Poetry competition CLOSED 22nd August 2023 2:51pm
WINNER
Anonymous
rosette
RUNNERS-UP: AspergerPoet56 and adagio

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Your take on the theme of melancholy

robert43041
Viking
Tyrant of Words
Canada 43awards
Joined 30th July 2020
Forum Posts: 918

Poetry Contest

Melancholy. The theme is wide in implications. Tell me.
Poems up to 50 lines preferred.

robert43041
Viking
Tyrant of Words
Canada 43awards
Joined 30th July 2020
Forum Posts: 918

Melancholy

A very dark and gloomy day  
Boring, yes, langweilig  
As I sit by the window  
So bored, suffering from  
The total tedium vitaie of Seneca  
Hesse and Wilde  
 
So bored, trying to count the number of raindrops  
But are they tears of a greek goddess  
 
Or the last drops of blood  
Leaving a tired body?
Written by robert43041 (Viking)
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AspergerPoet56
Tyrant of Words
Scotland 33awards
Joined 4th Dec 2018
Forum Posts: 1893

(I Pick) Scabs

I pick scabs
Watching the wound bleed
Tormenting myself
More ruthlessly
Than any other
Could hope to do
In their wildest
Darkest imaginings

Peeling broken skin
As if inviting pain
Like hurt is my breath
That my mind
Deserves nothing else
I let the monster
Of my own choosing
Dwell coiled around my heart

Let’s say it
Like it is
I fear life more
Than any death could
So in the wilderness
I leave my soul
To decay
Blow away
Written by AspergerPoet56
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Jordan
D.O.C.
Thought Provoker
United States 13awards
Joined 4th May 2022
Forum Posts: 245

The Melancholy Meme of "Me!  Me!  Me!"

"The hopeless romantic endlessly experiences a deep, heartfelt sympathy  
for his own pain."
-- the mainstay of melancholy
 
*
 
Its glimpse entails the same old lardy lies,
the same old oily verse full scrawled by rote,
the same old soppy heart of sloppy sighs,
the same old plainsong on the same blah note --
Then Melancholy scurries from the pane
to greedier yet grow beyond the rain.
 
*
 
a dedication of Respect
for
the occasional Pain of countless feeling beings yet presently  
dropping dead like flies --
yet presently dropping dead to boot
 
a revolving helios rhyme menippean satire on
Romanticism's mania for melancholy
 
august, 2023 -- 'tis now the very sad-boi time of night,
with sad-girl hours cried by candlelight
Written by Jordan (D.O.C.)
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poet Anonymous

<< post removed >>
WillowsWhimsies
Dangerous Mind
United States 19awards
Joined 8th Mar 2016
Forum Posts: 293

eternal parting

 

daylight teases around the corners
tentative & noncommittal
golden-hued highlights trace fingers
over every shadowed surface
as mist reluctantly settles
silently resting upon dew-kissed ground
palms pressed to fogging pane
random glimmers hold my seeking gaze
as branches sway to nature's beat
lifting & falling with the breeze
such music is beyond divine
only heard by haunted ears
like mine
hymnal open in ancient trees
whispering song of dancing leaves
directing eyes to dusky skies
where sparkling stars slowly fade
as Night gently greets her lover Day
and I bear witness
to their bittersweet parting
small wonder beloved Moon remains so late
Sun rising slowly in delay
but for these few moments
their time is brief
thus morning rises melancholy



Copyright @ Willow. All rights reserved
Written by WillowsWhimsies
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Rew
Fire of Insight
England 15awards
Joined 30th Sep 2022
Forum Posts: 535

wallyroo92
Tyrant of Words
United States 151awards
Joined 11th July 2012
Forum Posts: 1843

A Romanticized Past

 
There is an ecstasy in the grief of yesterday’s fractured delights
As if longing to relive the nearly forgotten downtrodden pain
The realistic becomes a romanticized past fully idealized
Wrapped up in a sweet torture of both dignity and shame
 
I put the needle down as the vinyl spins round and round
Tones and notes rock the soul but soften this old heart of stone
A diversity of emotions reconvene in a magnificent discord
Tugging at the strings of time and memory, of flesh and bone
 
It’s a sweet reminder of the ups and downs, joys and burdens  
The vulnerable stages and unstable phases of battles fought
The losses, the heartaches, everything that makes us human
The lessons taught to us by life, whether we liked them or not
 
The older I get the more I remember wistfully, emphatically
About the path taken, about who I’ve become in this journey
Hoping I’ve grown from yesterday’s sorrow and through to tomorrow
Because that’s what melancholy and beautiful sadness means to me  
Written by wallyroo92
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Razzerleaf
Fire of Insight
United Kingdom 27awards
Joined 15th Sep 2019
Forum Posts: 525

Golden Pockets

Standing alone in my old house, residents carried away by cancer, yet still their presence remains in each coat of paint and flowerbed, all now partly concealed by my much needed indifference. The home is bare, stripped back to its shell, except for the ghosts of old furniture that appear, just for a second, as I enter each room.
 
I’m supposed to feel sad, it's just me and my brother now. We’ll split the money and never speak again but that doesn’t bring sadness. I stare out over aged gardens and contemplate my loss. Many times I have wept with my own forced memories, the self-torture that brings tears for company, but that is not why I want to shout. Losing family is painful, but a severed link to childhood is barren by comparison and I fear one will compound the other; such a loss makes me tremble inside.
I move on, a giant looking into shrunken bedrooms and gloomy hallways; too many tiny details fill my eyes, viewed like shards of glass from a broken vase, which I'm trying to reassemble. Each piece is an image: places I once played games, a soundbite from a past conversation, the odours of wet dog and washing days or doors opened and slammed shut. The glass cuts at my chest making it hard to breathe.
 
I place my hand on the wall to check for a heartbeat. Can it be that traces of lost childhood are captured in the fabric of a room, dwell in wooden handles of old tools or crayon scribblings trapped behind wallpaper? Can it be that if we close our eyes and breathe in the essence of childhood haunts then chemistry alone can unlock memories once key-less and forgotten? And in doing so can you retrieve something so precious it can twist your body, crumple your face and turn sobs into shouts. I’m shouting now as I slide down the wall; I felt it beat before pulling away.
 
Such places can be found in most of our footsteps and if you know how to look they can almost be touched. But my other places do not compare to this home, I could linger here for an eternity, drifting as a child, growing on thought and melancholy, surviving on smiles and laughter unlocked from memories.
 
I cannot linger, the house is sold to the highest bidder. I have offered up my most prized possession, my touch-stone, my portal, for a pocket full of gold. Now when I need to look, how can I return to these places that hold me in their essence, that tell my story? Who now will listen to the beating fabric of my old home?
Written by Razzerleaf
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Rew
Fire of Insight
England 15awards
Joined 30th Sep 2022
Forum Posts: 535

This Be The Verse.

We lived our lives in silent ways
a silence of some olden ways,
where only work was allowed noise
but silence from my small voice.

Creaking floorboards, rattle of latch,
a distant dog bark these would catch,
and emphasize my silent room
faint echoes of life's distant boom...

The silence of my father still
reflecting on life's iller will,
my mother too her damaged past,
a damage that will last, did last.

And I, here, on this busy road
busy traffic, with life's great load,
alone recall that silent time,
a silence that will end with mine.
Written by Rew
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luddep
Lost Thinker
Joined 1st Feb 2023
Forum Posts: 13

Happiness

Teach me to see
and only see
How love exists
Everywhere

Open my mouth,
wade in my pulse
And teach me to sing
Everything

Teach me to dive,
into her eyes
And keep on swimming
To the core of her light

Repeat the human song,
Sing “There’s a whale in me”

Teach me to be
A juniper tree
To live and die
Peacefully
Written by luddep
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javalini
Fire of Insight
United States 17awards
Joined 4th Apr 2019
Forum Posts: 213

adagio
Tyrant of Words
United States 5awards
Joined 15th Jan 2019
Forum Posts: 574

Is this the way to San Jose...

Is this the way to San Jose...
really?
There are no gardens of stones
without sounds or bones
or hoarders that seek

Rhinestones and wrinkle-free
memories of Jack in the box
holding on to the handles
screaming...
"I lost my way  to San Jose."

But my ticket was punched
in Tucumcari buy a runaway taco
beating a dead horse  

Casting a spell over troubled quarters
up to my ass in a rundown casket
waiting on sundown connecting dots  
listening to, "Chitty-Chitty-Bang-Bang"    

Is this the way to San Jose...
really?
Written by adagio
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Grace
IDryad
Tyrant of Words
124awards
Joined 25th Aug 2011
Forum Posts: 16793

A Bout of Melancholy

 There is a vague timeline
In this earthly transition
looking at the ticking clock
counting the seconds
Am I that afraid of the darkness
Of an unknown beyond
Well, nothing promised nothing gained

I look into the mirror
Where beauty once resided
A thing of beauty is a joy forever.
they say but no, not this decline
forever is just a word
Nobody have returned and told
where forever resides

So do I wait for death
Or expect the unexpected
Things happen for a reason
So they say…
but not aging pain and demise
or is it?
I refuse to seep in melancholy

So let me think positively
A good beginning
makes a good ending
may not apply to me
the beginning was terrible
the same ending…
o help me Lord!

Better to have loved and lost,
than never to have loved at all
that’s positive
lost my love to lost love
His not mine
She returned…..
Positive indeed.

I give up
Tick Tock
I’m counting
Definitely not sheep.
Written by Grace (IDryad)
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crimsin
Unveiling
Tyrant of Words
United States 124awards
Joined 25th Jan 2011
Forum Posts: 2648

melancholy's melancholy

 
in my morose mood I capture honesty
in darkened tones, create
it is with pure unadulterated hurt I coax the truth

in my malaise I am real
the lies drop away and you meet my sadness
sorrow comes forward and embraces my soul

it is melancholy who knows me
in my solemn thoughts I am well known
neediness in mortal love
I am shy to admit so I do without it
it hurts to feel anything so powerful
but the reality is there none the less

I conquer my ghosts
just to have the dead rise again
winsome loneliness presents itself
I can't simply usher it away

it is an utter disenchantment with life
looking for fascination and being denied
in my hollow places empty
reaching for the light among shadows

condemnation for the damned



Written by crimsin (Unveiling)
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