MM's IBPC Selections for September Competition, No Poll Required Options

[Cleo_Serapis]

This is a reposting from the August nominations. John graciously offered to defer his poem to the September competition.

Best of luck, John!
~Cleo


Hi Lori and All,

I would like to nominate Arnie's excellent poem 'Tunnel Vision' for August IBPC. His striking style and personal rhyme scheme, along with up-to-date hyphenating and line breaks, make it a highly worhty piece, in my opinion.

(I'm nominating it now, even tho' I intend to make one or two crits, because I'm always in a rush and I don't want this piece to slip by unnoticed)


Hugs, Syl***



Tunnel Vision by John Macleod


Bobbing heads, eccentric,
restive rustling feet
and scintillating colours
as people come and go.
For most who walk are strangers
and if friends do-chance to meet,
it’s only scant acknowledgement
to— so and so--.

The dank darkened tunnel
the rumble, the pound,
and syncopating rattle
from archway to the hall.
With clear glass eyes the newborn
hurtles from the womb unbound,
and with red-hot brakes a’ screeching,
welcomes one and all.

Animated puppet dolls,
sweat filled summer days,
and suffocating carriages
where luck fills empty seats.
The unfriendly— unnoticed—
stand in crowds of cramped malaise,
their bodies tired and worn from the city
and the streets.

Wheels, slip metal brake shoes,
slowly turn on rail
as stimulated motors breathe
out babbled blatherskite.
Untethered, the silver train
moves on down the chequered trail
to vanish, as a ghost, with the
spirits of the night.

[Cleo_Serapis]

We've received the go ahead to resubmit any older (prior judge's timeframes from original submissions) poems as we wish. I would like to send in Snow's poem SADness for September's IBPC. As Sylvia put it in her original nomination, "It's a deftly handled and beautifully worded piece for this fairly common winter condition. I like the way Snow has begun the poem with the swallows congregating for their flight to Africa's sunny climes, and the envy it implies. Then the poem ends with the return of swallows building their nests, and happiness jolting the affected person out of her gloomy couch."

SADness by Eira Needham


Tinged with melancholy,
chilled September air
tumbles with
desiccating foliage.
Sun weakly embraces blues
and sadness settles
into a crumpled carpet.

Restless swallows congregate,
trilling on telegraph wires.
I watch them flock
to sun baked Africa;
long wings undulate
until they dot the horizon.
Sucked into their void,
I yearn for their return.

Decreased daylight spills
into long sombre nights:
a body clock disturbance.
I slouch through stark winter
transformed into a couch potato,
pigging out on starchy foods.
Hedgehogs hibernate beneath
last season’s wrinkled sheets,
while I intermittently snooze
shrouded by a stratus duvet.

Springtime brings illumination
winking through dense woods.
I’m lifted, listening to swallows
twitter in the reeds ...…
and I sing.

I'm cosseted in sun’s warm shawl,
a bud ready to bloom.

This post has been edited by Cleo_Serapis: Aug 26 09, 05:42

Reason for edit: Revised version posted

[Cleo_Serapis]

We've received the go ahead to resubmit any older (prior judge's timeframes from original submissions) poems as we wish. I would like to send in Sylvia's poem, Lightning Bolt by Psyche. In Snow's original nomination, she wrote: "I have chosen it for it's vivid descriptions and the realisation that this devastation might have been caused by one thing -- a cigarette butt!
Well written Syl."


Lightning Bolt by Sylvia Maclagan

In a flash,
voracious walls
of weaving flames
swallow coniferous forests.

Fireballs arching
over brooks and waterfalls
ignite woodsheds, barns, homes.
Goats agonize
in russet glades,
their coats burning bright
under orange heights.

Darting flares
trigger new conflagrations,
whistling through
brittle undergrowth
cowed by enduring drought.

Ravens swoop
over towers of smoke,
gauging nature’s insatiable guts.

Hydroplanes hover
above the holocaust,
resembling paper projectiles
flung by fools.

Midget mortals
defying the inferno
retreat from their trenches.
Goliath gobbles
buttress and bulwark,
sandbanks and hoses,
bolts over black belted roads,
ultimately succumbing to Patagonia's
chain of mountain lakes.

A colossus has drowned
but will be reborn
in arcane arcs
over time’s infinite flow.

Moon sheds serpentine rays
on leagues of smoldering Andean
slopes and valleys.

A child cries.
Its mother prostrates herself
on warm cinders of her home.

I wander in frenzied silence
as tears sear my heart,
a bulk of pungent pine cones
coddled in my hapless hands.

A bolt of lightning...
or a tossed cigarette butt?

By Psyche

© Sylvia Maclagan, Buenos Aires, Argentina, 2009.

This post has been edited by Cleo_Serapis: Aug 31 09, 17:58

Reason for edit: Revised version posted

[Cleo_Serapis]

GOOD LUCK!