And the winners are... Jordan Romain and Ed Pacht. Here are their winning entries:
Web of Lies
Your web of lies appears to show
the gladness of a kind soul,
masking the prickly strips of silk,
fragments that flash
like hollowing salutes.
A pair of love-soaked silk ribbons
swoop between the pillars,
cinching a tightly laced corset.
The dust of betrayal fades,
revealing a blood-red trench.
In its midst clay
molds your life to the lies
you created.
Deeper still,
iron chains box and bind you.
Before you realize, you are forever deep
in the bottomless pit,
caught in your web of lies.
---Jordan Romain (Grade 10)
The Love-Soaked Road
The cacti stood in prickly rows beside the path,
much like pillars lined beside a sacred way.
A pair was walking hand-in hand in blowing dust,
bare feet slapping on the hard-packed clay.
In gladness beginning a journey together,
they watched the eagles swoop so far above,
with snow-white feathers flashing in the sun
in silent salute to their growing love.
For two whose lives were cut to ribbons
by the iron forces of a cruel world,
pounded into battered fragments,
and into the trash with scorn were hurled,
there seemed no choice for such as these,
that were prisoned, and trapped in that dark box,
and hopelessly caught like flies in a web,
straining and struggling to break through the locks.
Then a kind soul with a voice like silk
discovered those two, each in a trench,
brought them together, lifted them up,
and left them alone on a little stone bench,
hollowing there a place in their hearts
each for the other, where pain had been,
reaching to touch both hands and soul,
each healing the other deeply within.
The cacti stood in prickly rows beside the path,
much like pillars lined beside a sacred way.
A pair was walking that love-soaked road,
bare feet slapping on the hard-packed clay.
In gladness beginning a journey together,
they watched as sunset made the sky red,
a radiant salute to their growing love,
knowing that soon their vows would be said.
---ed pacht
