1st place
My thirst is past the point where I can relieve it by swallowing my spit
and my lungs are too blackened and tarred so I don't bother to quit.
Parallel to these ailments there are leaches, human drains I'd like to omit
but I keep them around, they supply me what I need, well, when I need to get lit.
Congruently I quarrel and struggle, a power game where I will not take tat for tit
and the thirst, the smokes, the pills, the blood suckers, they are not in fact my misery.
It all works quite nicely, aligned, in order, my own syzygy.
©2006 by LetaJo
2nd place - tie
Look me up, Loch Ness, spotted a yeti
New as I am to the world of the chuckle
Things get you through, like rice and spaghetti
If they ask what I do, I swashbuckle
I don't have the nuts to be a Svengali
My lurid romance steams one hot tamale
Want two, or three, and to be obscure
Zen moments bloom from each nonsequitur
My need, my need, is to have a spoon feed
In red-bubbled hot soup de jour
A rollicking bald tumbleweed
©2006 by ejohne
2nd place - tie
On Dublin docks, the ghost of Joyce
hides in the cobbles, under damp splice
of memories’ recall, stream of his voice
overwhelms the mind. Read once, twice,
Bloom’s day has none of the rage
and pain of this modern town, rock
thrown to crush thoughts sage.
Still, waves lap the wooden dock,
as whores in the shadows bump,
underwear ankle worn in the grind,
chasing the numb need to hump
from men, some who were the kind
who sought solace from the weather,
Irish rain unending, seemingly forever.
©2006 by loisseau
Honorable Mention
Gentle, intoxicating summer rain
Smelling sweetly of the lavender sprawled across the window pane
sipping tea while he sands the new table - always against the grain
Didn't want to finish his book - through which he sped
Could have danced in the sun shower - instead I read
about being a good wife - baking pies and making bread
Just gonna sit here and wait for the herons, for the crane
and when he's done sanding, I might bake - or he might be fed
©2006 by dancing on silver
