Competition Ends 8th October 2024 3:21pm
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Reworking Plath: a tribute

Everavalon
Fire of Insight
Canada 4awards
Joined 19th Dec 2022
Forum Posts: 72

Poetry Contest

Choose a poem written by Sylvia Plath and rework the poem in your own words using the format of the poem.
Include the poem you are basing your work on in the authors notes. I will choose the winner after 2 weeks

As an example, this poem is based on Two lovers and a beachcomber by the real sea:

The static of the hull

Bold and primal, the rumination
Simmering amidst a peerless mask;
scarlet dissections are hoarded up; in the style of mire
poaching an absent tone.

Sensations that wind the tirade of fermentation
strangles my pride’s crimson sheath
acquainting its sting like a wasp
to evanescence
Into the static of the hull.

We are fraught with what once was; with whom we are
rewriting all evaluations
between the hiccup of wild and tether:
Sheer veils mixed with sheer notions

The inclined wanderer dallies along the residuals
of Neanderthal schism
Browsing textured sectors with an iron fist
pounding through the crust of captive wails.

No soft landings on the pulpit of measured will
among us, our thoughts but musings of jilt and jade
leeching wisdom from the crest of its peak;
Fragments of madness is what we are.

blood will run dry; in the silted bed
hushing the ascent of reset;
A pearled lamb thrives in the absent womb
We are what we are

This change seemed suitable, though sullenness attended as its friend

Rew
Fire of Insight
England 15awards
Joined 30th Sep 2022
Forum Posts: 543

Away...

 
My chatty Ouija board just notes, " away "  
(I think it's developing a sneering tone)  
and where you have gone it just will not say,  
  
Its planchette just jabbers jargon all day  
emptier than your phone's jolly ring-tones  
and where you have gone they, just will not say,  
 
Though its not pointed to ' goodbye ' today    
but just stays mute as the graveyard's jaw bones  
my chatty Ouija board just notes " away. "  
  
Its cheap card board just got all worn and frayed  
as I've raced frantic round its spelling zone
my chatty Ouija board just notes  " away "  
  
Did it take vows it's compelled to obey  
(does  it approve I am left all alone?)  
cos where you have gone it just will not say,  
  
Perhaps a telegram will come today    
Or a dozen paper roses you've grown,
My chatty Ouija board just notes " away "  
And where you have gone it just will not say...  
 


Written by Rew
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Everavalon
Fire of Insight
Canada 4awards
Joined 19th Dec 2022
Forum Posts: 72

This is wonderful. Thanks for entering Rew

PAR
PAULO ACACIO RAMOS
Fire of Insight
Portugal 18awards
Joined 26th May 2022
Forum Posts: 270

Sorry!

Everavalon
Fire of Insight
Canada 4awards
Joined 19th Dec 2022
Forum Posts: 72

Great entry Par, however the poems need to be in your own words

ThePalestRider
Thought Provoker
United States 3awards
Joined 14th Sep 2018
Forum Posts: 25

"Abyssal Treading"

This is the land where flames crawl slow
Where shadows breed, and demons sow
The air is thick, a weight, a pain
No light escapes this black domain

Each scream is trapped within the smoke
A fractured voice, a silent choke
The ground is ash, the sky is blind
The soul is lost, the heart confined

No stars to guide, no moon to see
Just endless dark, eternally
The heat, a breath that burns the core
And yet the cold consumes you more

You walk, though nowhere leads ahead
The living path, a realm of dead
In endless loop, you spin, you fall
For here, there is no end at all

Reworked from The Moon and the Yew Tree

mel44
Fire of Insight
United Kingdom 11awards
Joined 3rd Mar 2017
Forum Posts: 329

Out of Ash

I do so tire
of the revival
no taste for the elixir

Unaware of what it is
that underwhelms
knowing not what is right

Numb, uninspired
without feature
remove the mask you place

Take leave of me
my flesh to hide
off to the cellar

Bearing no peace
I call for you not
to breathe me to life

No honour do you gift me
attempting to control
actions for me alone

All this is me
in the mirror
not for you to imagine

Not for amusement
or your God complex
nor a doll to fix

no painting am I
that needs perfecting
put your oils aside

Archaic solutions
be gone with my hell
do not begrudge

I pay my price
in sombre misery
upon each return

Judge not my scars
preferred over living
and over I shall go

Unbind my hope
not failures
but resurrections

I do not exist
in an earthly manner
leave me to God

Inspired by Lady Lazarus - Sylvia Plath
Written by mel44
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Everavalon
Fire of Insight
Canada 4awards
Joined 19th Dec 2022
Forum Posts: 72

Great entries everyone. Just a reminder that this isn’t a blackout competition. Poems are to be in your own words.

Ahavati
Tams
Tyrant of Words
United States 121awards
Joined 11th Apr 2015
Forum Posts: 16236

Blood jet is poetry: after Plath

And here you come, with a cup of tea      
Wreathed in Steam.      
The blood jet is poetry,    
There is no stopping it.     

~ Plath    
      
Your poems: I feel like I enter a forest      
of toothpick trees, a rigid summer      
where shadows fossilize  
the lungs of poetry asthmatic⁠—      
wheezing air does not absorb;      
but, there is a silence here⁠—    
I do not feel alone.    
      
I seek artifacts, pooled      
in the sweating hollow of your verse    
I read and read and read    
while their prison'd orange contrasts    
the etiquette of embroidered lace⁠—  
tablecloths, crumpets and tea  
   
white-gloved pinkies  
attempting to mediate  
nervous chatter of saucers and cups      
over the infidelity of an oath⁠—    
over the drought of belief  
and drying roots of a rose bush    
      
'There is no stopping it' ⁠—  
blatantly excused ignorance  
      
I mind my manners out of respect:    
right foot over left, intentions    
shaded by a wide-brimmed hat;    
steaming skin contained    
in an apricot scarf⁠—⁠  
polished silver service    
tablecloth stiff with starch    
      
The blood jet of poetry    
a sanitary napkin in my lap⁠—    
my phallic posture smiling  
hard, and politely erect.    
~
Written by Ahavati (Tams)
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PAR
PAULO ACACIO RAMOS
Fire of Insight
Portugal 18awards
Joined 26th May 2022
Forum Posts: 270

It's not there anymore!

Everavalon
Fire of Insight
Canada 4awards
Joined 19th Dec 2022
Forum Posts: 72

Thanks Par

PAR
PAULO ACACIO RAMOS
Fire of Insight
Portugal 18awards
Joined 26th May 2022
Forum Posts: 270

Almost Sylvia Plath

To endure and not spill at all.  
I abandoned myself like a patchwork.  
And I peel the epidermis from me like pomegranate seeds.
 
I juggled once more.  
A sort of wandering spectacle, my exit  
A captive without parchment,  
detain the scarf.
 
The persona, the jointed hollows, the array of molars?  
Soon, on strike the steak  
And I, a lady, a superior lady.  
This is the ceramic femur.
 
What a billion embellishments.  
They flay my palms and soles—  
These were my fingers  
My elbows, no, my elbows ache.  
Yet I am the same, identical nothingness.
 
And there is a charge, a very substantial charge  
Or a strand of my hair or my garments.  
I am your squid,  
That erupts into a howl.
 
I twirl and stagger, stagger and kick.  
Don’t think I hoard gowns  
your vast collection.
 
Disintegrate  
It is a non-craft, like nothing else is.  
I perform this theoretically well.
 
Outline in full sight  
For the same breeze, the same flavor, the same berry  
That ignites me.
 
From the embers  
I rise with scalp  
I inhale the breath of men, of men as breath.
 
I place my words in mouths  
in mouths like Sylvia Plath’s.
Written by PAR (PAULO ACACIO RAMOS)
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Everavalon
Fire of Insight
Canada 4awards
Joined 19th Dec 2022
Forum Posts: 72

These entries are fantastic!!

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