And the Winners Are ...

I enjoyed reading the entries for this random word poetry contest. There are three winners, each has a unique voice and perspective.  Here they are:

The Casting Up of the Bested Sailors of a Sunken Ship
By Ed Pacht

I heard slivers of a harpy's tune,

lilting, luminous, distant in the mist,

in the stillness of the lackluster grey

of a leaden sky whose ebony smudges

seemed endowed with darksome portent

of a storm that soon would burst its bonds,

releasing roaring winds and pounding rains,

and bring to an end the carefree voyage

undertaken with my peers upon a sunny day.

I heard the faint, appealing singing,

and by it thought to find a sheltered cove,

some safety on terrestrial shores,

but the island haven that I sought

was miserly in granting refuge to the lost,

and my vessel on the rocks was broken,

spewing forth all that were on board,

and as we landed in that land of singing,

those that sang, revealed in their full stature,

caught and ate each one that landed,

sparing only me to tell the tale.

The Sunken Ship

By John Nichols

The luminous ghosts of Fortune’s peers

Now reside only as smudges

Upon the casements of slimy portholes

That sink in silt ‘neath the pounding waves.

Slivers of beams from that sunken ship

Float in utter night, lackluster, carefree;

The miserly hold grips its gold,

Casting up naught but a harpy’s tune:

A siren’s call from the deep.

Those ghastly bested beings rise

From their deep sheltered sleep;

Their ebon eyes luminous in the wreck,

Their terrestrial forms distant and gone,

Endowed with new souls, wise

And carapaced hosts of the deep.

The lilting cadence of their

Alluring song, the shriek of banshees,

Drive the soul to burst its bonds

And dive deep into the well of mystery

Where all men stand at full stature.

Last Gasp
By Dior Hartje, Grade 9

The sunken ship has burst its bounds, sheltered in the ebony.
Carefree smudges and distant pounding endowed the harpy’s song.
Terrestrial slivers have cost the giant its full stature.
Its lackluster peers watch, miserly
At the beauty’s casting up of its final luminous rays,
Attempting again to catch the lilting air.