MM's IBPC Selections for May Competition Options

[Cleo_Serapis]

Hi all,

The following poems have been selected to go to the IBPC this month, with two additional poems to be sent along next month (ohsteve's A Gray Area and Larry's A Seed).

Best of luck Snow, Sylvia and Leo!

~Cleo

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 … I sing.

Wrapped in sun’s warm shawl
I’m cosseted -- a bud ready to bloom.

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 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 succumbs to Patagonian
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 peregrinate 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?

Movement by Moonlight by Leo Wyatt


The harvest mouse,
fearing the first bite
of Autumn frosts,
searches
fruitlessly.
Fleet - she lurches, shrivel boned,
between the shaven stalks of wheat.
Seeking out the
final gleanings,
sharp, beneath her hurrying
feet.

With luminous eyes,
tail twitching,mute,
the barn-yard cat -
Pouncing!
Her gaping
jaws announcing her intent.
Bright fatal flash of un-sheathed claws.
She skyward leaps,
feints in the air,
but mouse-less, lands with empty
paws.

On starlight dusted
wings, the Snowy Owl
blinks slowly - once.
Then glides
noiselessly.
Unseen - she slides, talons poised,
her amber eyes keen, unblinking,
Sharp focused on
one quaking mouse.
She downward stoops – her killing -
clean.

[Psyche]

Hi there!

Thanks so much!

I've just changed the title of the my poem to "LIGHTNING BOLT...", as well as tweaked the finale. Snow made a good point about 'title & ending', so I've come up with this. Any objections? When you click on the title in my IBPC thread, you'll think it's the wrong poem...LOL....

Still time to backtrack...or go forward with some other suggestions.

Only have about 24 hours to switch again!

Hugs, Syl***

[Cleo_Serapis]

Thanks Syl - I've updated with your revisions.

Will try and look at it tonight...