Twenty odd wins.
A hundred and forty or so weeks;
seventy, maybe eighty or ninety submissions.
Goddamn did we run.
Half a year or so of
Missed deadlines and
Loving critique;
Late monday nights
and rushed sunday submissions.
"Remember to vote!"
"Allow me to be the first to welcome you..."
Goddamn did we run;
It gave me shin splints but
What was I using them for anyway?
Legacies and stories and
Heroes and myths; I still can't believe we actually had to ban someone
And I'm so damn proud of the ***** that we did-
I'm proud of the country roads and political prose-
I'm proud of gods and monsters and cowardly men-
I'm proud of roses and sunsets and Otto flailing into the den-
The pace slows. Down to maybe a jog; a halfhearted trot at best.
Maybe the knees are starting to go- the lungs to fail the body to ail
and the years (all five or six) have been too much
Or maybe, the old girl, she just needs a rest.
Maybe the templates can just sit in the .txt files
And we can forget the bbcode for punching in the latest winner.
Maybe the dust can collect and we'll wait for some other nerd;
Like us;
To trip across this spot where "maybe I like writing," becomes
"What else was I doing?"
maybe one of us will make it.
Trophies will become prizes,
and someone will idolize and ask,
"what were your influences?"
And in passing, we'll recall
Haikus about ***** and socks and god,
and sonnets about crack cocaine and innocence
We'll remember that levity was our favorite,
Even if somber honesty always won-
Maybe we'll even have a favorite.
That poem Madding wrote, about the hot shower. How he let it run because the city paid for the water anyway.
Otto, falling down the stairs. A goddamn gem; the sight of which the world has been deprived
Maybe we'll just remember the times we fell in love with a series of sounds in Portugese or German
Maybe; like an endless string of untitled poems,
We'll just keep running.
Thanks, guys. To everyone I've ever interacted with in any way through the PRC. It breaks my heart to see it slowing down. I've seen the rest of this nook of MTGS slowly wither, but I always kinda figured the PRC was untouchable- because for me it was. It was a moment in history that never blinked and never faltered even when rounds got delayed. It was a thing that I spent way too many hours hosting (and yet still too few to have done a decent job), and a thing that got me through a lot of weeks. I'm a better writer for it. I'm a better person for it. I like to think I'll always remember what we did here.
A man can no longer stand alone in history
against the oceans of anonymity-
No one can struggle, mightily,
against the undertow-- and prevail.
One can only close their eyes and relax;
can only give way to the waves of our era
as the salt slowly washes away
the fine, ugly lines of our lives-
the details will become a blur
Our work, our rage, our love, our hurt
will be undone by the historian's pen;
the marrow of our days will be footnotes
amid a textbook's endless slur of words-
One can only close their eyes and inhale-
What worth has a scream
that will only go unheard?
Because struggle. August was Rough, and it sure didn't help that we failed to fire a single PRC. Hopefully activity gets a little more consistent; I know things get rocky after we have delayed firings.
Charon oh my captain
I only to row;
One arm wounded, useless-
I only know to row.
I am a rabid dog,
Lame, and toothless-
Charon oh captain my captain
I only know to row
Holy *****, been forever since I've been around. For good reason, there's not ***** coming out lately....
Shabazz Palaces was a good listen.
Been re-listening to Pinata and Kismet (eXquire released an alternate version called Kismet Blue at some point, not sure when. Has more tracks and a lot of tracks of him talking about some songs before they play. It's good)
Albums have to come out...eventually, right? I liked Pinata way more listening to it today than the first time I did. I found it to be a surprisingly involved listen, given the overall sound seems really inviting in an old school kind of way.
well, enjoy your sabbatical! I always assumed you were actually just a nature spirit, coming in to remind us of our own hubris. Gonna miss your contributions a fair bit, but not much beats travelling.
I am laughing unreasonably hard at this. I can't contain myself. This is perhaps the greatest thing I've ever seen. I don't think anything has ever summed up what it's like to host the PRC so succinctly as accidentally listing the closure of a round of submissions as a poem. This is beautiful, it really is. Too meta. It helps that this is one of the more bizarre weeks, PRC wise. I'm still deliberating my votes, so I guess this is a placeholder for now, just to preserve this moment against edits.
EDIT: Vote for Ilvaldi and Ophidian Eye. I sorta liked both. Ilvaldi's more, certainly, but I'm willing to endorse the lighthearted goofiness of Ophidian's piece.
I liked it. It was earnest, very direct and elegant, in a way unburdened by irony or modernism. The rhythm and structure were impeccable, and along with the staidness of the language, compounded to a work that reminds me a great deal of Frost. Excellent work
*****. I totally forgot to post something. My bad dude, I even had a few things ready.
---------------
We stand atop the mountain-
Bemoaning the thinness of the air
And the brightness of the Sun
Unaware of this great height
And the privilege of the sight
Unaware that we will never
Be able to make wrongs right
Never write our greatest works
And never see God unfurl
A mile long spool of truth
And drag it through the dirt-
A calloused fist raised at us-
Us; Who sprinted hard and ran
The gauntlet with jilted gaits
So that no one won the race
A finish line well never find-
Though the end is in our gaze.
Before us stands a specter:
A reflection and a ghost
Of the sins of past days
With a scratchy, haggard voice-
It sings a coded wall of noise:
A litany of mistakes and missteps
And a wellspring of regrets
That of us, implores:
"Feel you not, the heaving
Of your tired lungs?
The fading away of that
To which you clung?
Breathe- the end has come"
A few million years.
Not enough.
And never might have been.
Welcome to the twilight years-
The culmination Of unfelt fears
The Sprint is over, our world
Will Lilt and down the drain
We can only swirl-
It's already too late.
So look, Ye mighty-
Upon your work-
On your songs and
Your paintings
And your poems
And your porn-
And despair.
The dust will swirl
And the dirt will rise
And a foot, alone, will
Stand above the desert-
A plaque of golden bones,
Beholden to no man's gaze-
A reminder, from dead men
To dead friends-
"This is the only product of our days."
Some dope hip hop releases on the way people! Kendrick says he's finishing up his album, Kanye said in an interview that he's looking at september, october or november to release his new album,
Felt like a lot of the pieces were a little clumsy and aimless this week (mine included), and ilvaldi just happens to have a really strong grasp on reeling in wandering thoughts. Echoe's was about...something? Actually, literally as I'm writing this I'm realizing that it was probably about blasting for oil, which clarifies quite a bit. Before now I was only sure that it was set in the desert, and they all wanted to be in San Francisco. Blippy successfully recreated Radiohead's most popular song. And I'm not sure what to make of "Netherlands wins on penalties" except to say that mexico would have lost sooner or later against a superior netherlands team, and that the title probably confounds the subject.
A hundred and forty or so weeks;
seventy, maybe eighty or ninety submissions.
Goddamn did we run.
Half a year or so of
Missed deadlines and
Loving critique;
Late monday nights
and rushed sunday submissions.
"Remember to vote!"
"Allow me to be the first to welcome you..."
Goddamn did we run;
It gave me shin splints but
What was I using them for anyway?
Legacies and stories and
Heroes and myths;
I still can't believe we actually had to ban someone
And I'm so damn proud of the ***** that we did-
I'm proud of the country roads and political prose-
I'm proud of gods and monsters and cowardly men-
I'm proud of roses and sunsets and Otto flailing into the den-
The pace slows. Down to maybe a jog; a halfhearted trot at best.
Maybe the knees are starting to go- the lungs to fail the body to ail
and the years (all five or six) have been too much
Or maybe, the old girl, she just needs a rest.
Maybe the templates can just sit in the .txt files
And we can forget the bbcode for punching in the latest winner.
Maybe the dust can collect and we'll wait for some other nerd;
Like us;
To trip across this spot where "maybe I like writing," becomes
"What else was I doing?"
maybe one of us will make it.
Trophies will become prizes,
and someone will idolize and ask,
"what were your influences?"
And in passing, we'll recall
Haikus about ***** and socks and god,
and sonnets about crack cocaine and innocence
We'll remember that levity was our favorite,
Even if somber honesty always won-
Maybe we'll even have a favorite.
That poem Madding wrote, about the hot shower. How he let it run because the city paid for the water anyway.
Otto, falling down the stairs. A goddamn gem; the sight of which the world has been deprived
Maybe we'll just remember the times we fell in love with a series of sounds in Portugese or German
Maybe; like an endless string of untitled poems,
We'll just keep running.
Thanks, guys. To everyone I've ever interacted with in any way through the PRC. It breaks my heart to see it slowing down. I've seen the rest of this nook of MTGS slowly wither, but I always kinda figured the PRC was untouchable- because for me it was. It was a moment in history that never blinked and never faltered even when rounds got delayed. It was a thing that I spent way too many hours hosting (and yet still too few to have done a decent job), and a thing that got me through a lot of weeks. I'm a better writer for it. I'm a better person for it. I like to think I'll always remember what we did here.
Join the Poetry Running Contest!
Join the Poetry Running Contest!
A man can no longer stand alone in history
against the oceans of anonymity-
No one can struggle, mightily,
against the undertow-- and prevail.
One can only close their eyes and relax;
can only give way to the waves of our era
as the salt slowly washes away
the fine, ugly lines of our lives-
the details will become a blur
Our work, our rage, our love, our hurt
will be undone by the historian's pen;
the marrow of our days will be footnotes
amid a textbook's endless slur of words-
One can only close their eyes and inhale-
What worth has a scream
that will only go unheard?
Join the Poetry Running Contest!
Because struggle. August was Rough, and it sure didn't help that we failed to fire a single PRC. Hopefully activity gets a little more consistent; I know things get rocky after we have delayed firings.
(Glad to have you back iCwalzy, btw)
Join the Poetry Running Contest!
Join the Poetry Running Contest!
Charon oh my captain
I only to row;
One arm wounded, useless-
I only know to row.
I am a rabid dog,
Lame, and toothless-
Charon oh captain my captain
I only know to row
Join the Poetry Running Contest!
Join the Poetry Running Contest!
Albums have to come out...eventually, right? I liked Pinata way more listening to it today than the first time I did. I found it to be a surprisingly involved listen, given the overall sound seems really inviting in an old school kind of way.
Join the Poetry Running Contest!
Seven million.
"In or out?"
For what? The copper
Ran out seventy years
Ago and the citrus
Doesn't like drought
"In or out?"
"You're wasting A/C"
Seven million.
The people came
Looking for something;
And the kids leave
Looking for something;
And the sun sets
And the winters are mild
And the summer wants
You dead and so does
The sheriff and the voice
At the back of your skull-
The one that has studied you-
Hand picked to write your
Biography, so he knows you-
And he regrets it. He's seen
What you've done and he nods
In agreement when you sink
your head and slur
"God damnit,
"I'm ****ed up ain't I?"
And you both think the same thing.
You both hope it's true- that you are
A remarkably awful specimen,
The apex ********,
The pinnacle of wasted space-
Because the alternative?
That everyone out there
Could be just as bad-
Well,
We've got weak stomachs
Join the Poetry Running Contest!
Join the Poetry Running Contest!
I am laughing unreasonably hard at this. I can't contain myself. This is perhaps the greatest thing I've ever seen. I don't think anything has ever summed up what it's like to host the PRC so succinctly as accidentally listing the closure of a round of submissions as a poem. This is beautiful, it really is. Too meta. It helps that this is one of the more bizarre weeks, PRC wise. I'm still deliberating my votes, so I guess this is a placeholder for now, just to preserve this moment against edits.
EDIT: Vote for Ilvaldi and Ophidian Eye. I sorta liked both. Ilvaldi's more, certainly, but I'm willing to endorse the lighthearted goofiness of Ophidian's piece.
Join the Poetry Running Contest!
I liked it. It was earnest, very direct and elegant, in a way unburdened by irony or modernism. The rhythm and structure were impeccable, and along with the staidness of the language, compounded to a work that reminds me a great deal of Frost. Excellent work
Join the Poetry Running Contest!
---------------
We stand atop the mountain-
Bemoaning the thinness of the air
And the brightness of the Sun
Unaware of this great height
And the privilege of the sight
Unaware that we will never
Be able to make wrongs right
Never write our greatest works
And never see God unfurl
A mile long spool of truth
And drag it through the dirt-
A calloused fist raised at us-
Us; Who sprinted hard and ran
The gauntlet with jilted gaits
So that no one won the race
A finish line well never find-
Though the end is in our gaze.
Before us stands a specter:
A reflection and a ghost
Of the sins of past days
With a scratchy, haggard voice-
It sings a coded wall of noise:
A litany of mistakes and missteps
And a wellspring of regrets
That of us, implores:
"Feel you not, the heaving
Of your tired lungs?
The fading away of that
To which you clung?
Breathe- the end has come"
A few million years.
Not enough.
And never might have been.
Welcome to the twilight years-
The culmination Of unfelt fears
The Sprint is over, our world
Will Lilt and down the drain
We can only swirl-
It's already too late.
So look, Ye mighty-
Upon your work-
On your songs and
Your paintings
And your poems
And your porn-
And despair.
The dust will swirl
And the dirt will rise
And a foot, alone, will
Stand above the desert-
A plaque of golden bones,
Beholden to no man's gaze-
A reminder, from dead men
To dead friends-
"This is the only product of our days."
Join the Poetry Running Contest!
But! NEW SHABAZZ PALACES
Thank god. I've only listened to two singles so far, but both are incredible. This year might shape up well after all.
Join the Poetry Running Contest!
Felt like a lot of the pieces were a little clumsy and aimless this week (mine included), and ilvaldi just happens to have a really strong grasp on reeling in wandering thoughts. Echoe's was about...something? Actually, literally as I'm writing this I'm realizing that it was probably about blasting for oil, which clarifies quite a bit. Before now I was only sure that it was set in the desert, and they all wanted to be in San Francisco. Blippy successfully recreated Radiohead's most popular song. And I'm not sure what to make of "Netherlands wins on penalties" except to say that mexico would have lost sooner or later against a superior netherlands team, and that the title probably confounds the subject.
Join the Poetry Running Contest!