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.
What happened to everyone's trophies? I guess they didn't carry over from the Curse transition. Awww...
I remember I used to be proud of running the secret MTGS trophy mill. Tucked away inconspicuously in our little corner. I think we handed out more trophies than any other MTGS event/subforum. More than Clans and more than the Forum Awards which I inadvertently helped destroy.
It's sad to see the PRC in this state. Time really does fly. It feels like it's the same users in the Off Topic subforums day in and day out. The numbers dwindle and the next thing you know we're all in our mid 20's and up, doing our own things, and talking about how the 90's/00's is making us feel old.
Anyway, I don't really know where I'm going with this or what I want to say; but the PRC was a special contest in a special place and it (and MTGS) will always have a place in my heart.
this is basically the only reason i came to this site, for something like ten years. eight? eight-ish? but alas.
i suppose, in some ways, talking out what i've been going through has helped. poem-bound or not. i don't know if i've been writing poems, the last two, three years, as much as i've been narrating my life, as it blossoms and expands. but one would assume that in some ways that's a good thing.
i went through being a mod for the site! and then being demodded because i told people that digital river has windows 7 downloads if you have a valid cd key. ... still utterly ridiculous, but whatever.
i haven't played magic seriously since ... maybe 2008? the game is old now, withered. the rooms that people play in are crowded with the musk of odor and disgust. the people i used to play with, who i at one time considered friends, have generally revealed themselves to be shallow caricatures of people, and the majority of the people i've seen in game stores are similar. mtgo is safer, more fun; oddly it's more acceptable to be worse there, so people are generally nicer. i'm not sure how that works, but i haven't been to a magic game in real life in forever, and i'm pretty sure that the small joy i'd get from playing the game for ~30 minutes out of the hour would, as always, be outweighed by the odd feeling of being different. being unable to talk to people, because they want to talk, weirdly enough, about star wars. losing interest in the grizzly-bear-of-the-month and why it's slightly better than the ten other grizzly bears that have existed.
of course, it's always felt that way, but i used to pretend, before. pretending's pretty terrible. i suppose that again, if you create enough silver-tongued lies, you stab aimlessly into the darkness enough that you arrive at some variant of the truth. thank god i'm there, at least. i'm so self-focused right now that i haven't the foggiest if any of you are there, but i hope that you are, regardless of what it would mean for you.
---
you probably are. i have weird issues.
---
i think i'll still get pm's if people send them. i would be up for a sort of writer's email list or something (though in my experience this sort of thing never works). this contest has been in many ways my only writing for the last two years, as my job took my thought and then, as i retrieved it back, my life opened up its gaping maw and decided, evermore, to swallow.
i've written a lot of poems during this contest. (don't i have the most wins? a function of showing up the most.) i never really got a feeling that people were on my wavelength, poems floating past people as a sort of divine miscommunication. probably ten of them were good. on the other hand, if none of them were really understood, which is likely the case ... then they were all terrible. because what is the purpose of art, if not to express something?
the one that people 'liked the most', from what i saw, was not one of them. opinions are always so fickle.
i was even accused of plagiarism, once. (! how DARE you write something not exactly like what you've written before !)
it's been a strange ride. we lost other people, too, and, like most of you, odds are high that i'll never talk to them again.
not /lost/, just gone. but, having experienced both ... i wonder, sometimes, what the difference is.
my mouth is full of winsome lies -
and eyes are full of death besides
but luckily the soul is wise -
it sees beyond my blindness and
forced failure makes a better guise,
so as i come again alive,
it feels like life's a decent plan
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!
Sniff. I'm touched.
special thanks to sentimentgx4 for the sig
Pourquoi?
I'd be willing to contribute and help save it from the brink, but I fear it's too late.
My Mafia Stats - My Helpdesk
G Omnath, Locus of Mana U Arcum Dagsson BUG The Mimeoplasm GW Gaddock Teeg X Karn, Silver Golem
I remember I used to be proud of running the secret MTGS trophy mill. Tucked away inconspicuously in our little corner. I think we handed out more trophies than any other MTGS event/subforum. More than Clans and more than the Forum Awards which I inadvertently helped destroy.
It's sad to see the PRC in this state. Time really does fly. It feels like it's the same users in the Off Topic subforums day in and day out. The numbers dwindle and the next thing you know we're all in our mid 20's and up, doing our own things, and talking about how the 90's/00's is making us feel old.
Anyway, I don't really know where I'm going with this or what I want to say; but the PRC was a special contest in a special place and it (and MTGS) will always have a place in my heart.
i suppose, in some ways, talking out what i've been going through has helped. poem-bound or not. i don't know if i've been writing poems, the last two, three years, as much as i've been narrating my life, as it blossoms and expands. but one would assume that in some ways that's a good thing.
i went through being a mod for the site! and then being demodded because i told people that digital river has windows 7 downloads if you have a valid cd key. ... still utterly ridiculous, but whatever.
i haven't played magic seriously since ... maybe 2008? the game is old now, withered. the rooms that people play in are crowded with the musk of odor and disgust. the people i used to play with, who i at one time considered friends, have generally revealed themselves to be shallow caricatures of people, and the majority of the people i've seen in game stores are similar. mtgo is safer, more fun; oddly it's more acceptable to be worse there, so people are generally nicer. i'm not sure how that works, but i haven't been to a magic game in real life in forever, and i'm pretty sure that the small joy i'd get from playing the game for ~30 minutes out of the hour would, as always, be outweighed by the odd feeling of being different. being unable to talk to people, because they want to talk, weirdly enough, about star wars. losing interest in the grizzly-bear-of-the-month and why it's slightly better than the ten other grizzly bears that have existed.
of course, it's always felt that way, but i used to pretend, before. pretending's pretty terrible. i suppose that again, if you create enough silver-tongued lies, you stab aimlessly into the darkness enough that you arrive at some variant of the truth. thank god i'm there, at least. i'm so self-focused right now that i haven't the foggiest if any of you are there, but i hope that you are, regardless of what it would mean for you.
---
you probably are. i have weird issues.
---
i think i'll still get pm's if people send them. i would be up for a sort of writer's email list or something (though in my experience this sort of thing never works). this contest has been in many ways my only writing for the last two years, as my job took my thought and then, as i retrieved it back, my life opened up its gaping maw and decided, evermore, to swallow.
i've written a lot of poems during this contest. (don't i have the most wins? a function of showing up the most.) i never really got a feeling that people were on my wavelength, poems floating past people as a sort of divine miscommunication. probably ten of them were good. on the other hand, if none of them were really understood, which is likely the case ... then they were all terrible. because what is the purpose of art, if not to express something?
the one that people 'liked the most', from what i saw, was not one of them. opinions are always so fickle.
i was even accused of plagiarism, once. (! how DARE you write something not exactly like what you've written before !)
it's been a strange ride. we lost other people, too, and, like most of you, odds are high that i'll never talk to them again.
not /lost/, just gone. but, having experienced both ... i wonder, sometimes, what the difference is.
and eyes are full of death besides
but luckily the soul is wise -
it sees beyond my blindness and
forced failure makes a better guise,
so as i come again alive,
it feels like life's a decent plan
special thanks to sentimentgx4 for the sig
Pourquoi?