[Julie Steiner]

Ecce

"Now, lookee there. In life and fishin',
big 'uns gobble li'l 'uns, see."
The lad regards him with suspicion.
"Grandpa...get away from me."

Julie Stoner

[Roger Slater]

I added a stanza and retitled it.

LA GIOCONDA

Perhaps it's just the eyes that smile.
The mouth does not participate
but sports a non-committal style
that might be love, but might be hate.

But then again, it may just be
the mouth alone that gives the sense
that she enjoys a mystery
and is amused at your expense.

But mouth and eyes together tell
that she has something to confess.
You feel you know her rather well,
although you could not know her less.




[This message has been edited by Roger Slater (edited October 05, 2003).]

[Janet Kenny]

Roger
Very nice and inscrutable.
(I'm not sure how much we are permitted to say in these threads but I am greatly enjoying the poems here.)
Janet

[Zita Zenda]

Having Seen the Fish Ingestion of 1556

The sea was rather flat
for what transpired therein,
the fish had swallowed all
the other lives, wherein
they’d swollen to their deaths
from drinking in their kin,
and not a one was left
that hadn’t one within.



------------------
zita z

[Roger Slater]

Melting Clocks

Though time may pass without resistance,
I credit Salvador's insistence
regarding memory's persistence
for helping me ignore the distance
keeping now and then, for instance,
separate aspects of existence.

[Susan Vaughan]

If a rewrite is OK I'd like to replace my above too-hasty posting with this one.
FWIW, personally I'd enjoy reading public comments on the entries. Maybe the judges would like the option of considering public comments in their decisions -- you know, like the apparently toppled Tipsy did :-(
___________________________________

Carcass in the Moon

poem written after an engraving by Breughel

We batter it with breath, yet it dies on.
No gasp of air surrenders to our knife,
for time is but a carcass in the moon
that eats the thing it feeds to us: our life.

Let all dig in to love! How sharp to think
of when we shall become mere pungent dishes,
yet soon eke from great gaseous holes of stink
of fishes eating fishes eating fishes!

Though soon we shall be swallowed near the sea,
yet let us wing across the heartless sky,
then drop into the souls that we shall be,
to lie and lie and yet no more to lie.

****************

[Mateo Sampoozi]

Wow there is some great work here.

The ideo of this made me chuckle...

David

"Excuse me sir, though I do enjoy your work,
I find it odd that I stand here without pants or shirt.
I accept your apology for the mistaken wine showering.
My garments have dried now I must be exiting.
I have other parcels to deliver before the sun sets.
Also, I'd apreciate not being sculpted erect."

pretty horible eh?

[Lightning Bug]

Since you mention Buffy the Vampire Slayer, this is an early piece from my old BuffyBoard days:

[Medium pace]
Buff and Angel, cold and wet
from fightin' evil brew.
So they took consolation with some
Wang Dang Do

[Faster Pace]
They did the Wang Dang Do [whizz whistle]
Ya bet they did, they did the Wang Dang Do [Aaoogah Horn]
Some people like to court and spark
and others pitch the woo,
But they was in the dark
to have some Wang Dang Do.

[Medium pace]
Parker had just lost his dad,
Buff said I'm here for you.
He said then how 'bout slidin' me
some Wang Dang Do.

[Faster Pace]
He wanted Wang Dang Do [cow bell]
That's all he wanted was the Wang Dang Do [bicycle horn]
Buffy wanted true love
he played her for a fool
Cause all he really wanted was
the Wang Dang Do.

[Medium pace]
Buff and Riley this one time
in their old dorm at school,
they spent the WHOLE DAMN EPISODE
at Wang Dang Do.

[Faster Pace]
They wore out Wang Dang Do [DarDee Siren]
I's act-u-ally tired of Wang Dang Do.[Halloween Rattler]
They didn't do no ragin'
at monsters with Kung Fu,
they was all engagin'
in the Wang Dang Do.

[Medium pace]
Spike and Buff debatin'
on who was right for who -
they ended up a' "datin'",
as in, Wang Dang Do.

[Faster Pace]
They did the Wang Dang Do [Bike Horn]
It wasn't pretty, but it's Wang Dang Do [Whizz Whistle]
They got a little feverish
and things began to stew,
they opted just to share a dish
of Wang Dang Do.

We love the Wang Dang Do [Aaoogah Horn]
Ya know we do, we love the Wang Dang Do [Cow Bell]
Some folks may like to court and spark
and others pitch the woo
But me and you'll just park and have
some Wang Dang Do.

- Bugsy

[Robert Brueckner]

Combining an appreciation of Keats' "On First Looking Into Chapman's Homer" with an appreciation of John Berryman's most famous opus, done in the style of the Dream Songs and the form of Keats' sonnet (with a few differences in the rhyme scheme).

On First Looking Into Berryman's Dream Songs

That half-hid Henry sulks and whines along
and rattles Mr. Bones if he should feel
impermissible, or turns hard on his heel
& stalks off toward some other dream all wrong.
The three of them go chuckling like a brook
unseen which in a meadow sports a sail
at once a hat & hitting the head on the nail
but never letting you put down Henry's book.
And on and into more night than you thought
you owned following the ragged trio into morn
a laughing aloud — like Eureka! or maybe sex
and plenty of both, if that was what you sought
before you came away full (& forlorn
a bit) & everything else your life reflects.

[Kevin Andrew Murphy]

My friend Seanan McGuire did a sonnet redouble on Buffy the Vampire Slayer, season 5.