Thread: 1/14/07 | The Desert

Okay, Ladies and Gents, here is your new poetry challenge. The competition will last for two weeks. Judges will be announced soon. Our topic was provided by the winner of the last competition, Baron.


Topic: The Desert

Simple as that. As a theme, as a metaphor, as a setting; you decide.

Due to a recent suggestion, it might be quite fun to include an audio recording of your poem. Host on another site, link in your post. And, please, keep the links tidy, short, and one per entry.

May the best poet win.

Submissions close on the 28th of January.

Judging volunteers, you may PM me if you are interested. If not, I'll find you, don't worry.

I may edit this later to add a spoken word link, but as for now, here is the written part.

The Desert Rose

Creativity is a rose
planted, centered,
in a desert.

Withered from crossing
petals parch
dehydrate, dry
footfalls fill with
suffocating sand.

Time is a water drop
prism splitting
scorching sunlight
in four directions
the colors absorbed
in the bland
surrounding sands
of life,
and death,
desperation
and banal work.

Moisture gone, given
to the endlessly pale
bone billowed granules:
earth’s hardened, wrinkled skin

that lacks and steals
imagination
that lacks and steals
ingenuity
that lacks and steals
individuality
that lacks and steals
originality: the soul of creation
and sucks with vigor
the spirit from its roots.

His hell bent horse
races to horizon
where dazzling stars tryst earth
in haunted, silent, knowledge.
Bisht streams behind
and snaps the air
with cerulean strikes of silk.
Hoof beats thrum resilient sand.

Asad, I’ve come back with thirst.
Impoverished of shadow and light,
I crave discipline for my eyes,
the savage vista
where you stalk hidden.

He urges flesh,
perfect, sinewy, cut,
to storm wind brushed dunes
where he declares the icy night.
Sand becomes his seed.
He licks the stars.
Banshee screams soar like kites,
then slice to perfected silence.

Asad, if I am in your gaze,
fall me now. Fill yourself within.
I’m swelled beyond teeth and talons.
I am home again.
Our blood remembers.

The rider raptures. He swallows God.
Exhilaration burns him alive.

My old man planted a seed;
threw it way out there in the desert
of his dreams.

Said: now watch that tree grow, lad.

Watering can in hand,
a newspaper to read,
his tree, painfully breaking the sand
but not the ice,
took an age to grow -
creaking, burnt by the sun;
dad, too old to know
it couldn’t work,
waited, wasted his time and mine,
throwing everything at it that he could,
left us with nine -
nine pennies in a pot.

Said: three for me, three for you
and three for the bank, leaves us with what?
Squinting through dusty spectacles,
leaves us with not a lot.

We had a lot of bad, a little good,
but still fought for our patch:
a four by four foot wood
under the hill he climbed,
and it’s only now,
after all these years
that I can finally show
some profit for watching our seed
whilst dad grows to that tree.

I've deleted this and am now posting it in the main poetry forum as I'm now one of the judges in this challenge.

Day by night

From the stillness of high noon
Yellow death
Drops west
To leave the room

Arachnids creep from under stones
As cool of evening comes.
Then dance circles in moonlight
Rattle claws, fight.

Gazelles lick night time’s condensation
Move smoothly into action.
Racing circles under the white orb
Herd absorbed.

The fox rotates his absurd, huge ears
Realises the rodent’s fears.
Interrupting his nocturnal shuffles,
Satisfied, snuffles.

Yellow death rises in the east
Hate, feast,
Mate, fight.
Can all await the night

Dust Devil










It begins
with the softest whistle
___of the wind
as the sigh picks up
__and the dust of the dune
_swirls back with a whisp
the effect
____whip-snaps
like a scorpion attack
___when the light
_of the moon
___disappears
as the heartless sand
___gathers tempo
____and dances around
then invites all the fears
____of a tribe or a herd
where the mud brick shacks
____cannot keep out the burn
of the oncoming
____monster that’s dressed
_____in a shroud
__as it whips at the backs
___of the frightened crowd
_____who are filled with despair
_________turn and run somewhere
___that’s away from the thunderous sound
______as the dance takes a turn
______for the worse
_______when it rips up
__________the shacks
_______and the barns
___as the crops get crushed
_____with the weight of the dune
__that has flown from afar
_____to be here with it’s onslaught
______that’s not looking like
_____it will ever disappear
_______but it slows
___as the moonlight glows
_____and away to the east
______you can see
____that the dust devil
___blows
__like an ex
who has ran off
__with
__your
_clothes
___!










.

The dried well
heaves its empty buckets
splitting thread by thread of rope
for dust, dirt, and small insects.

Cat-tales grow
next to barren ponds,
cauldrons of breeding
mosquitoes. Heaping
bighting, breeding
mosquitoes.

Muddied waters,
a boot-print deep,
bare the message
of long caravans
heading East.
The mystery unbearable
under the Arizona sun.

Streets whistle
like reeds
a song of emptiness.
Children do not laugh or
playfully beg the store-owners
for handfuls of dried pecans.

Rusted plows, wheels and barrows
haphazard in the street
outlived their usefulness
as tools for the farmer.
Not worth saving
for crops that will not grow.

Rainbow Serpent

Tender is the tail of the night in the desert
hot is the feel of its' phosphorescent rays
clammy is the skin of the hills of the desert
vapourising technicolour with rising days.

EDITED: By Shawn's request, I will be judging this round.

Smoking Wicks and Lakes of Sand

Lately,
It seems as if i can't
produce a decent poem.

The spark is gone,
nothing remains but a
smoking wick.
When the world was once
at my hand,
it is now nothing but a memory.
an imprint of better days.

It's as if my mind was once a
vast ocean, deep with ideas and ideals,
and inspiration flowed like milk and honey.
But this time has pasted.
It has dried up to a desert.
the flowers of my better days has withered,
and I along with it.

My Heart

Lacking capacity

the arid desolation

of a barren waste land

the sea spits out her salty quagmire

and vomits sand

Impoverished creatures, surrender

Silence grieves, indulges life

abandonment of the essential liquid that is

a wrinkled blotchy blanket

artesian spring

perpetual snow

Falls as the frozen tundra

Yields indispensible yesterdays

Unknown unwanted unloved, irrelevant

Inapt opportunities sparse amenities, no life

Yet, I live.

Persistent demons

Adapt to the desire to separate

Survival in extreme uninhabited conditions

Cold ,dead, I grieve the space

Of parched devastation

A storm center

My heart.

You
are but
a speck of dust
a mere dot on an empty page
an insignificant afterthought
amongst this vast desert
of beauty and desolation
which I alone
created

You
have polluted
my glorious landscape
with your petty whims
obscene desires
and arrogant need
to control and manipulate
things
not of your domain

understanding is not
a virtue you possess
for if you did
you would then
know my
name

Crimson Light
Desert Night
Never again
a SpiritBright
GODS' Word was spoken
burnt and scarred
wings seared
bones broken
cast out
forgotten
thrown aside
for an act of pride
I fell
Made My Hell
and devour all
Who Enter

And that means

YOU

you arrogant little bastards...

Waiting for Wildflower Season

Sand-glass hours
whisper our secrets

Seventeen years
slid by on a
golden topaz hiss
baring bone slivers
of abandoned ghosts

Dune
a turning shoulder,
shifting flesh in a
sleepless wind

Small carnivorous hopes
sleep, paws twitching
burrow-waiting
beneath scoured rock
for evening scamper

Tumbling
future-seeds
tightly furled
mix into the surface
awaiting rains
of wildflower season.

Sweet As Desert Breeze

In wood, on hill is n'er a sight
Nor sounds as sweet as desert breeze
When setting sun is three fourths down
And moon slips out to play

With silver eye 'gainst ebon shock
Aglow amidst a star-lit mane
A wink from darkened dust 'til dawn
When sky sees full once more

With cold light swift alighting
To dance across the dunes
A cactus waltz o'er arid floor
In frozen nighttime climes

Slow steps follow... One. Two. Three.
Through cracked and sundered stone
Needles lift in green-skin goosebumps
From Luna's farewell kiss.