28 posts tagged contest
Judge of the What3Words contest, Sallyanne Sweeney, has selected the winners of the poetry competition, as follows:
1. Deck.holds.steepest by Damask
2. Quiver.garden.spectators by Logan Ellis
3. Loved.further.crackles by Laura M. Kaminski
All what3words poems (from this competition and others) can be found at w3wpoetry.tumblr.com.
Winners will be contacted by What3Words.
Congrats!
fallen
not like angels carved in the abbey
with real blood stained on faded pavers
chanting of olives and New Jersey delis
but leaky pens hooked on ratty notebooks
smashed glasses and stained grass
by the cascade of water and sediment
as only eons can wash away my father
and our sins
watched and abetted by those hovering
in nimbus clouds
feeding masses drawn to wires and air
like all good things drenched in honey
stuck to drown in richly detailed angst
dissolving the filthy wafer
keeping quiet amid the screams in the waiting room
with summer droughts
and empty thunder
time begins dwindling
as soon as footing is found
flowering with scratched black vinyl
crows vent their syncopated darkness
oil of stars that covers the sea
moss that grows
in the cemetery plot of my skin
4-D Elvis of radiant brain seizure
your machine of dying
what is the fuck?
was it you that kicked a hole in the sun
was it you that kicked a hole in the universe
Where my father’s grief held high
the ripped hospital cup of experience
as the broken limp into cherry awareness
a certain showdown between cavalry appearances
nomenclature unending but bursting sideways
with ethereal knowledge & having specter
that aren’t reverberative or uncalloused thought
here & now ain’t ready for unplanned pregnancy
the terror living exhumes white sheets & spoons
for whatever appetite you deny this search
compels upward syncopation melody bound to
paper upon paper of weight upon weight
as trestled touch pours south these people
calling me an angel & the saving grace
that arrived from nothing to question the silence
there’s enough money for testing enough doubt
for wishful analysis & comparative justification
why the sun sets at a chosen business hour
the stone gods’ forebearers looking on &
make ready one clear idea about trees
& skyscrapers that everything will echo
& why cry when you can stand & howl
brightly at the trauma of people moving empty
where you found a skyhook of meaning which
data compiles into endless mounds of beautiful
decay & what you do with time portends many
dreams about waking repeatedly for the first time.
I did it, it was my fault
and so logically I am a god.
Here I met him, by insinuation,
ruby red robin
on this cold white windowsill -
such sweet bones with bendy gleams -
for three hours he refused amber asylum
said red was the colour of survival, what
a strange thought for a harbinger.
His opinion was a chocolate fountain, but
I am unassailable in my round tower.
Yes it was my fault, how powerful I am!
I tell you this sincerely and without arrogance,
when you curl your fists in anger
resist the temptation to be death defying.
Waking, consciously, factually
Inhaling the bees,
big bluestem grass my vibrating straw:
she kissed my forehead goodbye
and made me fall in
like
spilling secondhand grief
the color of cloud shadows
over the knife-edge
where prairie meets highway.
Waking, I never want to sleep again.
Golden, unburdened air
Cradles the winged grasshopper and I:
I don’t remember if I run to
or away; only that I match the fierceness
the sun-drunk joy.
my last gasp of certainty
before the thunderous shaking,
softer still then I ever was
layers of days,
ripeness I cannot refuse.
Consciously.
Cicadas, buried first,
then resurrected to youthful flight:
Night breaks open
impermeable reflections. I watch
Carpenter’s hands
sift fallen leaves,
construct diagrams,
semi-lucid lines crumple inward,
motley alphabets
drawn from ancient dreams.
Factually.
For the first time, naked,
and the opposite of alone.
art by collageartbyjesse
September: It is probably raining;
there is no fog. After 10 hours,
it is selfish, but logical, to drive
30 miles home, to sleep. After all,
I have work tomorrow, I have students
who still must learn and maybe
just this once enter the classroom cheerily,
eager to know “What of the baby?”
It is not my body fighting to retain
the child, refusing to dilate against
wave upon wave of push. Even pain
is a dictionary word right now.
The doctor says Go home, and she
agrees. I am useless anyway; I
cannot speed the process, cannot
dull the pain. I can sleep
until the morning, until they induce,
until my son inhales meconium,
until I see him bluish-gray,
until I am ushered out.
Port Hardy, on the northern coast of Vancouver Island, was where my son inhaled his meconium in the birth canal. He died 3 days later, after being flown to children’s hospital in Vancouver.
Hugh Anderson lives and writes on the Southeast coast of Vancouver Island. He has published most recently in Loch Raven Review, Popshot, and will appear in issue 78 of Right Hand Pointing.
suppose you didn’t collect
capsules and jars and bowls and bins of salted
muddy eye-water and suppose
the marks on your door were made in vain and then
suppose you did not emerge from the jets; a body
shot straight into the ether like that author twisted
crudely into heaps of metal
this modern knot in our fabric, rubbed
between thumbs
into dust
into ashes; and
the birds sing to us
Decades of vacation made my sword swallowing
uninteresting. Letters from you and old coworkers
flatter my throat, but my boss is convinced
I’m a video game. My audience was a baby brother,
adjusted for inflation; you expected fangs. The night
was reserved for meeting without action, so I could
dream our child’s exoskeleton has a magic veneer.
I pointed to my hilt and hunted for a new anxiety, but
the blade is so pervasive that my cysts soften into
diamonds. I scratched at your wall for so long
that I became one. One of my pockets is a miniature
pyromancer and the other is full of gasoline. When
snapdragons mature, they breathe fire. Me too.
When I got naked, my clothes became a volcano.
you kissed me
folded over like a piece of cheap paper
how they told us in school
hot dog style
you smiled when you were finished
proudly lighting a match to your saliva
imagine kissing
the way they made us fold when
diagrams about caterpillars turning into butterflies
the bleach color would have faded after licking
so many edges
briskly stripped
it was quiet not like a lawn mower thick thunderstorms unexpected snoring pink umbrellas
not wanting to wait for the evolution of butterflies
you folded, slid your tongue
right across the middle tip to tip front and back not using teeth but breathing heavy
trying to make the tear cleaner and easier
it wasn’t and now a piece of the cheap paper
is damp white and sad
spark made. regrets of fucking many,
a feat for the very sortilege of bullshit,
spark made. an avalanche upon the
stupid jump, a loss unrelated to heart
but of the heart. of weakness I, of
flaccid natures and peculiar habits,
of black dreams, blacker daylight,
unknown desultory trodding the
unusual streets in unusual clothes,
far places to rest my crisis on, fair
aqueduct, running a pleasant static
over my web of lies. yea, spark
made, I broke, so then uplifted nothing
to my place in clarity’s tomb, o manic
depressive, before I knew it out the
window thinking grace to the ground
where busted SPINE. I lived then on
upon basis of sorrow, fortitude
delicious enough to busted SPINE to
make of me a ragged, barely
functioning infant, a tired infant, you
know, with bags under his eyes
or some shit, waiting for Nöel, but,
my presence was cheap, a cent by
cent sense made, a collected sense
nobodies has all patience ta lishen
tew. yeah, these three, these three
fuckers: events, situations, shenanigans
really: I jumped the gun and followed
my nose, near-robotic, to the first
tranquility seen, an escape of mind to
peace ultimate, as if all it a game,
the goal for honorific, saddle with god.
well, I did, not expecting retalitions
of that eddy’s core I saw the ghost
of once, an imprint of a once-lord of
things, creator, sustainer by death,
a cosmic nothing to tap me to insane,
to death, like bits of water-torture
plumb on the nose, until nothing was
uplifted for years, me shifting within
my weathered bones, making this
nuisance of discomfiture my nature,
feeding it beyond all decision, lullingly,
I was tried by regret, rehearse my
simpering apologies, I ate the mother-
fucking horse I beat to death at least,
at least this, a pain too wordy to call
it only that but every word I’ve evah
scribbled, to scram the nuisance.
lost the love, my flaccid, bumbling
heart now with no object: needing none
anyway as I found: love your people,
do not love this unalive effigy burning
your mind down my mind says to me
through its own overloaded cells,
its own tricky ambivalences more of
that bleeds through, to the point of
inscrutable metaphor, a loop of my
SPINE a-squeal as I come in to look
at me prick, maybe suck - it - too,
tell a nun or something : tell here to
come back, as I ward off anxieties
in the psyche ward, disembodied:
lithium maybies werk fer sum peple,
na dunnit work for I. it’s that shunned
feeling that’s the most peculiarly
crucial: the venom ebbs sans drugs
at all : it also crucial to live: lithium
in me opinion, is taken when the
need to correct chemical imbalance
overrides quality of life : my masthead,
nearly broken, my godhead seen and
in all its ugliness spoken, I perceived
that eddy further into a developing atom,
the birth of an adom, me delirious eve
of bathos, sunderedness: thinking of
her dirty sundress w polka dotss -
her cumin ta mete out rightful ire, at
least, on an infinite plane, the fate of
my effusiveness, the lurking battle I
would lose, already done, and me
at this point happy: will so I hurtled
to the ground: well, I lost the love atm
“of my life” and for years after nursed
an untidy, protracted-growing
obsession held in a box of letters under
my bed : they were sweet letters, they
settled SPINE : not in to reconfigurations*
never went to physical therapy for
the becoming shards : becoming that is
for a life already hell, in love with hell,
wishing to be the void of god I saw
that one night after - manic visions strewn
hastily - barely thought-wise, mixing
letters for meaning, next weeks I can
remember after - that quality three-week
amnesia, what a chunk! of life! - on a
newspaper, a few reaaaams actually
of the prophetic bullshit: written terrors,
to dis day canawt figurit a’out :sheez,
but what, play god ??? change hell ter
heavens, says I. dat not playing god.
dat shenanigans on the personality of
memories you retain: my mom always
told me a’saith : it is never too late to
have a happy childhood : a’saith: it is
to late to have a happy teen love: with
whether P. the dunes of ex I find wave
theire dust into my breaths still, I
stranded like Oxymandias among a
choir of Shellys. Ihopeapoet is my final
bearer of pall. but at least now I have
these words that say the word pain -
to stave me off from thinking death w
my dirigible mind, a ricochet across
very planets, whom in greatness watch
my odd foolish presumptions with
contempt: I was in Psych WArd once
and guy gave me is oxycontin: he had
back problems: then I took my vikes
without letting nurse check if I cheeked
‘em : she yelled hey get back here, and,
hear this, and, I say : I am in pain.
good thing, and little did I know I was
fated to speak the word only, perhaps
feel infinitely otherwise wit each new
abstract delight, each painful detail
scoured: yer artform, say nurse in my mind,
and I tell her, she is as real as words,
words on an eddying atom.
What3Words and Uut Poetry are pleased to announce the following contest:
What3Words has named every 3x3 meter square in the world with a unique combination of 3 dictionary words. The basis for this poetry competition is to use the three word address where the most significant event in your…
Tomorrow’s the last day…
1.
2007 ceiling fan shifts hot air on hairless faggot pinkness
naked only in the middle for to cover up quickly.
big white box fan to wash out frantic muffled dick sounds.
bounce off tall beige walls.
house has three floors.
two floors and only one underground.
three empty bedrooms.
my age is three times five and his is this minus one. heat rises.
third law of heterodynamics.
half clad fags in lab coats.
ask me why I don’t have a girlfriend.
2.
when someone knocks we rapidly re-belt and split.
once mom googled ‘lesbians’ spelled with a ‘g’ in it.
utah is a white privilege rectangle with the top right corner bitten out by wyoming.
oscar wilde gives a speech in salt lake city about homemaking and interior design.
organic oil makes latex condom rot.
leaves hard stains in unfinished wood at the tops of little ladder lofts in someone else’s parents’ house.
cumming in someone at the end of “almost famous.”
ask me why I don’t have a girlfriend.
3.
someone once won an award for inventing carbonated yogurt put in narrow plastic tubes.
the boy scouts share their patron saint with syphilitics.
frankly i cannot forget the words
you said to me as we
floated on each other’s planks in the
Bird Sanctuary you said
you’d never gut me but as i
flopped around on the Earth you
knocked me down into the dirt to do me
it burned like ice
chapped knees knocking together
time moved at glacial speeds
i floated on your plank and sank
into an unenlightened underworld
filled with turtles and minnows and
muscle relaxers that paralyzed me into never
busting through the stone walls surrounding
The Clock Mansion used to tick and tock
like each blow to my sternum that knock
knock knocked me out cold
but when it burned up poor Lorraine it left a stain
on the land
shaped like a disillusioned cul-de-sac
filled with Joneses and Murphys
laws and regulations
dull swords cut deeper
as you drive yours into my miniature model
i always hope it hurt you even now
like stepping on Legos or thorns or
brown snow barefoot
frankly i cannot forget the words
you didn’t have to say as i floated above our planks
being devoured like a fish filet
threats and oohs and aahs and
growls
from you, a no longer nocturnal
raccoon
bent on tearing through me
your trash can
: faking gab together
The station says about him that
It does not matter. It is a beguiling sort
That comes from enough money
To pay for jokewriters whom will later extort
You, hold you by the legs over
The Verrazano Bridge.
When that happens, one can
Be sure the twilight will
Be bananas, to see whether
The bridge likes it,
Approves of the drop :
Would it start a chain of events
Too bleak to mention, that is,
Without these mouthless
Things gagging on
Particularly reticular vowels
Like an allergenic in
Hay-fever season ??
Shames, lost causes, a
Guy in his monkey suit dropping
Cid in the back of
A cadillac: are such things
Mere appeasements, lowly rentals;
Doesn’t anything matter anymore ??
You might ask yourself. Maybe. But the
Bridge back over is tricky, once
Somebody phones in mortal
Fear and denies
Themselves the right to go
Out : as a rich headcase, the picture
Of wealth : but, o so
Crucially: unfunniest of his
Unfunny friends : dour,
Predictable magnates, stiff
As a druid stuck in sand, and
Called a world-wonder.
Think about it. The bridge would very
Well wander back to what
Happened to itself, all those years
Ago; might want revenge, see.
That miserable fuck
Wants to hug and kiss me
Again … ? Says the bridge,
To himself, as most
Bridges are unpopular
Amongst that unsung empire
Of the inanimate.
But whose content with
Their character in any case,
Head or no ?? Shall a small man
Sailing the brackish waters
On a Sunday come
Across a body bitter with
Urchin, in need a good dose
Of lye, to absterge the many-footed
Ganglia of inhabitants upon
Flesh : curlicues, watery mite,
All the dole of a man who just
Wanted, as he wanted
All - so said his station - one
Last draught of acid -
Had one last good fullblown
Hallucination, before
- and absurd, this - he
Dismounted from anymore
Royalties to the puny jokemen,
Ran towards his
Bedlam, being followed. He,
Knowing himself
Done for, kissed his childhood,
Infinite Plaything : the stone beside
The bridge, making up
Its founding principles, scruples,
And most of all liberties.
He thanked the
Bridge for showing him love,
Compassion - a
Veritable easel on which not
Only to paint a mimetic
Of his complex force, but still
Emotions to a silently
Lapping tide, with even greater
Force, as it pops into the rich
Boy’s head, only for
So long. But how timely
His end !! So greatly important he
Felt to be not anymore at the
Hands of his mask:
Thinking upside-down he took
His flaws to task in those
Last minutes, sans an external
Originator, jokester or
No: those jokesters that
Did not care what became
Of him, nor his station dropped
Him down to that lovely
Silence the water made of even
The loudest foundry’s
Ruckus. His only flaw, of
Course, being: the man stole jokes from
The wrong Jews, don’t define
Yourself by amounts of green paper,
And stay away
From hallucinogens
That make you
Think that bridges and
Other non-sentient
Things can talk
art by franz falckenhaus