So, welcome everyone to the Anthology of the SDMB Poetry Sweatshop, Dec. 2009 edition; **please post your completed poems here in this thread. ** Everyone will have one hour from now (1700 EST or 5 PM EST, however you care to think of it.) to create a poem which incorporates the following three words -
Move
Spider
Absurd
derived, for those interested, from Roget’s Thesaurus by rolling a 12 sided die to get a page number and then a line number.
Other than using those three words, the poem can be any length, form, rhyme, theme you choose. I have a list of people whose poems I am on the lookout for, but anyone is welcome to participate.
In an hour from now, (at 1800 EST or 6 PM), I will add a poll to this thread, and any and all members of the Straight Dope Message Board will have 2 days in which to vote for their favourite poem. Latecomers are welcome to post their poems as well, but once I’ve made the poll, I can’t add anyone to it.
Revenge
Winter came to spring, and
Eros made move to bring Pallas Athena
A good man, arranging a chance meeting
Outside MOMA in the rain.
But Arachne, spying this at a distance
And still fixed on vengeance,
Ticked off the doom of the courtship
On her eight spider legs:
*Encounter, persuasion, a fondness for Asian;
Six months to court, and *le petit mort; Devotion, affection, and then the rejection.
The summer of love turned to absurd fall,
And cast off at last, Pallas Athena
Enjoyed the bitter taste
Of her own medicine: Aconite, plus a pinch of spite.
I haven’t been inspired in weeks -
A spider has spun a web
Inside the grand piano.
Sitting immobile
Anansi waits -
vicious lurker
or bored fisherman
wishing for a beer?
It’s hard to tell
and I wonder what he thinks
about the web of strings inside the instrument -
absurd modern architecture
or are humans too lazy to weave a proper web?
On a whim, I lock my thumbs together
and, contemplating my newly arachnid hands,
I hear a voice inside my head…
“I’m bored - play me somethin’ I can move to.”
I watch the spider slowly stalk,
put my fingers down
and play a lazy, shuffling dance across the keys.
I watch Anansi slowly weave and bob
and while I imitate his every step,
every note falls right in place.
After a while, the song subsides; Anansi smiles and says
“That the way you spin a web, son.”
In a dark cave the sisters weave,
destinies of men from a loom of fate.
What they have measured, none could change.
What they cut, none could restore.
Like spiders spinning a trap of doom,
they ensnare all in fate’s absurd strands.
Move try you might on the board,
the game has been decided from the start.
It gets colder, and darker, and I find that
now and then I have small visitors from outside.
They move inside, or try, to avoid the killing tide of winter,
purposeful and single-minded in their desire to live.
I can hardly blame them; I would do the same as they.
Although I don’t mind them, all in all, I will not,
with some absurd notion of hospitality, accommodate
those I loathe year-round - the mice, fleas, ticks, and such;
but see! There, now, on the hearth:
A spider is always welcome.
I’m a little sorry I sat this one out, especially since the three given words are so much less terrifying than last time. Next time I’ll try harder to be buttocked.
I will be selling fancy hand-written copies of my poem printed on a parchment scroll if anyone is interested. Excellent stocking stuffer!
(personally autographed for a small extra fee)
I just want to give this a gentle bump before I go to bed - we have a tie as of writing this, and so, I need to encourage as many people as possible to vote in the next 20 hours. It’s a challenge to choose with so many remarkable poems, I know, but please, try to vote for one.
Voted!
Very good entries all around, and I liked each in their own way- it was def. tough to pick a single winner as i enjoyed 3-4 of them quite a bit.
I’ll keep an eye out for more of these voting polls!
And with the poll closed, my heartiest congratulations to all who participated - there was some truly exceptional poetry created this weekend! Great work, everyone.
And a very special congratulations to Maserschmidt, whose outstanding poem ‘Revenge’ was chosen as the favourite. Maserschmidt has earned the right to be called ‘Poet Laureate of the Straight Dope Message Board’ for the next few weeks. Well done and best wishes!
