Posted: Mon Oct 02, 2017 9:06 am
by M
Many thanks to those who participated in making nominations for our IBPC submissions this month. We thank our nominees for allowing us the pleasure of having them represent WPF in the competition. However, as you will notice from the poems below, we only have two entries for the IBPC this month. Which means one slot is still open. We had no eligible poems from last month to submit.

If anyone would like to have their own poem submitted this month, please send it to me at mjm@wildpoetryforum.com by tomorrow morning (Oct. 3). This opportunity is on a first-come, first-served basis.

To our entrants, please look over the poems. The poems will be submitted on October 3rd, as they appear below. If the entrants have any edits or corrections to the poems, please send them to me at mjm@wildpoetryforum.com by the morning of October 3rd. If you come upon this notice late and you have edits, please send me any edits anyway. I will try to have the submission updated before it's sent to the judge.

As a reminder, if there are no or not enough IBPC nominations in any given month from the membership, we choose from the eligible poems (those poets who gave permission) from the prior month. So, if your poem was not selected in any given month, please know that you still might have an opportunity for it to be submitted the following month. Also note that if there are no nominations/acceptances in any given month and no holdovers from the prior month, there will be no IBPC submissions sent from WPF that month.

Congratulations to our entrants and best of luck in the competition!

Love,
M

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October 2017 IBPC Submissions from Wild Poetry Forum


Poem # 1
Title: Night Thoughts of a Mottled Songbird
Author: Kenny A. Chaffin


Dark as the inside of a dog’s stomach
and brain going a hundred miles an hour
Why can I never sleep no wonder
my songs suffer. I keep slipping off this
branch, that don’t help and I can’t help
thinking that maybe this is all just a dream
Maybe nothing is real, Maybe some kind of trick
Maybe everything I think, everything I see, every song
I hear or think I hear is really just in my own head.

Maybe nothing is real…
Maybe I’m a brain in a vat
or a computer program
or just a fragment
of underdone potato
but, but, but, but, I am
therefore I think.

I think of seeds,
will there be seeds tomorrow
will the sun rise as it always does
will there be rain will I fly
through the air
tree to tree
twittering my song
hearing friends’ songs
or will they
be in my head
in the vat, in the lab
in the computer

Or is it real

I must stop
this
must sleep
must sing
tomorrow
stop the
monkey mind
and rest

Why do I keep slipping
off this branch, did some
fool pig-grease it, should
move to another branch
or is the grease on my feet
or in my mind
Will I slip from that
branch too

How can I sleep
How can I rest
slipping like this
Why me – is it because
I’m mottled – is it
my brain – is it me --
is it everyone could it
be the theory of bird mind
or just pig-grease inside a
black dog’s stomach vat

Please!
God of Birds!
Let me sleep
Let me rest
Let me sing

-END-
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Poem #2
Title: The Art of Not Being Descartes
Author: Guy Kettelhack


“What is all this?” must surely be a candidate
for the iniquitous ubiquitous first question
asked by sentient beings everywhere; well,
asked by those at least who dare to cleave
to their galactic versions of Cartesian reason:

you think therefore you are. From that self-serving
point of view, who else but you could be the star?
A star exploding into untoward elements which cool
on spinning orbs to sod: can Word be lurking far
behind, all ready to be Flesh, Body of the Letter?
How more neatly to suggest that thought is God?

(Harold Bloom says add the Odd and you have
something better: genius.) God is Phileas Fogg,
finding, naming, blaming worlds. Existence
is a language test. But you and I will shock the rest:
we’ll dock them in our pockets of resistance.

Like nests availing birds, we rest on other
than another’s words. I am the place you live.
You are the thing that lives there. What undergirds
this into grace? What theory does God have waiting
for us to remind us of our place? We don’t care.
You are where I live. I am who lives there.

-END-

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