Butty's challenge

butters

High on a Hill
Joined
Jul 2, 2009
Posts
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Ok, poeteers, this is the first week for what i hope might grow into a fairly regular event, and i'm taking responsibility for the first one, after which other poets will be taking their turns to set one.

This week I offer you a phrase that i hope you'll find to be some inspiration. Its entirely up to you how you respond to it - use it as your title, in the body of the poem, reference it obliquely, or simply write something that sparks from it.

on blueprints drafted before birth


(from Christina Springer's "Reaching across the void- to my mother")

there is NO set form or style required but ALL styles and forms are welcome!


Please post your poems here, and i'll choose my favourite at the end of the week. Happy writings, poeteers!
 
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2/46

On blueprints drafted before birth
Are bodies modeled. God erects
A framework built of bones and breath,
Then flips a coin to fix the sex.

If that sounds arbitrary, well,
It is. In almost all respects
We differ mainly in our Will—
Not dangly bits found below decks.

But vive la différence, dear God,
For blessing concave with convex
As complement. Your greatest Good
Glues intimate to intersects.


.
 
Her body is a place of mirth,
Hands and feet sprung from the Earth.

While I may be a piddling serf,
She was made for higher berth.

"Why dost thou pine and suffer dearth?"
She's gone with Paris to the church!

Some folks learn to measure worth,
On blueprints drafted before their birth.
 
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Best Picture

James Cameron drew up the Na'vi
From blueprints drafted before birth
With expertise, computer savvy,
A ball of loot big as the Earth.
In 3D, Jimmy's film's amazing,
At his Pandora we're star-gazing
Enthralled by luscious technical
Screen wizardry that's epochal.
But here's the twist—the Oscars mostly
Bypassed Jim's expensive flick
In favor of one by some chick
Who's his ex-wife—one much less costly.
And so, this headline (though it's mean):
King of the World trumped by Ex-Queen.




I didn't see anything that said you can't enter more than once, so I'm trying to stuff the ballot box in case it's judged like a Lottery drawing. :)

This is an Onegin Stanza, by the way. I think. I didn't double-check the rhyme scheme.
 
On blueprints drafted before birth
you were planned and crafted
to be my compliment.
The silhouette of my profile,
the mend for my every flaw,
the finished form of this ragged prototype.
On blueprints drafted before birth,
You were created to complete me.
Carefully measured and laid on the cutting table,
every hair on your head
and thought in your mind.
Such perfection in execution
could never be left to fortune.
 
Brooke Sheild's Eyelash Deficiency: Cured!
Thank you Jesus, whose miracles never cease

Brooke Sheild's Eyelash Deficiency: Cured! Thank God, your miracles never cease

Across blueprints
we stretch angles with elastic,
straighten psychic curves
into lines with LifeTime endorsed
pharmaceuticals. You
have seen them press against
the current of posterity. You have
seen lasers burn and chemicals foam
those follicles persuaded to grow
or die depending on location.

Fuck fate! Blue smudge erasures
cross mind and heart and adrenal streams
while clots thrown high in thigh get caught up
(elsewhere)
self suffocation you were stolen,
knees broken I lost you I lost you
I lost you.

But oh how these hips still sway slow and circle in tighter
circle in this primitive need for someone anyone to match my
movements balance all forces until as one
we are finally zero. For now. Was this
drafted before birth? This curse?
This magical motor hum that draws me to you
and to you? You, my habit, you my promise,
you my wired edge.


oh in case someone was wondering, this is no form, no meter, no corset or stockings.
 
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On downy head and glow of an angel
a mother's lips are pressed,
her tears baptismal through the pain
to wonder through the years ahead
which blueprints drafted before birth
should make him be this way.
A finger curls around her own, grasping
as if he knows this is the love
that sees not imperfections but
a loving heart, a joy, her son.
 
We all have a debt
To nature due
I've paid mine
And so must you.



On one hand, there's the scheme,
Blueprints and schemata,
Drafted by Mom and Dad,
Before oft dreamt of you. .............But then
Birth happens...
 
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1

fit, form, function
packaged precisely to scale
tolerance taken into account
lubrication provided as needed
sequence programmed to repeat
some assembly required
two person lift desired
fabricated for fit
self-test enabled
just press go
 
Dream home

On the first day he presented us with
blueprints, fine blue lines round misty shades
drafted by experienced eyes.
Before we had no conception of the
birth of our home but here
on white sheets smoothed wide
blueprints, ghosts of rooms to be.
Drafted, we believed finally in the forms
before us, Dresden lines on china-white a
birth of a dream, our dream.
 
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On blueprints drafted before birth,
the galaxy a lonely sea
in ink and star, the newborn earth

of less or greater soul in me.
Before a word was ever spoke,
the galaxy a lonely sea

still blind and fingerless awoke
to know the world and seek her breast
before a word was ever spoke

or clamoured in the great unrest,
in strife and passion, endless need
to know the world and seek her breast.

In moments after birth the seed
of memory begins to sleep
in strife and passion, endless need

to know again that velvet deep
on blueprints drafted before birth
of memory begins to sleep
in ink and star, the newborn earth.
 
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Triangle Shirtwaist Factory

Maryann feckin’ oirishes pushcarts
To dicker for some day old kale
And pullet eggs, two pennies saved
For hot cross buns on Sunday.

No Bowsie I, I look for work
And eat my oats by five a.m.
Like all the milk cart horses do
Whose shite I’ve shoveled once or twice
Not far from Greene and Washington
Where Da he works a factory
And got a job for Maryann.

Staying warm Chris sakes till March
Would make me think of girls again,
Though I’d never tell the priest
Whose church on Sunday warms my feet
Sweet Jaysus five degrees at least
Worthy of his five Hail Marys
He says to pray ten times at night
To chasten all those teenage dreams.

But dreams one time were little more
Than blue moods drafted before birth
Of footprints on an earthen floor
In a County Galway house
Himself and Mother talk about.

They say this doesn’t stink as much
With smells like Mother’s soda bread
Whose songs I hear at half past ten
Unless she says the rosary.

She’s goin’ for the ride tonight,
For Da brought home some pay today,
And Maryann will work next week
At the shirtwaist factory.
 
These are the sheets we lie upon,
colourful and smooth, blue prints
of forgetmetnot buds are drafted
across where we loved before,
new to your love as in rebirth.

Nibbles at skin bring blue prints
of ecstacy, begging for me before
the need became too much upon
your senses, nipples from drafted
sighs erect, I seek inside rebirth.

I haven't reached this place before
nor has my mind and body drafted
such brilliant yet crazy blueprints,
bring into my life a yearning upon
which I must now call rebirth.

The sweetest breath has drafted
across my cock, your lips upon
the head teasing, touching before
licking softly down to blue prints
of veins engulfing, I moan rebirth.

And now my love we share rebirth
I move hard, erect and ready upon
your slender body, already drafted
for my desire, soft and open before
we blend creating new blueprints.

I think it's a form of my own making not quite a Sestina .... I may call it Annikey
 
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On Blueprints drafted before birth


The light ebbs from their eyes

Darkness creeps into them after the transfer

They join me in fractured lines of thought

I savor being filled each time

Until it is time to hunt again


Evil some say

Others cry deranged or ill or sick

The worst are those who demand justice for my crime

Crime? There is no crime in me

and it is time to hunt again

I act

Alone
Subtle
Complete
Perfect

They are being built into me

Each time I hunt again


I am the taker of souls

I extract their light and fill myself with it

It is who I am

It is how I was made

The pathways if my mind were laid out on blueprints drafted before birth

Cry out against Father or Mother or God if you choose but you are wrong

I am the bringer of death and twilight is beginning in my brain

It is time to hunt again
 
Ok, poeteers, this is the first week for what i hope might grow into a fairly regular event, and i'm taking responsibility for the first one, after which other poets will be taking their turns to set one.

This week I offer you a phrase that i hope you'll find to be some inspiration. Its entirely up to you how you respond to it - use it as your title, in the body of the poem, reference it obliquely, or simply write something that sparks from it.

on blueprints drafted before birth


(from Christina Springer's "Reaching across the void- to my mother")

there is NO set form or style required but ALL styles and forms are welcome!


Please post your poems here, and i'll choose the winner at the end of the week. Happy writings, poeteers!

The beauty of the gunfight (aka: slap face) is that the person who posts the challenge has no say in the result of the challenge. It's why I personally adore the Gunfight. Once you have a 'God' in the challenge (the one who posts it and judges it) you no longer have a fair poetic fight. It is biased, from the get go, toward the judge. This is the only reason I will not participate in this challenge, Chippy.
 
a3xxs.jpg


Cyanotype as Myth

The sheet shows nothing but your outline, traced
along one drift of hip in Prussian blue.
Your silhouette is blank, in no way true
to anything but shape—the way you placed
your breast curved on the paper, turned your waist
to draw this line, this sinuous tattoo
of pure abstraction. Beauty's always new
in Aphrodite's eyes—just not this chaste.

So now, my Galatea, rise unbound
from this flat, photographic surface. Be
a Woman and not Art, with Love be crowned!

Pygmalion thus to the picture talked.
The miracle, though, wasn't meant to be:
this blueprint wasn't birthed, but simply stalked.




Cyanotype by Trabucco Mumi
Form: Italian Sonnet
 
(First take)

on blueprints drafted before birth


she told me after the fact,
as she often did,
but seeing the telltale marker
on the white plastic stick
slapped a smile like, well,
like nothing else in the world

much later, when it all came
crashing about my head,
evaporating like dew under
sunlight, I knew the truth of it

machinations,
manipulations,
I was always susceptible to a
fluttering eye and a set of
rounded curves
-----
:cool:
 
Ok, poeteers, this is the first week for what i hope might grow into a fairly regular event, and i'm taking responsibility for the first one, after which other poets will be taking their turns to set one.

This week I offer you a phrase that i hope you'll find to be some inspiration. Its entirely up to you how you respond to it - use it as your title, in the body of the poem, reference it obliquely, or simply write something that sparks from it.

on blueprints drafted before birth


(from Christina Springer's "Reaching across the void- to my mother")

there is NO set form or style required but ALL styles and forms are welcome!


Please post your poems here, and i'll choose my favourite at the end of the week. Happy writings, poeteers!
on blueprints drafted before birth

pen poised the artist
lays the finger on the page
and presses down with the nib
to create the archetype of curve
and lines twisted in the spiral frame
Circular Amazing Tantamount Great
to become the drawing spread
against the universe that spawns
the unique ONE of you.
 
Class of '66

We were the unwanted ones
dispatched to the lower forms.
Given the greenest teachers,
easily rebellious, resistant to punishment,
abandoned as hopeless, our future
on blueprints drafted before birth.
We swam against insurmountable tides
and only in adulthood as the manacles of
modern schooling slipped off did we flower.
Artists, architects, writers,
designers and entrepreneurs,
on the blueprints drafted before our birth
there are no directions, no hints
of things to come.
 
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I really like this (except maybe for manacles of modern schooling). I can relate though.

We were the unwanted ones
dispatched to the lower forms.
Given the greenest teachers, unseasoned,
easily rebelled against, soft on punishment.
abandoned as hopeless, our future
on blueprints drafted before birth,
we swam against insurmountable tides
and only in adulthood as the manacles of
modern schooling slipped off did we flower.
Artists, architects, writers,
designers and entrepreneurs,
on the blueprints drafted before our birth
there are no directions, no hints
of things to come.
 
I really like this (except maybe for manacles of modern schooling). I can relate though.

Thank you PG - you quoted before my editing :) -

Interesting exercise - which is better? I thought the version you've quoted was a bit misleading in the 3rd and 4th lines.

I expect Annie and Butty will relate too - unless you're very lucky British school stifle any individualism or creativity.
 
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on blueprints drafted before birth
Okay, fine, damn you, I can't resist your temptation:


On blueprints drafted before birth
I knew what I was
upon a time past
cushioned by lust
and now I'm but dust
of lovers desire
 
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Design

In blueprints laid out before birth
both parents scientists – chemists
soon I shone, nature and nurture.
I found physics, geophysics and geology.
Liberal and open minded, yet strict Catholics
boy wished marriage, wife's death, priesthood -
if lucky at death all seven sacraments.
Young man lost his faith, kept those principles.
Girl-shy guy found a girl, fears led to lost love.
Sometimes wine with a meal, responsible drinking.
Alcohol help me forget her, pulled me down.
Not my parents plans, nor mine.
 
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