>>CoffeeMinion

Well:

"A little dab'll do ya," as the kids used to say.

Or if not the kids than the multi-million-dollar advertising agency that came up with the slogan for some sort of hair product back in an age before any of us were born...

Mike

Structurally, this is pretty straightforward. The rhythm isn't very regular, but with this simple a structure, I guess it doesn't feel like it has to be.

As to meaning, I'm a little lost. Most of the imagery of these burning drops casts them as violent or malevolent, but "burble and jeer" strikes a pretty different tone than that, and maybe even "cackle" does as well. I think these burning drops are either supposed to be meteors or globs of lava from an eruption, but there may be a deeper symbolic meaning to them that I'm missing.

The ending leaves me a bit confused. The narrator seems to be making a value judgment, but since I'm not getting what the burning drops are about, I don't have a basis to agree with him or not, yet the narrator has roped me into being like-minded, calling me a fellow raindrop. I'm put into a position to empathize with him, but it's not giving me a reason to. So when he makes that contrast, I'm left seeing it as just a factual one rather than something to get meaning from. Maybe these burning drops like being confined to the sunless depths, just as much as the raindrops like the ability to cycle back up into clouds.

Clever wordplay there, with "wicked" being a single-syllable word. And kudos for making a limerick with the more traditional anapest instead of the amphibrach that many people assume is the standard.

My initial confusion was that the narrator was himself a candle, and I couldn't understand why the last line made him seem to comment more on his fellow candles' plight than his own, but now I think he's supposed to be a person who hoped his candle would last through the night. While I appreciate the last line's cleverness, it also suggests some level of sympathy he has for the candle, but there's no basis established for it, so it kind of comes across as reaching for a bigger emotional payoff than it earns, like it's going for the joke alone and not the meaning behind it.

But with flawless structure and the smart joke, I liked this.

Someone has an ax to grind...

I wonder if this is inspired by a recent pony feature box topper. I've also been laboring under the delusion for years now that Morrissey is a lot older than he actually is and that he tragically died decades ago, and return to that impression even after repeatedly learning he's alive and well. Maybe I unconsciously share your pain?

As poetry, eh, I don't know that being poetry does it any favors, since there's no structure and I don't get anything from the decision of where to place line breaks. But then I'm betting you didn't care about that.

My first though upon seeing the title was: "I wonder if this has anything to do with light bondage?" Then lo and behold, you have delivered. You people have corrupted me.

Anyway, this carries a nice double meaning for "light." I already mentioned on the other limerick how the structure was so good there. This one doesn't have quite the regular rhythm, but limericks are often mangled a bit, so it's probably a form where that's easier to forgive.

However, I feel like I'm missing a piece to the story. Why is he seeking scandal? I don't know what situation he's in that he thinks this declaration would be scandalous, why he'd want to cause it, or who the people are that he wants to shock. Nice joke, but it feels like it's only halfway telling me the story.

Kind of a prose poem here, but one that does seem suited to the form. It might feel too choppy if rendered as prose, with all of these separate lines either being run together into paragraphs or each getting its own paragraph. in prose, that too often makes things feel unfocused, while in poetry, frequent line breaks can add emphasis in a way that would make prose seem forced and over-dramatic.

As to meaning... well, this is probably the kind of poem I'm not well-suited for interpreting, because a lot of the subtleties will likely go over my head.

I'm not sure who the person is suffering from gender identity. I can come up with several possibilities, all of which would work in a sympathetic light. That's the thing here: in many cases, different interpretations can either resonate or not, depending on whether they carry much meaning behind them, but in this case, all of the ones I was trying to decide between still make this a sympathetic character. I doubt you meant it that way, because I expect you had a specific meaning in mind that you wanted the reader to pick up. If you did mean it that way, then color me impressed, but even if you didn't, it still works.

I could see this trans character being the narrator herself, who's narrating this death as the passing of her former self. I could see it being someone she was attracted to, which ended up breaking apart her marriage (the language suggesting they were significantly younger, encountered each other at an office party, and there being a husband involved might read that way to me). I could see it being one of her sons. Part of that comes from the phrase "hot boy with the red dress." It immediately makes me think the hot boy is the one wearing the red dress, particularly with the rest of the stanza speaking more about boys wearing dresses, but maybe "with" refers to the party, so the narrator was wearing the red dress and was attracted to a boy she met there?

The ending connotes someone hanging themselves, but I don't know whether that's the trans character, the narrator, or if they're one and the same. I could even see this being a split personality thing, where the person in the red dress is some other persona the narrator has, and she's giving it up. The "gone is her love/gone as her love" juxtaposition seems to say the person died in the form she loved, but again, that could refer to either herself or a separate person. Though the one thing tending to make me think it's not the narrator dying is that she seems to be observing the funeral with other family members much more than being the subject of it.

The father, brother, son litany doesn't speak to someone who's as young as this "hot boy," unless that's a role someone's playing, so this is yet another case where I can't tell whom it describes. The narrator refers to herself as female, but the poem also has a theme of gender lines becoming blurred, so I can't assume that part doesn't refer to her, and...

I'm confused. I really liked this, but I'm confused.

I'm afraid I don't understand this one. The prompt is about nobody mourning, but here, Matilda explicitly does, so... maybe I'm missing something? And then I don't see the connection to the second part. What did zombies have to do with any of that? It's like these are two unrelated poems. If they are, why not make them separate entries? If not, then I guess Matilda has decided to stop mourning because she's afraid he'll become a zombie? Or the second part is from his perspective, and he's turning into one?

Btw, "jenny" wouldn't be capitalized in this sense, though maybe your autocorrect suggested it because it assumed you meant the name?

I quite like:

The imagery here, and the message came through clearly enough: those who burble and jeer are headed straight to the bottom with no chance of return. Like >>Pascoite, though, I also would've liked a steadier rhythm and another stanza between the first and the second to set up more of a contrast between the behavior of the two groups on the way down. Nice stuff.

Mike

My biggest problem here:

Is that I have almost no idea who Morrissey is. A once-popular singer, I vaguely know--I couldn't tell you the name of any of his songs--who's been mentioned again recently because he's taken to saying stupid things, though I couldn't tell you waht any of those stupid things are, either. So I'm not at all the audience for this, I'm afraid...

Mike

So:

Both our limericks this time around are candle related? Peculiar...

Of the two, the story tracks better for me on this one, but the meter's too jagged in that last line. Limericks are the most easy-going form in the Engish language, sure, but like a feghoot, the last line really needs to sing and zing. This one zings well enough, but it needs words that match the pattern of stresses.

Mike

As I said:

On the other limerick, the meter on this one's better, but I'd like a better idea of what situation the narrator's in at the beginning. I almost get the impression that there's some danger in the shadows that the candle is holding at bay, but I'm not sure. I know there's not a lot of room in a limerick, but I could use a bit more clarity as to what the set-up is.

Mike

This poem is about the pieces of the Death Star falling to the moon of Endor, burning in the atmosphere, and crashing into the sea. None mourn the wicked soldiers aboard, blackened and burned during atmospheric entry.

I sense a frame challenge. As in you're disagreeing with the the thesis of the prompt. Yes, the wicked are mourned, and here an example. I reject your challenge; no truly wicked person would be mourned.

Also zombies. If this entry is an anthology, it needs more poems.

I like his music. I dislike his racism. I suspect choking on a gallon of horse pee is a disproportionate punishment, but I'm willing to entertain the notion. I think you've matched the prompt well enough. He'll have diehard fans when he goes, but many will not mourn his loss, and may even welcome it.

Clever wordplay. Inconsistent meter. Randall seems unwicked in one sense. Not sure if his preferences count as wicked in another sense. Either away, mourning seems uninvolved. It also doesn't seem like a subversion or challenge to the prompt, so I guess inspired by?

Pascoite provides so many ways to interpret this one; i don't know what's right!

From the title, I assume this is intended as slam poetry, but you probably shouldn't recite it in the office, although I guess that somewhat depends on your office.

I'm not entirely sure how to evaluate slam. Some criteria pulled from Google search results:

account, content, performance, delivery, connection with the audience

well that's not helpful. Trying again.

For some, strong writing may focus on the clever usages of language, the uniqueness of point-of-view or topic, the clarity of metaphor; some may focus on the content of the poem, the passion behind the idea, and the rhyme scheme employed. This is all fine, as long as you are both fair and consistent.

So judge whatever the hell I want. Thanks.

You use words (and maybe not-words; looking at you, wist). Your sentences are short and long. Your words are fast and slow (No. Not that. Not after that time.). You use contradiction (dying. But only a little. vs Gone as her love.) So what's missing? Clarity of metaphor. Only, I don't know if that's a good or bad thing.

I award 🐄 out of 10 points.

Good structure and clever use of homonym, but I have no idea what's going on here. My best guess is: a helicopter lands or hovers near an outside Chanukah display. The wind from the chopper knocks the menorah over. The candles, extinguished, come out of the menorah during the incident, but the menorah isn't concerned. With minutes to dawn, chanukah was almost over anyway.

Okay. I'm now convinced I've stumbled into the intended meaning. Change my mind.

Like >>Pascoite:

I'm not quite sure what's happened here. The woman at the end, is she mourning her husband or her son? Both? Does she kill herself in the last two lines? I can't tell from what's here...

Mike

Another line:

Of description or scene-setting or something In that second one, and you could've made the word limit without having to drag MLP characters in at all. :) I quite like the second one, though the first one's gonna weigh the whole thing down on my ballot...

Mike

Of various verses I shall take a merry view
By use of the schema called Clerihew
Where meter is often deprecated,
And clever rhymes decorated.

These descending specks of pyrotechnic pumice
Cause great havoc and take much from us,
But they sink and we rise
To semi-eternal reprise.

And now an eulogy for the Cranky Doodle
Where one might wish a frank refutal
Of deathly themes, but we harp on one key
Of resonant corpses and bitter donkey.

Steven Patrick Morrissey
Found fame and a forum, so in chorus, he
Gave out with unpopular frankness
That caused this work's dankness.

Young Randall, the self-centered masochist,
Told his friends that he wouldn't wax pacifist,
But they did spurn
To deliver the burn.

Here we have white bones of meaning, sans textual gritty
Cues that define; wicked, family, loss, transsexuality...
Leaving reader with unresolved emotions clanging--
To wit, an unexpected hanging

With my fires aslumber, rage
Flows in me but I shall not take umbrage;
The ember of my very last taper
Shall suffice to enlighten my caper.

>>Pascoite, >>Baal Bunny, >>LoftyWithers

Light Domination

Thanks for the comments!

I had nothing for this round all day, but late at night before bed I was determined to get something in, and so I patched this together. I skipped my usual morning edit for other reasons, and so it went.

>>Pascoite, >>Baal Bunny, >>LoftyWithers

Precipitance

Wow, thanks for the gold! 'Gratz to Señor Alta Cruz and Baal Bunny!

This was a Morning After piece, written at work during a short break period and submitted just before the deadline.

I conceived of the burning drops as being people consumed by negative emotions, who take delight in spreading those emotions to others, with the raindrops representing average people who mean well.

This is thus an optimistic view of the future, where over time the darker emotions drop away and we carry forward with the best our species has to offer the world.

Thanks again!

>>Pascoite
>>LoftyWithers
>>GroaningGreyAgony

As I said:

This needs more development, but the first thing I thought of was using "wicked" in its monosyllabic meaning. Maybe a longer form would've been better--a sonnet's got more room for backstory... :)

But thanks, folks, and congrats to the other medalists!

Mike