Carl

Shall I compare thee to a Summer’s day?

Drizzling, blustery and intemperate

Late frosts killed off the darling buds of May

White breath, red cheeks: August bank holiday!



Sweet climate change! How could the poets know?

Summer’s lease expired some time ago

Seasonal metaphors dealt a fatal blow

One verity unaffected: we're reaping what we sow.



Shall I compare thee then, to our own Summer days?

Fitful, mingled, fixless, gusted all ways

Can Nature represent us still, or are we too afraid

To truly see our broken state, in winter sun, in the high-summer grey?

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David the Wrong (1142-1170)

Whate'er shall we do with IT? (an acrostic in three oar spasms)

Insidiously me search for the werds
Nullifying the songs of the berds;
Fankfully me remember how to spell
"Ingenious," "philosophy," and "'ell!"
Nightly me read her blog to me kittens
Inducing them to sew her new mittens;
Totally inept at writing these verse
Eventually me'll fall down accursed.

Tragically me see the dead pig bleeding,
"How 'tis such nasty knees!" say me, pleading:
"Out of the heart of your good, go eat cheese!
"Unfinite thought is guaranteed to please!"

Growing fond of death, I cast off from shore,
Hearing the stench of human-kind no more;
"This is end," say me; "where'er wend, I free."

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MT

This is
the impossible
first line.

Next,
a memory—
I think.

Then,
from a long line
this short one.

Careful,

on these last few
the ending
balances.

Press it gently
to the surface of the thing-in-itself.

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Bob Allen

Puke My Guts Out


when I pass by Holiday Inn,

or when I go to the town

or when I go to Missouri for any reason,
or see a cop

I want to puke my guts out.

when I put on a wifebeater
and go outside in the heat

I want to puke my guts out
I puke for people who like their jobs
I puke for real estate agents
I puke my guts out for personal responsibility

I puke both ways before crossing railroad tracks
I puke for Karen Carpenter
I puke for Barry Manilow and Ron Paul, together
I puke for American Idol
I puke for Wal Mart
I puke for Harley Davidson
I puke for sportscasters
I blow chunks at speeds approaching nearly 180 mph for NASCAR,
I hurl for Hillary, barf for Barak, and ralph Nader,
I puke my guts out for Sundays
I puke for rodeos
I puke for bars
I puke for guns
I puke for the death of irony
I puke my guts out in the name of home improvement
I puke for television
I puke for the power and the glory,
I puke for America


-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Ezra Mark

A poemthing in one word:

glost


***

It could be argued that you can't have a one word
poem; Richard Serra (I paraphrase) wrote "You draw a
line. Another makes a composition." So if I made the
word, I could put it with others, make a little
constellation:

glost. If so be

came then


***

but I think it has enough internal rift / elision to
hang there in the corner of the page by itself.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------


Jon Shaw

VENTOUSE
(After Louise Bourgeois)

Cutting through petty murmurs

are stayed inhalations,

the spherical antitheses

of mother-tongue

finding their sanguine route

to the surface

of purist slate black -

indecipherable from its support,

its blocked form.


A light within -

which you grossly name catharsis -

offers no heat

only a shadowed step ironically upward,

a Virgilian invitation

past marble spines

and guttural transparencies

and systolic chambers.

All stitches outward

to a rough, milky line.

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Dominic

Nonsense Villanelle

I know this one. The answer's seventeen
black buttons, and a quart of castor oil,
assuming you mean what I think you mean.

Although the pole may splinter on the green,
the thread unspool, the ghost milk go to spoil,
I know this one. The answer's seventeen.

In coughing so, whilst buffing to a sheen
that ball of brass, that sheet of baking foil,
assuming you mean what I think, you mean

to ask me just how many years it's been
since last I cried, my temper at a boil,
"I know this one!" The answer's seventeen.

How many cornfields must the gleaner glean
before he reaps the gains of honest toil?
I know this one; the answer's seventeen,
assuming you mean what I think you mean.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Dominic (an older poem, not entered but included here regardless, primarily for reasons of cleverness)

(Every line is an anagram of the first line; and thus, an anagram of
every other line)

This is a poem about language
(august, hospitable egomania):
a beauteous, gloating mishap.

"Manageable utopia sought." Is
this a poem? Language is about
tautologies, an "I AM" bush. Page

gaps. The ambitious analogue.
Stage phobia, mutual agonies:
"Situation Omega! Plague!" (Bash!)

An ultimate big oesophagus, a
biasing gaol-house. Amputate
sub-human. Apologise. Agitate.

I, alphabet - I, nauseous maggot,
inestimable - oughta go up as a
gaseous, glum ape-habitation.

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Results

Now I know why they have committees of people to do this, it's like a firing squad, best not to know who decided for or against you. I don't actually want to pick one....gulp....but after much deliberation, I'm going to say Bob Allen for the line 'I puke both ways before crossing railroad tracks'. 'Glost' is brilliant, Carl and David are funny, in both senses, and Dominic, Jon and MT can actually write poems. You see the difficulty here.