trace a line,
heaven raised hands, held up
to some unseen vestige
of safety and warmth and life,
only to find, amidst the cold,
choking earth, an echoing
emptiness and a journey's end.

Super late and hungover, hastily hashed together - apologies.

[Ashes1396]

Entries

• tehrafe - Hero
• Ward - Words Want for More
• Grakl - Like the Stench from a Tomb
• Ashes1396 - Lea Valley
• Bootaaay - Worm stripped fingers protrude

[Bootaaay]

tehrafe - good use of rhyme and metre, and it's a touching piece, although the first couple of stanzas feel slightly disconnected from the rest.
Ward - nice use of alliteration and some good language throughout, but it jumps about a bit in it's structure.
Grakl - clever idea and some nice language, I especially liked the 'new merchandise...gone rotten' bit, but it felt a bit prosaic in parts.
Ashes1396 - some very nice imagery throughout, and I liked the use of rhyme, although in reading I found the ending slightly muddled.
Bootaaay - this one was kept succinct by necessity, but I think it works in it's favour as there isn't much of an idea beyond the image of a half buried corpse, although the ending is pretty weak.

1. tehrafe
2. Ashes1396
3. Ward

HM; Grakl

[Grakl]

1. Ashes1396
2. Bootaaay
3. Ward

'Course, HM: tehrafe, but considering there are only 4 people other than me in this, I think it's a given, haha.

[Miizy F Baby]

1. Ashes
2. Tehrafe
3. Grakl

Hm; Ward, Bootaaay

[Ashes1396]

1. Ward.
2. Bootaaay
3. tehrafe

hm. Grakl

[tehrafe]

Sorry for the late response, I was away for a couple of days...

1) Ward
2) Ashes1396
3) Bootaaay

hm Grakl

[Ward]

1. Bootaay
2. Grakl
3. tehrafe
HM. Ashes1396

[Truth101]

Something I just wrote and wanted to share.

The world we live, lonely and suffocating.
So close we walk, beside one another.
Yet we know not the stranger.
Our lives are prominent.
Our lives are first.
The lost child
The blind beggar.
Are but a stranger that walks beside us.
To know no one.
To see nothing.
Is that our destiny?
An empty world, filled with invisible people.
Is that what we wished for?

It feels incomplete but when I wrote that is as far as my mind stretched.

[Ashes1396]

Got to rush out. Hopefully I'll add up votes when I get back.
@Truth, cheers for sharing, you should enter sometime. We're pretty cool cats/dogs round here. :P

[Ashes1396]

Results:


1. Ashes - 10**
2. Ward - 8**
3. Bootaaay- 8*
4. tehrafe - 7*
5. grakl - 3


Pretty close this week eh. Next thread coming asap. ;)

[Bootaaay]

Congrats Ashes :)

[Miizy F Baby]

Congrats, ashes! Where's that next thread? Let's get this graveyard on a roll.

[Ashes1396]

Got stuck on the time rift. Didn't know whether I was in the future or in the past. ;)

Jump forth to the future/past/alternative future re-imagined from a Victorian past?