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Board Administrator Username: mjm Post Number: 3282 Registered: 11-1998 |
Honorable Mention Cinquain Train Wild Poets Zephyr: Please jump aboard, simple rules the next cinquain starts mystical tour which wild poets complete Next cinq starts Complete Gary Blankenship: Complete the magic ride, join the gay travelers through their cinquain journey cross the net. Denis Garrison: The net trembles with the iambic footsteps of web-wise spider poets spinning verses. Jim Doss: Verses, terse curses, what's the difference between them when you're trapped in sweet Robbie's rose bud. Jim Doss: "Rose bud" slips from Orson's lips as winter explodes and hunger consumes his astute pallet. Gary Blankenship: pallets of bright colors - poetic graffiti challenges imaginations, our muse Jim Doss: Our muse is bemused, mute, hair in flames in fireweed ditches straining to tell us her secrets. Denis Garrison Secrets now versified, these mystic crooners, these poet legions, march to timeless anthems. Jim Doss: Anthems from Rimbaud's pen, Verlaine's ears, Baudelaire's behind steer us higher, always starward Jim Doss: Starward through our hellish season we rise on drafts of wordlike illuminations, wings spread. Gary Blankenship: Wings spread across the sky, poets reach for the stars, the moon smiles as loose feathers drift sunward. Zephyr: Sunward- poet's passion perceives no limit to what we can conceive, sets life ablaze. Christopher T. George: Wild ride Orson interviews me -- strange to be interviewed by a dead Hollywood star, wierd! Rosebud! Gary Blankenship: Ablaze, the forest burns - lack of water, arson? Ablaze, my heart burns for your love, our lust. Zephyr: our lust impaled on hearts alight with love, soul mates feel, accept, empower, to be their best. Gary Blankenship: their best might not be good enough to overwhelm our enemies really may be our friends Christopher T. George: One two buckle my shoe three four open the door five six seven eight don't you hate the end? Gary Blankenship: Our friend, Christopher G, has not figured the game - start the next with the last - or he don't care! Christopher T. George: Don't care?!!! I did not know, I was blind ignorant. Now I know the rules I leave you with this Jim Doss: don't care, nary a half- life of don't cares passed by before the steel toothed mind tripped its bear trap Gary Blankenship: bear traps will catch the most unsuspecting, so will not posting rules, leaving Chris caught like a cub Christopher T. George: a cub I may have been, a fella in a pub hung over, so bottoms up, cheers I say Gary Blankenship: I say, old chap, you are a good sport, the finest. If we could meet I would stand you a round. Christopher T. George: a round thank you for that. It is absolutely whizzo of you to stand me to a drink. Nehi? L J Cohen Knee high tall grass tickles a grasshopper. The bees sneeze pollen, buds on bare branches flower. Gary Blankenship: Flour, powdered sugar and cinnamon cover the counters, a grandson baking cookies Christopher T. George: Cookies PC passwords encoded in the blood. It's understood: the camcorder's watching. Gary Blankenship: Watching, waiting, learning, experiencing, teaching - a commercial for Windows or poems? Christopher T. George: Poems convey secret messages written in a language known to few, hidden from sight. Gary Blankenship: from sight, we blinded see; from speech, we the mute speak; from touch, we feel the air and where you were Denis Garrison: You were. We know because your hand-carved lines survive. Poet in, but not of, the dust, sing on! Christopher T. George: Sing on, singer of streams; o singer of mountains; sing on, o singer of heaven, sing on! Denis Garrison: Sing on, sweet golden-throat! Let fly your lilting lines and teach us what the silent heart can't tell. Christopher T. George: can't tell if we're ended or not, some wonderful lines inscribed here, now to edit, publish? Zephyr: Publish- so folk will learn what fun we have for free end anthology - in poets playpen. Gary Blankenship: playpens built for playmates, toys for endless scribbles scattered, time for the kids to fill toybox Christopher T. George: Toybox: vox humana! Expunge the toxins now, let poetry's voice give this out-- where texts are purged, voices silenced, Sing out! Gary Blankenship: Sing out! Let loose the songs of poets. hHumanity's chronicles gives voice countering tyrants. Christopher T. George: Tyrant's boot that smashes innocents in the head, words of false honor, art of lead, protest! Gary Blankenship: Protest? And look behind to see no one follows? Rugged the path protesters take, hard scrabble. Kathy Paupore Scrabble, square letter tiles worked into words. There you found "peace" in the mix on the board, points earned. Gary Blankenship: points earned for how line five fits together with one, something this square too often does not get Christopher T. George: Not ghet- to, not iron bars confine the human spirit, liberty's voice cries out again L J Cohen: Again I tuck you in, check for monsters beneath the bed. These rituals for my mind's ease. Gary Blankenship: Minds ease as we close in on the end, our final sleep natures way to tell us to slow down. Christopher T. George: Slow down, there's no hurry, sniff the petunias and the manure -- life's passing all too fast. Denis Garrison: Too fast for those in love, too slow for those in pain: just so relentless Time measures our lives. Gary Blankenship: Our lives speed round and round until the roses smell like any other and coffee tastes too sweet. Dale McLain: too sweet? Your lips on mine, a confection indeed. Not too anything except gone too soon. Kathy Paupore: Too soon April gives way to May. Snow today mixed with rain. Ash clouds, sun, there - blue sky it's gone. Christopher T. George: It's gone to seed, all hell has broken loose, love's lost in recrimination, distrust of self. Gary Blankenship: "of self" he wrote and smiled - the perfect title for his bio - all twenty years laid out to read. Christopher T. George: To read of self, he wrote about his life, reminisced and recorded; his life will grace your shelf. Beau Blue: your shelf holds mystical runes, thrown haphazardly, revealing an exciting ring of joy Gary Blankenship: of joy, for happiness - before you look to stars, look inward and find the finest of all Christopher T. George: Of all the opening lines! A stunning starter, guaranteed to quiet the crowd, as now. Beau Blue: as now? as then, it's all the same sillinesses clomping thru our literary jungles Christopher T. George: Jungles of jugulars jangling the haggling hags for a literary bijoux goo goo Gary Blankenship: goo goo gooey moon pies and Pepper in August pink crawfish cooked by grandmothers kids crawl Christopher T. George: Kids crawl under August moon, fish bite in Loon Lake, fireflies dance over the meadow, love stirs. Denis Garrison: Love stirs the boiling pot. Lust turns up the heat and pours out fragrantly steaming clouds as bait. Gary Blankenship: as bait she was a beaut, she strolled the avenue always in search of suckers, shills, cheap thrills Christopher T. George: Cheap thrills -- loud, shrill, rose scent, a white gardenia behind her ear, a 38 loaded Gary Blankenship: Loaded to his sideboards, he staggered down the street; he knew who he would meet, pockets empty. Beau Blue: empty pockets promise hungry children nothing but more time on harsh city streets begging Zephyr: begging with haunted eyes, bodies that fade away before they stir or touch the worlds conscience. Denis Garrison: Conscience of the world, speak! Raise your voice from silence! Or were your dreams not troubled while you slept? Gary Blankenship: You slept beneath willows, I captured the sandman among camas lakes, beneath Oak's mistletoe Christopher T. George: Mistletoe! Why should I kiss your lush lips; you offer them so easily to each man, Lilith. Jim Doss: Lilith, where's your Adam gone, to foreign lands filled with foreign women searching for Eden. John Daleiden: Eden, Garden of God, Adam and Eve browsing, before knowledge plagued the human rat race. Denis Garrison: Rat race survivor falls prey to promised release. Working hard in leisure land, he curses. Christopher T. George: "Curses foilèd again!" quipped Basil to Errol as he flung his rapier down and died. Beau Blue: And dyed red, his hair looked ridiculously camp. So much so his wife exploded, "You Beast!" Jim Doss: "You Beast!" What does that mean in the grand scream of things? I howl like a wolf, pursue Beauty with lust. Christopher T. George: "With lust, I trust? I want nothing less, just throw down the gauntlet. I like it like that: blood red!" Beau Blue: blood red fingernails tap on the kitchen table. she fumes in her evening dress, 'he's toast!' Christopher T. George: He's tossed on the ocean's waves, he's lost in the night, he seldom had the sight of land since birth. Beau Blue: since birth, he's been in love with disagreeable women made kneeweak by cute, hung wry eyes Christopher T. George: Wry eyes, sarcastic stares! He walks the catwalk nude; the women reach out for a piece of him. Kathy Paupore: Of him; a difficult begnning, an unsure interim, untold future with no end. Denis Garrison: No end to this cinquain train, this mystery tour. Poets write like drunks drink, because they must! John Daleiden: They must write like the sun must rise when the earth turns-- like the horse must scratch its behind on trees. Christopher T. George: On trees we stretch our shoes to make them fit our feet just as we test words for sense, rhythm, meter. Dale McLain: Meet her? Of course! His muse waits in the shadowed place ready to spoonfeed him new words tonight. Christopher T. George: To knight his incipient thoughts as poems, they meet in a moment of mystery, magic. Jim Doss: Magic is the name that holds the key to Rimbaud's alchemy: red I, blue O, white E-- black dog. Christopher T. George: Magic is the name that holds the key to Rimbaud's alchemy: red I, blue O, white E-- black dog. Gary Blankenship: From him to her a note professing that his love is for another he meet in France - Dear Jane. Christopher T. George: Dear Jane it breaks my heart that I must inform you I've fallen in love with Michelle ma belle. Jim Doss: Ma Bell ain't what it used to be, ain't what it used to be, ain't what it used to Ma Bell Christopher T. George: Ma Bell et telephone sont les mots qui vont très bien ensemble -- so well together ring ring! Beau Blue: ring ring, ring ring, ring ring, and STILL nobody home! I guess I'm out of luck tonight dammit Jim Doss: Dammit Hamlet we need to stop meeting like this. So much love in Denmark who needs fathers. Beau Blue: fathers forewarned us, George not to trust power mad puppeteers with hidden motives. "say oil?" Christopher T. George: "Say Oyle!" blusters Bluto to Olive, "What's Popeye up to eschewing spinach for foie gras?!!!" Beau Blue: foie gras??!!! don't tell me, now, the sailor scarfs that too. no kind of seaman ever eats pate. Zephyr: Pate was covered over by various old wigs one for each day,underneath he's quite bald Denis Garrison: Quite bald though she may be, she's also beautiful. I'm blinded by the glory in her eyes. Denis Garrison: Her eyes are eloquent. She need not speak at all. Let him who has eyes see and hear wisdom. Christopher T. George: Wisedom: the place she's born, down the road from Wisecrack, in Punning Lane, Big Jest House, Rib Tickler. Dale McLain: Tickler- a French delight, but this is too naughty for Wild I'm afraid, so I'll just be quiet. Jim Doss: Tickl'er with a feather, a tongue full of puns, till she involuntary ecstacizes in rhyme. Christopher T. George: In rhyme, we channel words with craft and rhythm in time, recording the truth of the world's madness. John Daleiden: Madness: a rogue's deciet-- concealing agenda-- an aberration to obscure raw truth. Dale McLain: raw truth, tough to swallow. Perhaps a side of lies washed down with smoke and mirrors would taste sweet. Christopher T. George: Tout suit, taste raw defeat, smoked salmon, chutney, lox, keep the lies and excuses to yourself. Dale McLain: your self- righteous picnic might prove a lonely place. Atop that thorny hill you might just choke. Denis Garrison: Just choke back those huge tears, my crocodilian friend. Let this picnic end with us all alive. Christopher T. George: A live eel in your pants, a ferret up your shirt, my best for your birthday, happy returns. John Daleiden: Returns to the sender: no such addess or zone-- don't send me another letter-- I'm gone. Denis Garrison: I'm gone but not forgot-- they remember to look for me night and day, humorless victims! Christopher T. George: Victims are dead but not forgotten, memories live on, the old crimes reenact through time. Dale McLain: Through time and memory runs a long crimson thread sewn through the hearts of those we love always John Daleiden: Always lock doors at night, turn the heat down, lights off, check under the bed for burglers-- then sleep. Christopher T. George: Then sleep perchance to dream, each night we drift away from reality, hoping for release. Kathy Paupore: Release comes with spring growth; buds burst, pods pop. Flowers clutch wind, leaves grasp sky, everything begins. Denis Garrison: Begins the same old dance, new life! Yadda, yadda. What a Spring it would be with no green things! Christopher T. George: Green things invade my dreams: a dream of green beings, Jolly Green Giant and Jolly Green Wife! Zephyr: Green wife's green fingers coax heavy blossom to bough, fruit on the vine that matures as fine wine. Christopher T. George: Fine whine to some, fingers of whisky for others, a cup of forgetfulness, pass the grog. Zephyr: The grog, beer watered down - rumbustion, pirate's currency - rum, often traded at sea. Dale McLain: At sea my heart's map spreads before me, clear and true. I remember my way, at last, to you. Christopher T. George: To you it is a small matter, to me, it's all: how we see things, or we fail to see them. John Daleiden: To you I pledge my troth, undying faithfulness until a more beautiful lass kisses me. Christopher T. George: Kiss me at the crossroads; here the road birfurcates, we must decide which path to take, or part. Dale McLain: Or part? Geeze Chris! It's tough to start a cinq with "or" in fact, I fear it can't be done. Oh, well... John Daleiden: Oh! Well... ...if I had known you were the bold masked thief I would have kissed and told; lethal my love. Christopher T. George: My love is like a red red rose: thorny beauty! Handle with care, cherish with all my strength! Dale McLain: My strength depends on this fragile peace that teeters on the edge of loss and regret, so near. Denis Garrison: My strength for a horse! Wait... Now, that's not right, is it? Am I in the right line? Is this Tuesday? Denis Garrison: So near and yet so close. Wait...that's not right either. I should be in the other line today. Christopher T. George: Today is the day that followed yesterday, that much I am certain of, or think I am! Jim Doss: I am what when how why all baked up in a pie that Humpty Dumpty couldn't piece together. Zephyr: Conjoin makes two not three syllables, will that do? come on Jim, nice cinq, but stick to the rules! Christopher T. George: The rules are made to be broken some might well say also called syllables not all counted Zephyr: Counted pieces Humpty could not put together oh how foolish, silly me,who forgot! Christopher T. George: Forgot? Oh, not forgot! Surely you're remembered in the heart, hallowed sepulchre of love. Dale McLain: Of love I grow weary but of cinqs I do not. They always amuse and amaze I say! Christopher T. George: I say, I say, I say, what do the cinq and lim- erick have in common? Both crack us up! Zephyr: Jus' ups and downs conspire to fire muse and poet wires her head to crack open life's bubbly. Jim Doss: Bubbly heads can't count how many straight or crooked fingers the man in blue holds up, tipsy. Christopher T. George: Tip Sy? Why should I do? What's Sy done in the last hundred years for humanity, for us? Denis Garrison: For us, to rhyme's a crime; no meter either here! The form's the norm; make it work in five lines! Dale McLain: Five lines is just enough for me to have my say. If you believe that, my reader you're not! Christopher T. George: You're not serious? Or maybe you are! Thrashing about in the dark, searching for the key! Zephyr: The key turned in the latch by poet's muse works best kept well oiled, writing off-the-cuff cinquains. Christopher T. George: Cinquains running uphill, puff puff the old steam train: do poets begin to run out of steam? Denis Garrison: Of steam, a surplus, friend! Never met a poet who could not outlast a train - on coffee! John Daleiden: Coffee-- cinquain licquor distilled, cyber essence-- cosmic titilation, soaring comet. Christopher t. George: Co-fee! That is the thing we've to worry about! The docs and the insurers make us sick! Christopher T. George: Come, it is up to us to provide mankind with poetry to arrest our sad decline. Denis Garrison: Decline not, O poets! Write the salvation of the world in burning lines and wise stanzas! Christopher T. George: Stan Sass, worthy poet! Write now in the footsteps of Frost, Whitman, Shakespeare, Shelley! Write well! Denis Garrison: Write well or not at all... well, write on anyway! The line's the thing, the message is just play. Christopher T. George: Just play! After all, it's Friday -- time for poets to let our imaginations sail free! Dale McLain: "sail free"- so read the ad. I knew there'd be a hitch. I'm peeling potatoes. Damn Navy! Christopher T. George: Nay, V, I never said poems will save the world but we can try to give it our best shot. Denis Garrison: Best shot in the contest gets to be the target. Hateful Fate is best tempted by success. Christopher T. George: Success always evades those who try ever hard to entertain their muse -- a harsh mistress. Dale McLain: Mistress of a sultan, or so her sweet dream goes. Reality offers no such delights. Christopher T. George: Delights of the Levant brought to my tent each night! I will no longer hunger for her lips. Christopher T. George: Her lips charm me! And her shining face, her cheekbones, eyelashes, all mesmerize me! Harm me! Gary Blankenship: "Harm me," cried the lovers. "Give us your rejection." (that we may look for another victim.) Christopher T. George: "Victim, Victor? I shan't be your victim, go find another vixen to be one," she snarled. Dale McLain: She snarled and he nipped her as the pearly moon rose. "Is this love or war?" she wondered. Who cares? Gary Blankenship: Who cares whether sailors dive under the oceans to find it empty of oysters and pearls? Christopher T. George: And pearls for eyes, oyster shells for lips, seaweed hair? Metaphors scurry down the beach like crabs. John Daleiden: Like crabs in roiling foam at sea-side we scuttle; when will the hurly-burly end our life? Gary Blankenship: Our life - pastel crayon in a box of charcoal. primary oils drip on the floor, fading. Christopher T. George: Fading, as life's last hold releases its grip, we count the ways that love entertained us so. Dale McLain: Us- so incredible! We cinq to high heaven and ride the rails to the town of Verbose! Gary Blankenship: Verbose as Congressmen hustling votes at the fair, silent as frozen lava flows, as snow. -END- Honorable Mention Sandhill Seaandbell and the sand hill on which I sit has seen this valley form and reform a thousand years or so, its nothing to the sand during which time I was married, bore children, divorced the sand hill thinks nothing of this for this, in its long dream, was only a sage or two, a flock of crows passing the midnight clouds spun in the soft silver of time yet for me, it was everything. The sand, wisely, says nothing knowing there was nowhere else for us to go, nothing to do but simply to be. 2. Mountain From here I see the mountain creviced, the tears of a million rains washed down its skull. Marriages are like this, cisterns where souls are buried. The tears wash down certain passages and form gullies, places where there are hard feelings or impossible cliffs. They resist. Eventually there is a skeleton, dead bones bared by that which once was, formed by what could never be. 3. Dreams The houses bite the hill, hordes of small stucco fleas. The roofs are papered with money but inside they are nothing. Hard shells, so empty. Inside they wage battle. I had one once, too, and also I fought thinking there was something to be won or lost. But it was all just a dream, bitten by reality, cased in stucco, unable to move. 4. Speaking It's easy for me to speak from the top of the present mountain, to form opinions about the life we made strewn with babies stones, money, and the relifious belief upon which the tablatures of our morals were written now buried under the mud. Its easy for me to say, less easy to believe. 5. Dreams and the soft footing of dreams shifted in the day, the wind changed shape and grew bright roots or sometimes thorns left carelessly on the hill, tangled, like crosses that scratch the passing clouds. 6. The End Of such were the children, formless yolk, of such were the cars rusted into the autumn hills. of such were the papers we signed, those which had nothing to say, only finality and tears to wash down the canyons and make new ribs on which others will build. Of such were all of these. |
