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Neopoet Weekly 09/29/24 to 10/05/24 Winner!

This Week’s winner is  Twizzle48

 

WHISPERING WOODS

 

WHISPERING WOODS

Perhaps the rustling leaves are telling the tree’s tale
Whispering, such that only those listening may hear
Only when it is in tune, may the message be clear
Yet unless easily understood, it will be of little avail

The breeze is a medium, but other connections too
To share, an underground root network also serves
It’s communication via a kind of complex of nerves
No myths or stories, as all that’s shared will be true

Summer is a competition for sunlight, as if in a duel
In autumn it is time for the farewell to falling leaves
Yet the first snow of winter is as an axe that cleaves
But next spring, it’s the buzz of growth and renewal

The style of the telling is not random, but planned
Facts the trees near and far, eventually get to know
But its sending and receipt is effective, even if slow
Nature’s sagas few of us will ever get to understand

September 2024 Contest Winners!

September 2024 Contest Winners

 

Congratulations to all our contest winners

 

The Winner of the What is Life? Is Alex Tanner

 

Life Is What You Are

 

There's a time to go back to live life again,
Let the boy who was fearless be reborn just the same;
Command the old man who grumbles and moans
Of the aches and the pains that torment his old bones.

Ride his bike one more time, no brakes, hands free,
Skate winter's froze pond where he knows not to be,
Go down to the river for frogs, newts, dragonfly,
Climb gnarled oaks so tall they caress azure sky.

Boot footballs, play rugby in fields full of mud.
Wash knees in ice water to clean off the blood
From kicks and from falls but never no pain
Just laughter as into the fray once again.

No laptops, no mobiles perhaps no tv,
But they were not wanted this boy he was free.
Free from an age of want yet to come
To go where he pleases till hungry then home.

From dawn until dusk he was out all around,
With his numerous pals no trouble was found,
Nor was it sought, just laughter and fun
Or maybe some girls as adolescence begun.

The old man sits straight and a smile lights his face
He'll do what he can and if he seems a disgrace?
A silly old sod who ought to know better,
By God! life's for living, he'll show he's no quitter.

 

The winner of the 09/24 The Bully is Tawny023

 

Encroach and Invade

 

Mold is an inconspicuous bully
Decomposes reds, yellows, oranges
Blues, and even lime greens
Does not matter its outer shape
Covets the wetness deep inside
Feeds and declares dominance
Nest and festers, spreads
Like vermin and vectors
Permeates and inhibits
Its host hold on to structure
While degrading its bonds
In order to have its way with
Just about any old living thing
A temperamental nuisance
But it’s grotesque mold juice
caught the eye of Dr. Fleming
Its usefulness is no other
Than the holy grail
called Penicillin
Which fights viruses that would
Otherwise make human’s
procreation unviable and
Their deaths excruciating

 

The winner of the 09/24 Bon Fire is RoseBlack

 

Bon Fire

 

Moon high; middle of the night.
Drums thumping; bumping in hypnotic flight.
Cloaked hoods fall to the ground,
scattered chants mix with the eerie sound.

Candle wax burns at the fingertips;
Hecate's breath embraces swaying hips.
Shadows dance amongst the flames,
linking spirits to our world without shame.

'Tis our season, witches take hold,
The magic runs hot and bold.
Our veil is thinning, hear the roar of the thunder,
when the living and the dead are no longer asunder.

 

The winner of the 09/24 Under the boardwalk is  Lavender

 

Along The Windy Shore

 

I remember you
and your lit-up smile
under the salty boardwalk.
You were seventeen
with your tousled hair
along the windy shore.

Such a time we had
'neath the summer sun
under the salty boardwalk.
With our hands entwined
we would race the waves
along the windy shore.

We never made promises
we couldn't keep.
No promises were broken.

So in the silver moonlight
there on the beach,
few words were ever spoken.

I remember soon
summer days grew short
under the salty boardwalk.
I was seventeen
when we said goodbye
along the windy shore.

Do you remember me
with my deep brown eyes
under the salty boardwalk?
Part of me remains
racing with the waves
along the windy shore.

I'm there along the shore.

 

The Winner of the 09/24 Homecoming is Tawny023

 

Did you know?

 

Golden Shovel after Victoria Chang’s, ‘Homecoming”

Pieces of us still exist from as far back
As diapers and Similac, even before bedtime stories.
Our DNA hangs around in their
Bloodstream like butterfly wings,
As if the contractions remember
Something of us swimming in nothing,
But a secret tunnel and we were and are
Umbilical cord joined until cut, but the bond is never
Broken— our Mother’s DNA still holds our knowledge

 

 

 

 

 

 

Neopoet Weekly 09/22/24 to 09/28/24 Winner!

   This Week’s winner is Jokerface82

 

THE WRATHFUL SEA

 

Her salted bludgeoning maw
swallowed vessels and galleys
with its green saline gullet of
ulcers
barnacles, and a throat full of oily
spots of acne sticky limpets

Treasures guarded by a circle
of sharks in an ocean restaurant
pinching crabs,
and swaying seaweed keeping naval
secrets.

A wave of wrathfulness, tossing
clubbing, floating ships, drowning
them into the abyss.
stripping seamen Into
skeletons with silent screams.

Supported by a howling killer
of a storm . Ripping, blowing holes
into arthritis wooden decks into oblivion
into the coldest dark depths.

         

 

                                                                     To leave an additional comment on the contest page click here

Nepoet Weekly 09/15/24 to 09/21/24 Winner!

                                                                                      This Week’s winner is Jokerface82

 

Grandiose Majestic Mountain

There stood a majestic
Craggy face with razor blade
Edges of a monstrous
time honoured mountain

Turning its rocky nose up
at anything below him, robust
Jagged and risky, high stabbing
armour with White shark tip
Cut throated fins.

Bald rugged with a silent manner
cold stone as white as marshmallow
steep and strong, bold and old
broad frosted shoulders

With powdered freckles and a storm grey
complexion it wore a white necklace
and a frosted crown, made
by heaven.

 

                                              To leave an additional comment on the contest page click here

 

The stream (all workshops)

This is the stream - you can see all poems on Neopoet, live, as they are created.

 

If love was the wind
passing through the autumn trees,
the melody heard
would sound as a lovely hymn

Like the birth
of the morning sun,
warming us with its light,
or rain giving life too all the earth

Love is the fertile soil
that is in our hearts,
A place to plant a seed
cultivating it to grow true and loyal

You will have the rains of May
fall gently so you may drink
giving the strength
to make love live another day,

hard words or dandelion tea?

i.

implications are not words--
they rarely cut to the chase
merely insinuate the distance
between cold sheets of light
and the water we throw on our faces
to awaken
from the gloom and doom on the one-way
street that
reminds us silence is the path around those razor hedges

once words were green fields
blue skies filled with echoes and clouds of unknowing,
dandelions
roar with their big heads
poking through
and no one hears the wheat grow
bending into the softness

ii

Rusty Hinges

to fall asleep under a tree
blue shades of grass
laid back dog pal
and mud between my toes

one more shoeless day of denial

rosebud, my rosebud

now today, a tuesday afternoon
a knock on the door
I cringe

THE ILIAD

THE ILYAD

In Paphos, one momentous spring, (when nothing much was happening)
A rock-fall in a tomb caused consternation:
Behind the rocks, revealed at last, a great epistle from the past
In ancient Greek, which needed true translation.

Unfortunately for us all, to translate what was on the wall,
A vagrant Scottish drunk blagged his way in.
What follows is his woeful verse, which made a bad job ten times worse
In his grave old Homer’s having quite a spin
================================================

Implosion (eddy styx)

Implosion

mallet strikes
bone splitting blow
unseeing eyes
reflect
explosions
of pain
vision erupts
in starburst patterns
and shards
of splattered brain
this headache;
MIGRAINE!

FUTURE HISTORY

'Twas over forty years ago
came The Hammer and the snow.
The flying mountain which brought ruin,
freed the wolf, the lion and bruin.

Near a full year of no sunlight
resulted in near total blight.
Of trees and plants a sudden dearth
and famine came to all on earth.

"'Merica" was called this bitter land
ere the glaciers came to hand.
Their conquest still shows no retreat
none ever have enough to eat

Brake Failure

I thought
I saw his eyes
in the headlights

staring,
numb,

blind to change,
open to adaptation;

tight-twisted with colored sugars
to sweeten past paths
and make the hard roads
seem

softer.

Myopia helped him forget
about human beings;

free and equal,
with dignity
and rights.

It helped him define mankind by its color
and strength of mind by its sex

and he forgot

that humanity is endowed with reason,
conscience,
and an inner spirit of brotherhood.

final days

the rain falls here
despite it
i am not despondent
freshness comes with water
washes clean
all the stains
i have been friend and
confidante
a failure and success

home will resume with
more of the same
different people
directions and dreams
memories stay
tucked in pictures

in gestures and actions
life will be as restless as it was
no regrets
i left them
long ago

VENOUS

hold me
billow sail
silvered with
lust

the rust of mermaid
hair the streamer
calm

changeling heart
we play the part
The hero racing
the Villian proud

the mirror whispers
like waves on sand
the slither tongue

and a jaundice moon
slides like clockwork
through the ruins

"What are you waiting for"
exhaulted exhale
I can taste the salt
I can feel the depths
your scales writhing
with your turns

warm
slippery
love

blue glass ceiling

in dreams
the corridor to you
remains open
you say
"enter, my Love"

no bridges, no rivers
to cross,
nothing to say
nothing but this
opening

there are no words,
only poems,
there are no poems
only poets, there are
no poets
only lovers who dream.

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