• Hey, guest user. Hope you're enjoying NeoGAF! Have you considered registering for an account? Come join us and add your take to the daily discourse.

The NeoGAF Poetry Corner - Challenge #40: Homelessness

Status
Not open for further replies.
B

British Monsoon

Member
The NeoGAF Poetry Corner - Challenge #40: Homelessness

Theme: Homelessness

Congratulations to Ashes1396 for winning the last challenge, the theme he's chosen for this challenge is 'Homelessness'. Interpret the theme however you see fit.

Secondary Objective: Etheree

An Etheree has ten lines and no pattern of rhythm or rhyme. Each line contains the same number of syllables as its line number. There is also a reverse ethere, which is the opposite (first line contains ten syllables, second has nine, etc.) and also a double ethere, which usually consists of an ethere followed by a reverse ethere.

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)

t1324710000z4.png


Voting Deadline; (PST)

t1325055600z4.png


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)
 
B

British Monsoon

Member
The NeoGAF Poetry Society: Alumni's Archive

ulMAd.png


 
B

British Monsoon

Member
 
G

Grakl

Member
A New Beginning? (for both objectives)

Last year, lights screamed by as did my parents'
lives. It was insidious, decay
that destroyed everything we had,
and it coalesced in to
the final act. A drunk,
a drunk family.
The car helped. It
ended our
story.
Gone.
_____________________________________________________

If it Pleases You (this is just for the main objective)

My

frame of MIND is
hah
HAHA
jungle
a jungle of THORNS

I Understand
I TRULY DO
promise pinky
I promise my PINKY
to tell you
THE TRUTH

I see numbers.
They are reality.
You just don't Understand.
Understand a
mine.
A mined mind.

it is violence
DESTRUCTION
to not Understand
to not comprehend
what is COMPREHENSION
just a pile of ashes

dead

please please please please
just Understand
please HAHA
my frame of MIND
what it IS
I AM

they tell me
TELL ME
tell me
only tell me
always tell me
never stop telling me

I heard of it once.
Something everyone owns.
Everyone except me.
My brothers gloat.
I cry.
I know I do.

I KNOW
I PROMISE
remember I promised my pinky
you know haha the truth HAHAHA
you Understand
the numbers SPEAK of

home?
 
F

FantasticMrFoxdie

Mumber
Heart,
Can you
figure this?
He stands no chance.
By dawn it is death.
The winter will claim him.
Our fellow man designed it.
Do you mind it? When beggars die?
When pushed to the ground with nothing left
Dignity and Identity remain.

GWJOv.gif


these Laws were made broken a myriad.
Fights for territory, currency
Sit on sidewalks claim them kingdom.
The throne, a rite of passage.
Tame this urban landscape.
Processed food for thought.
Balance is all
that we need.
Your Love
,Home
 
I

iavi

Member
Awesome. This challenge is off to a great start. I'll have an entry or two in myself as soon as I finish up a few other things.
 
B

British Monsoon

Member
Cold,
ever cold
on these steps
beneath the bright
awnings and displays
that shine in evening gloom
and beckon with sparkling warmth,
but for thick panes of glass between
fanciful settings of Christmas cheer
and the bitter cold of a homeless night.
With frozen memories gripped fervently
against the shuddering, biting wind,
the mind casts back to a time past,
before life went so awry,
when these bones were warmed
by loved ones held close
and the crackling
of firelight,
burning
bright.
 
A

ahoyhoy

Unconfirmed Member
Read "syllables" as "words" so I done goofed on the secondary, but here's the first poem I've written since High School:

Freedom!
Sweet Freedom!
Unbridled at last!
Released from the daily grind!
The weekly worry of looming deadlines
Of staring at clocks and calendars and bills
Of false promises and phony peers and directionless ambition
Spirited from that crippled structure of deceit we called "Family"
To wander London's great outdoors with total and utter abandon
With worn clothes and worn soles and a worn soul
A rodent loosed from one maze to another
This of shattered glass and chipped stone
Watching shadows loom in the dark
Huddled for warmth under pity
Desperate but going nowhere
Invisible to myself
Hobbling onward
Freedom...
 
I

iavi

Member
Good damn, the thread is alive! Haha, this is great. I'll have my entry in a bit later. I've got a big ol pool of kinda~thematically related words/phrases all pooled together on a page. Arranging them into something coherent has been a bit tough.
 
A

Ashes

Banned
Broken Homes =/= Childhood dreams

Poor student,
shame on your sleeve,
pride is a hole in the shoe,
gutter roots,
the law is the law;
it's ripped hand me down shirts time
to read books centuries old.

Mum with the punter upstairs,
Dad unconscious on the sofa,
needles lying around baby Kate,
the roof is leaking,
the house is caving in.

Wash up,
keep it clean,
have a shower,
that's the important ting,
the addicts sold the food again,
where's the purse nan?

Teachers and compassion,
go well together,
yet the bullies bully,
and the noose tightens,
drink without I,D.
crawl from street to street.

Where's your god now?
and why doesn't he help me?
new gods and happiness surveys,
new classes, new teachers, new stations,
the train rattles along the same track though.

Homeless pigeon,
cry over no breakfast,
and you'll be a digit in the system,
you'll be shuffled through families,
dog collared to the welfare system.

Sit beside the window,
and watch the world pass you by,
the good don't know the answer,
the gods change every five years,
the evil care not.
so what do you do
when you are smart enough to know
some thing is wrong,
and are powerless to do something about it?

Wait it out,
wait it out,
eighteen, eighteen, eighteen.
 
I

iavi

Member
To be buried,

By the time I make it home,
I’ll be naught but soiled bones;
Venom weathered;
A fool among faux smiles
That please me.
 
A

Ashes

Banned
____________________________________________________________

The Poetry Corner Christmas Entry list 2011:
_____________________________


---"A New Beginning?" by the One True Grakl

---"If it Pleases You" by the One True Grakl

---"Our Binary Star" by the Super Excellent FantasticMrFoxdie

---"Cold" by Bootaaay the Wise.

---"Mother's Christmas Song" by the One the Cool Tim The Wiz

---"Freedom" by ahoyhoy the Maverick.

---"Broken Homes =/= Childhood dreams" by the Lover of Twins* Ashes1396

---"To be buried" by the Poet of Poets Miri

All titles subject to change. Half the list was untitled, so I just made them up as I went along. :p

___________________________________

Voting deadline:

t1325055600z4.png



I'll go along with Bootaaay's deadline. It's cause of the holidays I presume. :p

Merry Christmas everyone. :)

*titles. I mean titles.
 
A

Ashes

Banned
*wakes from slumber*

*yawns*

Busy thread as usual I see... Will do some crits hopefully in about half a day or so...
 
I

iavi

Member
Lol, for all of us to miss the voting deadline; Shame.

Votes:

1. Tim the Wiz
2. Ashes
3. FantasticMrFoxdie

HM: Bootaaay.

I'll come back through and clean this up with titles and crits a bit later. All around, great showings, guys.
 
F

FantasticMrFoxdie

Mumber
You are already deadline.
:)


1. Grakl - A New Beginning?
2. Ashes - Broken Homes =/= Childhood dreams
3. Tim the Wiz - Mother's Christmas Song

HM: ahoyhoy
 
A

Ashes

Banned
1. Bootaaay
2. Ahoyhoy
3. Tim the wiz ( this is my personal favourite. Excellent stuff tim )

Hm. Miri
Hm. Grakl - if it pleases you
Hm. Fantasticmrfoxdie - part 1 ... The second half didn't feel authentic, but that first part was very nicely done.
 
A

Ashes

Banned
Christmas Winner 2011:

uMTZE.jpg


Tim the Wiz

"Mother's Christmas Song"

Congrats mate on an awesome return.

Full results

  1. Tim the Wiz - 11pts***
  2. Ashes1396 - 8pts
  3. Bootaaay - 6pts**
  4. ahoyhoy - 5pts
  5. Grakl - 3pts*
  6. FantasticMrFoxdie - 2pts

A big Thank You to everyone who participated in the poetry threads this year. The winners, the underachievers, and especially all the people who run it so smoothly in the background or helped others to create and manage threads, (Bootaaay, Miri amongst others). Thank you one and all.

Over to Tim the Wiz now to walk us over the New Year. :)
 
Status
Not open for further replies.

Similar threads

Would you guys like to participate in a little community-driven gaming challenge?
15
1K
DelireMan7 replied
Neogaf GOTY 2023 |OT| Results thread
2 3
127
9K
lucbr replied
Barbie | Review Thread
News Rumor 6 7 8 9 10
465
33K
Woggleman replied
Could xDefiant find success with classic Call of Duty game design? We should know later this week.
2 3 4
173
11K
HeisenbergFX4 replied
PS.Blog Game of the Year 2023: The Winners
2
81
4K
geary replied
Top Bottom