Poetic Genius Society - PGS Contest Winners

The poor eternal cluster
of shattered dreams repressed
give way to the mournful sinner
who serves its piteous guest.

Denying the power of freedom,
denying the power within,
denying the will of the Master,
staying trapped in the wheel of her sin.

Dreaming of glorious freedom
and joyful familial displays,
she beats the dream down with her pity,
enforcing her defeating ways.

Like a dog at the bid of a master,
enacting the habit so well,
she takes the key to her prison,
locking the door to her very own cell.

Blinded by needs of affection,
her guide is only her will.
That will beaten down by affliction,
has left her life spinning but still.

Her cell has no walls to keep her,
but she sees them solid and firm.
Even her sleep has turned its back,
leaving her at night to toss and squirm.

As she ages in this prison,
her hopeful outlook fades.
Speaking only what seems real,
her countenance cascades.

When light shines through a crack,
she says it's only a dream.
Fixing the crack with her pity,
she covers and smoothes the seam.

She says no light can shine here.
No hope will enter through;
by not allowing it to happen,
she's making it come true.

The second day of equal measure
passed quite nondescript,
although a subtle change was in the air.
The angle of our golden treasure
dipped as terra flipped,
and hints of urgency were everywhere.

I stood beneath inviting globes
of crunchy-tart delight
where yesterday the blossom lured the bee-
behind those vibrant autumn robes
awaits the slip of night,
which all too soon will come to cover me.

I'm up to my neck in identical snowflakes and
My alarm clock got caught in a spiderweb this morning.
In the plaza by the capitol
Two men dressed like Dostoevskian Santa Clauses
Recite prime numbers, racing. The winner recieves
A vacation to that raised seabed
Where the freemasons picnic and yawn.
There's a ten year-old splitting with glee
Because she can pronounce Biblical words correctly:
"Gethsemane! Canaan! Theophilus! Upharsin!"
I politely but firmly turn down her volume.
She climbs the second-nearest tree
And mimics a billboard passive-aggressively.
I hear hot robots cry for evening meals.
QUEE! QUEE! QUEE!
Their alarms boil and rust.
QUEE! QUEE!
Piping hot robots, small and honest,
Meditate on the smooth plastic faces
Thirty stories above.
quee.quee.quee. hot robots purr like fans,
Like a pocketful of crickets.
Now the air tastes like a page of Ezekiel
And my ears are stuck.
All I can hear are the hockey scores you recited to me
Last night
When the radios had been kidnapped by static and
We were tired of text-messaging math equations to
Each other.
Not enough geniuses wear hats.

there's a solid
weariness
in my bones
an emptiness that
won't leave me
alone as i consider
choices i have made
in this
my life's far too
noisy parade

is a man all
he is made out to be
and if so
just who
must do the making
is a tear
drawn from some
remembered hurt
easily erased
as it draws its line
down across
his torn masculinity
drawing his yesterdays
to a breaking
can it be
covered up
with a happy art
or drunk to
nothingness
with any wine

We walked the new spring garden,
all its voices singing greenly,
scented light among the trees.
Tender beds appeared before us
and we reached out for each other
to elaborate the beauty
that the greening spring enflamed.

We walked the summer garden
underneath a fervid brilliance
that illumined imperfection,
boiling tender age away.
Voices, quavering forlornly,
sang laments of loss and longing
in the light among the trees.

We walked the autumn garden,
all its voices singing keenly,
golden light among the trees.
Underneath the flaming branches
we reached softly for each other
and the shadow that is winter
passed from us for all our days

Sitting in my weathered chair,
sheltered in the warming sun
on my gray, half-shaded porch,
I look into the tideland.

The sea has quieted today.
A storm has passed,
thoughtless turmoil has become
the soft stir of resignation.
At land's end, creatures babble
over coveted vanities,
their cries borne on unseen currents.
This is my mermaid's song.
It haunts me almost everywhere,
though I don't travel anymore.
I live here now, beside this great indifference
whose boundary is grasping waves.

The grass is gilded with October
and the wind has brought a chill
to my shadowed sleeping porch.
My ancient chair creaks softly
as I pull my sweater closer,
though the sun still brings some warmth.

At times, with care, I walk the shore,
watchful of mindless treachery.
When I least expect it
a rising sea might touch me with its numbing fingers
becoming wretched company.

The shade has reached my chair again.
I will move my old gray friend
back into the sunlight
and its warmth.

I am Acquainted with the Fall

I am one acquainted
with the language
of fall,
I transcribe
as
it shouts
a poem
from each
dogwood berry,
as Cicadas
scream
loud nights.

I am one acquainted
with the music of fall,
I listen
as
it sings
complicated songs
from trees,
each leaf
a colored note
on twig
staffs.

I am one acquainted
with the movement
of fall,
I dance
as
its sacramental wine
reddens
each bush,
earth's gears
click
as wheel of seasons
turns a notch.

Come, dance merrily in the softly forgiving sunshine,
sense the mildly kissing zephyr on young, unblemished cheek,
driving intoxicating sweetness into remotest soul,
a washing tide of rising emotion, sensitizing bitterly, then
desensitizing again,
with heartening tenderness flowing warmly to bone.

Come luxuriate and revel, brood and dwell on,
drink in the richest essences of elaborate poetic flair,
immerse unappeased soul in finest literary craft,
feast on rhetoric, devour tangy rhyme,
chew heavily on authentic linguistic fare,
savour the exquisitely piquant blends of purest, wholesome delight,
oh, muster all invigorated energies,
tame rampant spirit and consume with truculent voracity,
nourish deepest soul, feed to it the purest essences of romantic stanza,
taste the absorbing fulfilment,
the searing emotion, oh, such vibrant arousal,
now, get severely drawn into this grippingly edifying realm,
tread the path of poetic composition, and reach out to soul.

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Life is never ending, it is always, life has no escape, and not even the gaps between lifetimes can one be free. However, life is perfect.

Life is more precise than exact, more defined than it is real; its machine like design transcends power both spiritual and physical, It is furnace forever perfect, life is perfect.

Life is like a chessboard, the pawns, which roam its angelic surface, act as within a steady glimpse, and subtle movement from the beholders well executed move.

Life itself is bewildered by how it came to be, though life seemingly has many shapes and sizes, the truth is to be heard, life is everything, it is every imaginable shape, size and colour, constant euphoria mingles within its beauty. However, life is perfect.

Life is like a bio-sphere, life trapped in life and rounded off to create a peaceful prison. Life is like all our senses combined, no one to record has thought of it the way I have. Where others run, I stand my ground, I want to grasp its proverbial brilliance within my hands, know it better than one ever thought possible.

Bitter but sweet, life is like a matrix. We are the pips, if life were truly good to us it would show us a life from outside the apple....the real life. If life were truly good to us it would free us, give us emancipation. Only then would life really and truly be perfect.

Life is the pen, which we forge our own destinies with. We are as much in tune with life, as life is with us. We are equals.

Life is scarred, as the inevitable breakthrough of life's awesome barrier draws near, one can only laugh a polysyllabic tune. Life is scarred by the fact that we now know too much, and that we no longer need its eyes gazing upon us 24/7.

Life will sleep, birds will turp, and people will smile, for we all agree that the way of like in now overwhelmingly true, and freedom is anything but new. Everyone will stand high and marvel at life's true ingenious. We will forget the old life, move on, read and re-read this poem; the start of a new beginning is here. The life of life is perfect, this poem is perfect, and life is perfect......I just want too know the TRUTH!

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Lifting the bottle higher, praying
draining the last few drops, Amen.
Singing of a Chevy and a levee
and someone crying, leaving Eden once again.

Wiper blades flicking, clicking
snapshots of my journey, slipping by.
The windows reflect a lunatic gripping
the steering wheel, only interrupted by a sigh.

The windshield fogs, I wipe
leaving a handprint view to reality.
And once again hanging within my sight
that dismal winter scene of another moonless night.

I'm reminiscing about the future
and checking the mirror for the past. The last
time I was here, I thought I had found the cure.
But, here I am again at this purely neurotic task.

The static on the radio slips
in a surrealistic shading, to this cold
and indifferent night. The inner darkness grips
and holds, I've almost given up the fight tonight.

Trying to find my way,
by scouting for the bread crumbs, left behind.
Maybe I'll see the path to happiness someday
but resignation is all I expect to find.

I'm taking a couple of different
antidepressants, now. A third resides
in my dresser drawer. A back up supplement
to a supply-side suicide, I'm trying to ignore.

I went too far from home again,
not considering I would have to travel
the same road back to where it began,
when the mind started to unravel.

People have offered a road map.
A black book with a gold embellished cross.
Kind of life's 'triple A' to show the way,
but already my soul has sold at a bargain basement cost.

Home someday, someday soon I'll pay the toll
Before God sees, I must remove the stains from my soul.
Vinegar and soda may work, nah it would just be wasted.
Ah, but for now so much debauchery left to taste.

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My poor guitar- a string has snapped
And now has five instead of six;
I cannot play a decent tune
Without some fancy set of tricks.
My poor guitar- it is deformed
By virtue of this missing part
I play it now this crippled thing
And seek to make a greater art;
I run my fingers on its strings
And think of sad and drastic stuff
Of souls which fell into despair
Angelic minds with shattered wings:
I aim my malformed formed art
An arrow through the human heart

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JULY - DECEMBER 2001

First Place: The Doormat to the Wolf in Shepherd's Clothing - by Melinda Frye (Response to Christopher Marlowe's poem, "The Passionate Shepherd to His Love")

I live with you, I am your love
From shout to push and push to shove
A trailer park as grove and field
It's May- who knows what June may yield

And we will sleep on bed of stone
And I shall spend each night alone
You have your pride, and I, the wall
You can't define a madrigal

I wear this choking wedding band
This badge of courage pricks my hand
Just flocks of sheep our tempers be
The weary shepherds wish to flee

No slippers have we for the cold
No rose bouquets for me to hold
Blank stares are all you have to give
I compromise my will to live

No pleasures ever proven here
Delights replaced with swollen fear
To live with you and be your love-
Who knows what I was thinking of

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I try to bend my mind a bit
And snap off at the seems;
I try to live my life a bit
And snap off at the dreams.

I try to recollect the past
And to the future drift
I try to make here and now last
And stumble on the rift.

I try to set it straight with words
But make it worse with those;
I try to fly like morning birds
But trip over my toes.

I try to clear the air with all
And end up making fumes;
I try to break down every wall
And end up building tombs.

With all I try and try to do,
I rarely meet my goal,
But when I speak my love for you,
I do it with my soul.

And when I put my soul behind
The force of my attempt,
And forget the words of my mind,
Those mutt'rings so unkempt,

'T is only then that I succeed
At what I wish to say;
For you have made my soul complete
In all this hectic fray.

So if I stumble on life's path
Think me not awkward, dear;
I do not fumble to find breath
When you are standing near.

Just look beyond my tripping feet
And you will hear a song;
Just listen to my soul's true mete,
It shall not do you wrong.

When my mistakes come flying fast,
Ignore those if you can;
And feel the heat of my heart's blast,
Though I am a flawed man.

And if beyond my many flaws
You manage to espy,
You will grasp the whole Grand Because
And never wonder why.

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amitrptaline induced happiness was great for a while,
buspar was added after a panic attack. Doctor switched to
celexa a newer antidepressent inducing maniaso
depakote was added to slow racing thoughts,
effoxor, that kicked neurotransmitter ass better than
floxetine more effective in clinical trials than
gabapentin, unable to stop the laughing voice like
haldol, but when I crashed again doc added
imprimine who I slept well especially with the
klonopin, but depression kicks in, so take some
janimine but it didn't cure obsessions like
luvox. Then the voices returned so the doc added
mellaril somewhat more sedating than
navane, but not as much as the
olanzapine, after a massive weight gain, I changed to
paxil and then I started biting my nails so up goes the
quazapan, then I couldn’t concentrate so time for
ritalin combined with a nice dose
serzone that didn’t help insomnia,so switched to
trazadone causing so much somnolence i slept through
viagra induced orgasms then the doc
valium oh there’s no winning not even with
wellbutrin it helped stop the smokes, but then needed
xanax. Now distraught, can’t get an orgasm. Doc said try
yohumbine, oh seratonin needed another kick. So try some
zoloft and go to bed.

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This poem of the first part
I shall call him Ed-
This poem of the second
I call Howard:
So though some things they say
Are better left half-said,
Here I think our three-friends towered
Above "impassive" endless multitudes
Who wait on line for all the platitudes?
If poems are just mere intelligence
Then my Commodore was sorta brilliant
In some ways, my Shakespeare dense
Though neither quite as great as Ed or Howard
For both of these are dead, and not my friends.

You showed your cards to fellows
Who do not know you well
They guess your nature, somewhat half-inspired-
For some of us will take a knife to you
And others say, well man you're hired-
I'm sure what's bugging me is bugging you
Was I a jerk? Sometimes us all-
You're scared of many words I spew
I often fear your all too few
And though we both now feel inspired:
What art and science are
However true, mere humans do:
We made loud major threats and fell at ease:
Most times such things occur when we're just
tired...

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PGS CONTEST WINNERS