Many thanks to the entrants!

Right, everyone, GET VOTING.

Ahem! Hold the votes, two other entries are now arriving!

HIBISCUS

Do you still love me
though I am bursting, flamboyant and have odd numbered petals?
Do you still love me
though my fruit is fickle and my seeds runneth over?
Do you still love me
though my color varies quite unexpectedly?
Do you still love me
though my leaves are jagged like tiny little teeth?
Do you still love me
though my stem is miniature and unruly?
Do you still love me
though I only grow in rare and devoted sunlight?
If so, you still love, then, let me drink.

The Visit


I keep our kisses like pressed flowers

I might trace them and risk turning

delicate petals to dust.

Yet I cannot.

For kisses with you are a glory

by which a tactile percussion renews

and my mind washes with colors

days and days curses clean.



Every full moon or so

desperate lover's entanglements

restore nearly heartbreaking

the fury of heat and rapture

natural happiness singing sweet

as love's strings render a lullaby

and goodbye draws near again.



Oh, Love!

I drink you like wine

the illumination of my spirit is paired only with yours

I learnt that denial is my adversary

this heart revived from deathly grasp

my starry sky found its earth to admire.



My ordinary world awaits a homecoming

our hands hold on to ghostly fingertips

my heart retreats to stasis

my body to an insensate jewel

Rejoin, my dear, to our next life.

TO THE POLLS!

I forgot one 😳 :

Forest

The only sounds
are the rustle of leaves
your heart pounding
breath ragged as
your feet barely touch the ground

The fog swirls around your ankles
hiding tree roots and fallen branches

You run knowing
you can't outrun your fear
not knowing what you're
trying to escape

Until you hear a blood-curdling scream
Yours
as he bites your neck

LAST ENTRY:

Untitled

Guilt clings like clumps and clags of mud
to shoes. Our steps can often take
us off the dirt-free path we should
follow. Puddle-jumping might make

a splash - a dalliance - but those
who journey over stiles or dare
to open private gates suppose
to trespass unseen, unaware

that evidence remains on soles.
What happens when we return home
from night-walks or discrete patrols?
The muddy prints from secret roams.

Should we take our dirty boots off
before we walk on the clean floor;
leave the mud to dry and flake off
the boots propped up outside the door?

Our eyes, hearts - and feet - will wander;
our stroll away might go unseen,
but the guiltless soles we squander
are tarnished, muddy and unclean.



Entrance is now CLOSED. Let's have a little democracy.

Seriously, people, much hard work has been put into these bits of verse. Vote, right here. Again, list your three favourites, with "1" being "most favouritest" and "3" being "third most favouritest".

Originally posted by ChronicLeaky
Seriously, people, much hard work has been put into these bits of verse. Vote, right here. Again, list your three favourites, with "1" being "most favouritest" and "3" being "third most favouritest".

Originally posted by Sunburnt
I'm going to be voting tonight. I need to sit down and read them all again.

Originally posted by ChronicLeaky
Seriously, people, much hard work has been put into these bits of verse. Vote, right here. Again, list your three favourites, with "1" being "most favouritest" and "3" being "third most favouritest".

Originally posted by Jigtie
I can't just vote like that! 😠

I need to read, then read again (because I'm slowheaded), then read yet
again (to fully appreciate the flavour) and only as the full aroma of each
text standing on its own has been absorbed can I start comparing and
finally choose between them.

Ye' shall have me vote the day afta' tomorrow, good friend. 🙂

Third place: The blanket of time and space

For it's sixties, space-mind surrealism and the sheer lunacy of it all.

Very well written.

Its exceptionally shocking brutality truly caused my heart to fail the first time I read it, and no less so now that I've re-read it over and over.

Addition: Basically, I'm dead now. 😕

I hope to discuss these poems shortly. They were all very good.

3. Wood of humanity

2. Blanket out of time and space

1. Untitled

To copy CFT: honorable mention to Walter's Perfect Phucctoy. This is very good discussion material and I kept changing my mind each time I read it.