Your Vote is Vital!! in the SDMB Poetry Sweatshop Anthology Thread, August 2011 Edition!!

Cafe Society
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It is 9 PM EDT on Monday, September 5 - the August 2011 Poetry Sweatshop will close an hour from now. In the meantime, I will start posting the poems I’ve received thus far, and I’ll start the poll at 10 PM. As I write this, interested poets still have one hour to submit something.

Past poets (and I) have greatly appreciated people’s comments and feedback on the works presented here. I have one simple request - please wait one hour until the Sweatshop officially ends at 10 PM before posting anything else. That way, the first replies are all just the poems. After 10 PM - yes, please, we welcome your input!

I just want to emphasize the importance of voting - the poets are depending on you for an outside opinion of their work. The poll is by secret ballot, so no one need ever know how you voted. As we have done for the last few months, I will make this a multiple choice poll.

Please note that the poll is seeking your favourite poem - no special knowledge of poetry required. Whichever poems strike a chord with you, please give them your vote. And, though the choice will be difficult, please take the time to choose at least one poem.

I also want to mention that because of our working method, all of the following poems will be posted under my user name, which may lead people to think that I am trying to claim authorship. Only one of the following poems is mine - the authors’ names may be found in the spoiler boxes at the bottom of each reply.

The three words this month (randomly selected from a copy of James Joyce’s ‘Ulysses’) are:

Seaspawn
Raised
Grey

And so, allow me to present our poets’ work for this March…

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The sea calls me, and of course I obey;
the cool sand of the beach drops behind and
the waves take me, high and cold,
ever changing, ever old, life’s first home
I dive, and swim, and come to the surface, gasping,
the salt stinging my eyes, the tide a familiar pressure
the waters part as I go, foam flecking my chin,
and for awhile I am seaspawn, a fish,
some ancient creature of the deep
companion to the shark, minnow and lamprey
raised to the surface but more accustomed to stygian darkness.

No, not for me the yellow glare of the Sun,
now must I return to the great depths
the monstrous pressure of cold grey water above me
For I am a denizen of the eternal night!
a worshipper of the ancient deeps!
a servant of the watery tombs of my ancestors!
an acolyte of the seaweed-strewn gods of old!

At least until she calls me in for lunch.

Elendil’s Heir

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churned from watery
bottoms, seaspawn spews grey plumes
raised up to the sky

Becky2844

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Everybody smart agrees. Pawn
to King’s four beats all seaspawn.
But the reason that it wins
Is moving pieces with one’s fins
Is hard. This point, though, must be raised
Lest the move be overpraised.
Though always White plays Black, we may
Be cognizant of shades of grey.

appallinggael

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Who are we?
What have we become?
How did we get here from where we begun?

Was I raised this way?
To shout invectives to those I love
and spend the next day mired in grey regret?

Is forgiveness real if given resentfully?
Should we wait for the other’s apology and feel self righteous?
Do we feast on pride instead of kindness and thus are not sated?

Was it so long ago that we have forgotten?
The promises and all the people we made them in front of?
Are we shipwrecked, seaspawn, broken beyond repair?

Where are we going?
What can I say?
I don’t know why we act this way

Puddleglum

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All days and nights seem falling
The sky blurs; all now is grey.
The seaspawn gives rise to the crawling
No choice; they enter the fray.
Untold trillions have all but shouldered
These crawling; see them struggle for land.
Past days and nights may have moldered
Tonight; their heads raised as they stand.

cmyk

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The grey cat sprawling on sunsoaked tile
Near the empty pool, head raised, tilted treeward,
Hears birds, smells mossy rodent scat
Carried on summer breezes redolent also
Of backyard gardens, grass mowed this morning,
Charcoal grills and cedar mulch.

Exposed seahorses peek between fronds,
Kelp which once shimmered and waved
Frames coral and clownfish, provides a bed
For seaspawn and one lone mermaid, hair interrupted
By crackling tiles long since dried.
Triton, ignored and unseeing, frowns in the sun.

xenophon41

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raised by the noon sun
he is the loved one
fly roman candles
wash sandy sandals

dolphins are calling him
time for a twilight swim
end of the day
clouds enter grey

dive in the potion
emotional ocean
a verdant sea
absent ennui

drifting luminescent
florescent adolescent
rolling seaspawn
exit to dawn

jackdavinci

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We were both so nervous my hands were actually shaking
and we laughed and made a few feeble jokes and laughed again
and then I kissed him, because someone had to break the ice
and I almost giggled, because I thought “someone has to break the ice!”

But then his beard hurt my lip and his tongue touched mine
and I marveled at how good it was to be scratched by a rough beard
at how alive his tongue felt in my mouth,
at how alive I felt.

We both undressed and we both were nervous again
and we looked at each other with hunger and shame
and then I kissed him again, because someone had to break the ice
and then I wasn’t nervous anymore and there wasn’t thought of giggles,

but just the feeling of ten thousand tiny eggs breaking in my belly.
Like seaspawn: some slimy, some hot, some cold, they spread in me -
nervous impulses spread through my limbs and my chest and my back,
spread in my tongue and in my hands and even in my feet…

And I thought of how fantastic it is that bodies have their own language,
that they speak to each other in perfect grammar and know how to conjugate each verb -
and I wondered whether I was my body or if it was a separate thing I just happened to inhabit -
and I wandered if the tiny creatures swimming in me were me or if they were my body’s.

I thought of the poet who lamented that bodies knew each other but souls didn’t,
of the philosopher who declared them independent,
of the scientist who said they were the same,
of everybody else who don’t give it any mind.

I noticed how his skin wasn’t wholly brown,
but that part of him was grey in a nest of black,
how it raised to the occasion…

I concluded the poet was a fraud, the philosopher a sham
and then the beard scratched me again and I didn’t think anymore.

Our bodies conversed.

vdgg81

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He’d lost the fight we all are born to lose;
A Rainbow Warrior proudly gone to grey.
“A whisky by the waves will chase my blues”
I said, and cried on shore at end of day.

At length, I heard his voice and raised my head.
“Why so upset?” he seemed to say.

“I can’t say why - I never voted for you
rarely agreed with you
some days, I thought you were nuts.
Yet here I am, as though the spectrum
has lost a vital colour…”

He laughed and said “Fair enough!
What is it you would do
to make a better world for all?”

And as he turned to go, he said
"That bundle by your feet -
those were my hopes.
they look hard to carry
because they’re so big.

But hold them
like a new-born baby;
like a cauldron of soup
at a homeless shelter;
share them when you can;
carry them like you’d portage a canoe through muskeg
and they’ll carry you
through the roughest waters."

Vouchsafed this seaspawn vision,
let orange be the colour of my mourning.
The orange of tiger lilies in a junkyard
The orange of a harvest moon
The orange of a sunrise
The orange of a fresh, ripe mango.

The orange of a flame against the darkness.

Le Ministre de l’au-delà

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There is no grey like late autumn dawn
flat and washed in muted cloud-tones
everything crashing down around
waves–seaspray and mist, no color
in the fog-light–and with his car
pulling away on the twisted road-strip
squeezed between mountain and gulf,
everything becomes bleak as the chill.

Windbreaker pulled taut, the gusts cut
through like blades–the shivers racking
and my fingers trembling like bare branches
over numbers glowing in blue backlight
as I press keys, send a message
as I wait for my sister to come.

Shouldn’t have stayed the night,
or for months. He’s not good
enough for you. She pulls back to the road.
I know. The sound of sighing, ungloved
hands stuck in front of the heater
trying to thaw, pressed to the vents.
*I’m sorry for calling so early.
*
We’re silent, and we’ve always been
quiet as church, raised back to back
against the wall, our presence wordless.
She speeds away from the coast; I watch
the quicksilver water disappear
to a thin distant line and, at last unalone
will my chest to rise and fall, my body
to breathe, my heart to beat again.

Angel of the Lord

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Where did it start, this low call
Like the evocation of a lost memory?
It shook us from our deepest slumber,
Where our half-thoughts rumbled into a
Night that never expected to end.

We raised our heads slowly, moving first
With the tide, sleepily, and then against it.
Every movement became a current,
Wide grey fins moving great bodies as
Ponderous as the water around us.

And moving together, we sought:
Following the new song out of the deeps,
Irresistible as the riffle of seaspawn
In distant breeding pools, it rang out
Ceaselessly between our whistles and calls.

Where did it start, this low call
Like the evocation of a lost memory?
The days and nights folded together
Into an unanswerable question, our thoughts
Bumping together as we sang the song back, until:

The softening swells moved us onto the beach.
Grains of sand rasped our skin, helpless to move,
Unable to breath under our own faltering weight,
And yet…and yet…almost…
That last unending song still calling us forward.

maserschmidt

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The poll is set. Please, take your time - there are some very fine works to be savoured in this collection. When you have read and thought for a time, please, take a moment to vote for whichever poem(s) strike you. Or leave a comment - I know that I am quite interested in discussing these pieces.

I would be remiss if I did not once again thank The Mods for their kind assistance in allowing the running of the Poetry Sweatshops. It is greatly appreciated.

And now, I leave it to all of you to read and tell us what you think…

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Good stuff this month! Thanks for contributing, all.

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Some very good work, and I was happy to read them all and voted.

(Hopefully all of you will read the entries in the next short story contest and vote as well!)

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Yes, I try to limit myself to 3 votes, but FTR, I think my fav was yours Le Ministre.

This was my first shot at poetry, but short fiction is my real love… can’t wait for the next round of that!

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Wow, so many great submissions this time around! I still don’t understand how you guys can produce such polished work in so little time. I’ll list my favorites below, but have to say there wasn’t a single poem I disliked.

Rapture of the Deep and Everybody smart agrees both made me laugh. The first one is just like a Calvin & Hobbes Sunday strip and builds wonderfully to the conclusion.

Companions and Beach I disliked on first reading, but both managed to grow a lot on me. I think I reacted badly to the subject matter on Companions for some reason and at first I felt disappointed with the path the poem took after that wonderfully evocative first strophe, but on rereading I appreciated it a lot more.

I feel like I’m missing on cultural context on For Jack. “Rainbow Warrior” first had me thinking Jack was some kind of gay activist, but the rest of the poem made me believe I was mistaken and that Jack was some sort of well-known politician. This doubt then permeated my reading and I’m unsure as to how to approach the text. One way or another, everything from “like you’d portage a canoe through muskeg” onwards is very good and some of the images (canoe, lilies, mango) are pure gold.

If I were forced to choose a favorite it’d have to be Idyll. It’s one of the simplest poems of this thread but is the most concrete and precise and manages to work well with 4 different senses in just 3 sentences. I love the picture it paints and the contrast between the two stanzas.

P.S. Are the poets supposed to vote at all? If so, are we supposed to vote for our own poem, for all of our favorites or what?

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Vote for the ones you particularly like. I always find myself unable to narrow it down to a single favorite. Sometimes I can pick two or three. This time, the anthology is just terrific, and I voted for the ones I couldn’t not vote for. (Not saying how many that was, but I got it down to less than all of 'em.)

I’m still finding more things to appreciate about these poems…

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Oh, yes, I’d encourage all the poets to vote. I’ll leave it to them to decide whether or not to vote for their own poems - my personal guideline is that if I genuinely feel that my poem is deserving, I’ll vote for it. It doesn’t happen very often - I tend to be much harder on my own work because I know what I had in mind.

In other words, vote for as many as you feel are your favourites, and if that includes your own, so much the better.

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I wrote ‘For Jack.’ about Jack Layton, who died of cancer on August 22 of this year. He was the leader of the New Democratic Party of Canada and, in this year’s election, guided his party to its largest ever showing, becoming Leader of Her Majesty’s Loyal Opposition. Though heterosexual, he was a gay rights activist, an AIDS activist and a strong force for the institution of same-sex marriage. (His funeral was presided over by Brent Hawkes, the minister of the Metropolitan Community Church - Brent Hawkes performed the first legal same-sex marriage in Canada.) He also advocated for the homeless, for the environment, for legalization of marijuana… For all that he was very far left politically, his sincerity, integrity and passion made even his fiercest opponents respect him. His untimely death, coming so soon after his greatest political achievement, led to a massive outpouring of grief across Canada.

The closing of his last letter, written with help two days before his passing, sums the man up well -

Rainbow Warrior is a reference to Jack’s involvement in the LGBT rights movement, and a reference to the Greenpeace flagship. Orange is the official colour of his party, the NDP.
Although I hope the poem stands on its own, if you’re interested, here are three links -
Jack Layton’s last letter to Canadians.
Rex Murphy’s tribute to Jack Layton
This Hour has 22 Minutes, a Canadian news parody show, compiling some of their favourite Jack Layton moments over the years. Yes, he had quite a sense of humour about himself…