FOP BATTLE THREAD

PLEASE ONLY POST ON THIS THREAD IF YOU ARE ONE OF THE 5 MEMBERS ENTERED IN THIS CLUB.

Colm
Britt
Saerelune
Kakera
The princess

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The prompts must be used in order from 1-10, then repeating the cycle until time runs out. You cannot skip any numbers. MUST BE 1 TO 10.

The same member can only post up to 2 times in a row, they then must await a second person to post before they can reply.

I will post the prompts in the morning, along with the word GO.

Closing time is Friday 8pm. (UK time)

Good luck and enjoy.

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Your prompts are:

1. A formed poem

2. 30-32 syllables

3. Include "a river/ocean" or "a star(s)" either by the words, or through metaphor.

4. Use a song title for the poem's title.

5. Category must be sad/depression

6. Free choice of any poem at all

7. 10-12 lines

8. Must include a body part in your poem/title

9. Must include a time or date

10. This poem must rhyme at least once throughout.

Go

1. Formed poetry - haiku

beneath stones of moss
insects yawn as dawn arrives
crowning earth with dew

So ... same member can only post up to 2 times in a row

2. 30-32 syllables

With swollen eyes -
mosquitoes show no mercy,
waiting for the night
to sink its weight upon my skin,
or needles to sink into me.

3. Include River/ocean or star.

As a boy, I recall the golden evening -
holding Mammy's hand at Cobh bay
like sentinels at the cliffs, where West Cork
was tucked in by the Atlantic.

I watched you stretch your iron legs
and leave a washline of white surf
in your wake, watched until you sillouetted yourself
proudly against the setting sun.

I don't know if the jubilant deck calls or smell
of salty fresh paint and varnish were figments
and the added extras of my young dreams.

And after 87 years of sleeping on the sea floor, still
I see you shadowed against the orange Munster sky,
still I hold Mammy's hand and wave your time goodbye.

4. Song title

[Lost the echo - linkin park]

Enshrouded in tissue, no cells left
to regenerate, no breath left to keep
in glass jars, like fairy lights,
for I am lost in the echo
of a half-hearted smile,
such sorcery hidden in broken
tea cups, how they remind you
of screaming parents, how they
made you wish upon the stars
for a divorce which is denied
due to the lack of oxygen.

5. Sadness/depression poem

When I speak, my vocabulary reduces tenfold.
When I speak, the royal flash of his poker set becomes reality.

Behind the glasses of wine was a girl
with lips as red, from biting her tongue.

He never watched her, intently, lustfully,
just the hollow of a skull piercing through vision.

No hot knife could compare, just a stone's throw away,
and her throat would've been crushed like pomegranates.

6.

Thank you, with a capital letter,
for all the shared smiles
and cliche summer nights,
spent dancing beyond dreams

Thank you for the life you left me,
Life, capitalized for effect,
when you split infinity in half
to show me that nothing is impossible

Thank you for not saying goodbye:
It'd probably have been painful for us both;
Thank you, with capitalization,
for forcing me to quit chasing your shadow

Thank you, and godspeed.

Edit: Oh snap, what are the odds of us posting the very same minute haha?

7. 10-12 lines

The grey half-ruins lay hidden behind
an alcove of ash trees, almost invisible from
the road. Upon closer inspection, the brickwork and mortar
celebrated centuaries of marriage, generations
of moss and ivy their children. Inside was dark
and heavy, and the grassy floor an uneven
splattered cemetary of pigeon droppings.
And under the thin window slit
a loose, weathered piece of rock crumbles
and trickles to join its megalithic friends.

8. Must include a body part in your poem/title.

Play my rib cage like a guitar;
my arms like a bass;
and my vocal chords
like a saxophone

Use my shoulder-blades
to play my throat like a violin,
and show me that music
still hasn't left my life

despite the crushing silence
that lingers in my mind

9. Must include a time or date.

July 22th, at 18:48,
facing away from responsibilities,
to waste away, decay:
in the shadows of expectations
I remain

Answering nothing, loving no-one,
blaming the outside for the blinding sunlight
acting as a spotlight pointed at truths -
yet in the shadows of expectations
I try to remain,

Avoiding responsibilities,
wasting time and wasting away.

10. Rhyme

I saw a clown without makeup on his face
And I thought, what sort of clown is he?
Not the kind a I think I'd rush to embrace
He isn't a character you usually see.

Usually clowns don't look out of place
But this one was hanging out beside a tree,
He didn't even have clown shoes to lace?
He looked familiar, he looked suspicious to me.

At parties we love to play chase,
But wait! The man is a clown, now I see!
He playing cops and robbers, didn't make it to base!
The policeman says 'Finally! How did you ever get free?'

1. Form

Haiku

Canary yellow
freckles of leburnum feud
with smothering briar.

2. 30-32 syllables

Softly you sang love songs
to the revenants of failed attempts,
hoping to break the shackles of the past,
so that we may breathe freely.

3. Include "a river/ocean" or "a star(s)" either by the words, or through metaphor.

How beautiful the stars shine
when watched from an ocean
of loneliness aching,
where fate cried happily
as she in your facial expressions wrote
"Sink or swim, sink or swim,
Sink, or swim?"

4. Song Title

Teardrop (by Massive Attack)

The way you pursed your lips when I left
my plate on the sink and sat down to read the paper,
The way your laughter wrinkles tightened when I opened
another bottle of cold beer and turned up the tv,
The way your eyes narrowed when I forgot
to empty my pockets of betting slips before coming home,
The way your head dropped when I didn't
pick up the milk in the shop after the match, again.

The way a teardrop fell on your coffin when I reached
for your hand at my side because I can't, I can't

#5 Sad/Depression

I walked you home, one last time,
We stopped at the gate. I remembered
The tennis games we set up in summer in the yard.

And on down the road where we cycled to school,
Where you crashed in the ditch when Murphy's dog chased us.
In no time at all we were at the church.

It seemed as though I was listening to myself listening
to the prayers and hymns. Carrying you out
was the hardest thing I've ever had to do.

There was handshakes and stories, a meal
And prayers and drinks. But when I got home
There wasn't you.

6. Free choice of any poem at all

They say ignorance is bliss,
and that knowledge is power;
But I know that bliss is ignorance,
and that power leaves you miserable.

7. 10-12 lines :

When you laughed away the bruises
of cold shoulders bumping,
I had no choice but to laugh
at how bizarre it was for us,
the strongest of lovers,
acting like strangers too

And when I did, I got goosebumps
because of how beautiful the pain felt
when caressing the sore spots in my throat,
singing loneliness to the choirs.

8. Must include a body part in your poem/title

They lift my legs.

Left. Right.

No disease, skin like pearls.
And depression is the oyster
clamping around its treasure.

I am the epitome of cliche, right
to the bottom of mainstream psychology.

My mind's iridescent, residue, left
by the hands of surgeons.

They scissored right beneath
my breastbone, never between the legs,
left no trace of trauma behind,
no Hansel and Gretel spilling whiteness
to find their way home. Only intrusion.

Except, nobody believes me.

Left. Right.

Nobody believes me.

Nobody believes me.

9. Must include a time or date

2007 -

Left the world to baptize myself
in pixels, but no sword could save me
from my double-edged distrust.

After 12 AM, glasses still remained mimers.

2009 -

Left the world to baptize myself
in words, and cosy, they were,
and glee, they brought,

but nothing could've fooled me more
than the lies of being alive.

For after 12 AM, glasses still remained mimers.

2014 -

Left the world to burry myself
in blankets, and cosy, they were,
and glee, they took.

Found myself falling asleep
to headphones as lovers.

After 12 AM, hands still clutch to glasses
that fail to mime, a phone that fails to chime.

10. This poem must rhyme at least once throughout.

A word spoken, tears that fell;
Many words left unheard of, many tears choked;
Words and sentences become the tales you tell
making sure that no truth remains cloaked;

From the shoulders of giants you built your stage,
where syllables are sounded from the written page
in front of a million ears that are quick to embrace
the beauty of the written grace.

#1. A formed poem -

Monorhyme

Count your blessings, don't you dare run
away from the reality of our bonds come undone,
because while we both know that this ain't fun,
we too know that you're the broken one -
For whom the dark can swallow the sun,
leaving us blinded and loved by none,
because life is a game not easily won -
so stay here forever, don't you dare run.

2. 30-32 syllables

Cast the rod, rip the calendar
apart, you'll find your lucky number

they said.

I caught my lover, and
lost him in the wishing-well.

3. Include "a river/ocean" or "a star(s)" either by the words, or through metaphor.

"Cry me a river and I'll bestow you the moon."

Give me a break, Romeo
and leave me before noon.

For I am no mountain,
pride not in rivers.

The moon's glow is but a trickster
beneath the valley of blankets.

I've had enough, enough of rhymes,
enough of promises I know I could not defy.

Leave me as this facade still remains upright,
before I bestow you a river, and drown you inside.

4. Use a song title for the poem's title.

"Butterfly Dance" (by Diary of Dreams)

Summer came quick this year,
melting away our winter fears -
We jump into dreamlike states,
dancing like butterflies,
living life with wild abandon

Preaching life to the evergreen,
as watched from outside your window,
way past the anchors of industrial filth
weighing down our lungs, shackled and chained,
hoping that we will never have to
give up our dreams;

Dancing like butterflies,
living life with wild abandon.

5. Category must be sad/depression.

She woke up cursing the day of her birth,
forced to continue forward with bleeding feet.
She whispered lies with every "I am okay."
to please the shallowness of the so-called kind.
She was a stranger to happiness bleeding through
the walls of her numbness blocking;

When I painted a world of words ringing true
she abandoned her faith in me,
leaving me screaming:
"I know you're not okay"

"I know you're not okay"

6. Free choice of any poem at all

Tick tack.

Flies on the wall, counting their fall.

Tick tack.

One leg now gone, two wings to go.

Tick tack.

I'm not insane, please stay, please stay.

Tick tack.

I'm all alone, six legs now gone.

#7 Song Title

Back Down South (Kings of Leon)

Back down South, where you grew up on Bible
and cattle ranching was where we were at our best,
our honeymoon period in the Texan summer.
I bought a broken up, once-red convertible
that roared us from Dallas to small town life.
It doubled as a bed and I almost forgot how it veered
off left when I tried to help you navigate the map.
Now, every once in a while I pull back the dusty cover
And sit in it.
I face South.

#8 Body Part

I used to joke that the freckle on your shoulder
Was a cartographer (I baptised him Manny) - And the shadows
Under your eyes in the mornings after we slept together
But didn't sleep were miniature elephant tombs.
You would smile like a baby and I would remind myself
To remember.

9. Must include a time or date

At 12 AM, I forgot about the laundry,
still curling in the washing machine,
but I left it slide, like the dishes
I left at 12 PM, the last time I ate,
like the friend I left in 2011,
the last time I armed my heart
with less than two lies.

At 3 AM, I forgot about 3 PM,
I washed the bottle and refilled it
with salt, but didn't scrub my face,
left the lies dying there,
turned the ugliness inside-out,
like the ragged doll I wrecked
at the age of 8, and patched up again

just to have it look like myself.

10. This poem must rhyme at least once throughout.

On days like these, I put on the fan,
its sound like trees, clattering against windows,
summer breeze in plastic, lost in illusion,
with dreams too majestic, I belittle tempests.

1. Form (acrostic)

Chess

Castling, en passant, what are these terms I hear?
How do I make that perky knight disappear?
Everything confuses me, there's pieces here and there,
Some people call this a game, say its fun?
Some part of me wants to scream before this match is done!

2. 30-32 syllables

In the Garden

Butterflies flutter on summer breezes
honey bees farm foxgloves and fushia,
grass-stained children imagine far away worlds.

3. Include "a river/ocean" or "a star(s)" either by the words, or through metaphor.

O the weariness of her promises,
how it aches when she closes her eyes -
Letting us fall forward into nowhere,
regretting our journey past the gates
that lead into the realm of descriptions,
where the mists of deceit is lifted:

Shattered by the disillusioned mourning cries
we forced upon the fading echoes,
as we could do naught but stand by and watch
our Angels crossing the River Styx.

4. Use a song title for the poem's title.

"Oblivion" by Diary of Dreams.

O brother, crave for colours,
reaching past the beauty
of your fingertips tapping goodbyes
on the window into our grief, breaking
the silence in appreciation
of the lonely light that washes over us
from the stars on our sky fading -
Knowing that we too,
will know the coldness
of oblivion.

#5 Sadness/depression
I learned about black holes in science class.
A black hole is a crushing vortex where time slows
To a stop and space beats itself up.
I learned about black holes in science class.
I wish there was a lesson that explained the black hole
Revolving inside me.

Maybe it is tougher for a black hole to suck in molecules
that are attached to others. Maybe it is easy for black holes
to attract space that is already empty.
Maybe the worst black holes are the supertiny ones
nobody can see.

#6 Any poem

The dark clouds that shadowed my footsteps have lightened
to pale grey, and patches of aqua blue peek out
as if hedgehogs emerging from winter's hibernation.
The rain that stuck to my checked shirt and skipped
down my ladder-like spine has eased, and faint rays
of sunlight warm my skin and lighten my spirit.
And the chains that she once locked me up in have loosened,
The keys you gave me work better each day.

7. 10-12 lines

He's been oblivious to sea bells chiming,
lived in books afar from mermaid's marriages,
and thus he never believed she could disappear
in foam, as the coffee steam stained his glasses,
its dance reminding him of grandma and how she left
the laundry to drown in her fragrance, and
his mattress' warmth to dwindle
even as he burnt her picture
in the hearth of nostalgia, wondering why
he never bothered to look up from his stories
and see the fairytale glimmering between them.

8. Must include a body part in your poem/title

Beneath the city's neon signs, I need no breastplate,
and I don my leggings just to feel the air again,
and I look up to feel the rain and see what vagabonds see each day
but everyone's too drunk to dive into the sound
of street musicians, as if their ears are plastered
to speakers, and feet unaware of bubblegum.

Beneath the city's neon signs, faces align
then break the mosaic, faces light up
beneath cigarette smoke, and I know
I am but a face in the public vehicle's window,
dreaming of dancing with feet instead of imagination.