2015 Random Word Poetry Contest Winner

This year's winner, Ed Pacht, is from New Hampshire. Ed, a frequent contributor to this blog, has written:

Poetry is a calling. As a Christian, I consider it a sacred calling, an expression of something other than earthly. I consider this true even when, as is the case in most of these poems, the subject matter is not religious at all.

A poem represents a stepping aside from ordinariness, a suspension of the usual way of thinking, an entrance into a realm of words that point to what is beyond words. I find this to be true even in the most trivial of my poems. Even when I am making a bad pun, I find that I am not seeing as I usually see, nor thinking as I usually think. And then there are poems that speak of deep things I can barely imagine, and these too arise from extraordinary ways of thinking.

Ed used all the required words and met the guidelines for this Random Word Poetry Contest. Here is his winning poem:

Merchant-Boy’s Despair

by Ed Pacht

In the southern sky flashes a clear light

amidst oily-seeming black and churning clouds

that threaten those whose course must pass beneath.

The merchant’s son has been entrusted with a task:

to lead his father’s caravan through this gloomy land

in pursuit of the scent of gold to place upon his scales.

Beneath the lowering canopy above the merchant band

they press on, encouraged by the luminous glow,

attracted by the wealth of the newly settled lands.

Their traveling clothes are patched in many places,

and their faces are mere masks of dead emotion,

no speck of joy revealed as they push on and on.

When at last they have reached to their objective,

a clipped, unfriendly voice conveys the wrenching news

that their rival has arrived some days before them,

and there’s no trade left, no business they can do,

and they so sadly must press on further southward

underneath the threatening cloud-filled skies.

Poet Ed Pacht performing his original poetry at the Exeter Town Hall, New Hampshire

Ed has an inviting manner and expresses himself in a transparent way. He reads his own work and also Chandler Hamby's "Screaming Fire" which was published here.


Other poems by Ed Pacht

Spoiled Milk
In the Wildness of My Soul
Thumbs Mightier Than Fear
The Love Soaked Road
Go Ye Into the City
Fire Screaming in the Sky
Pain Like Broken Bones
A Really Big Party
Mass of the Visitation
Lament for the Hills
Reflections on Screaming Fire
The Rose
Spoiled Milk
Why Do I Write?
Acrostic for Hannah Mulliken
Leah's Burden
Ed Pacht Captures Mickey Blue Eyes
Novum Ordo
From Random to Reason
Jesus and the Concrete Jungle
Belshazzar's Wall
My Party
Ghosties