Slow Cellar Door Poetry Challenge

[Angeline]

That's right, here on the poetry forum we bring you the best of everyone's suggestions to make exciting new challenges for your poems.

We do it all for you.

And we give you choices! In this contest you can:

1) Write a poem entitled

Slow (Tristesse's suggestion)

2) Write a poem entitled

Cellar Door (Lauren Hynde's suggestion)

3) Write a poem entitled

Slow Cellar Door (the combined approach, which Liar likes)

There are no other rules. Form or free verse, long or short, illustrated or un--just have at it.

We'll see if we can get a prize for the contest, but if not yknow just write a poem anyway.

The deadline for posting them will be

Sunday, June 19th at 8:00 pm EST

That gives you two weeks to write them. As soon as I find out whether this is a contest with an award, I'll let you all know, and if so we can do the anonymous judging thingy. If not, you can just post them in this thread on the 20th.

I'll keep you all informed, but you can still say whether or not you're in--that doesn't have to be a secret, right?

Ok, Lauren? I did it.

 

[Guest]

I'm in

 

[Guest]

Me 2.

 

[Lauren Hynde]

How do you feel about variations, such as, for example, Slow and Hard up against the Cellar Door?

 

[Guest]

How do you feel about variations, such as, for example, Slow and Hard up against the Cellar Door?

Damn! There goes my poem!



kidding

 

[annaswirls]

I just read this as stellar door

how flexible are you?

yelling Stella at the Cellah door

celtic swelter and the soup du jour

melting sweller of the fruit loop whore

 

[Angeline]

I just read this as stellar door

how flexible are you?

yelling Stella at the Cellah door

celtic swelter and the soup du jour

melting sweller of the fruit loop whore

I'm very flexible.

You know me...I don't care what you call it. I just want you to write a good poem.

 

[annaswirls]

I'm very flexible.

You know me...I don't care what you call it. I just want you to write a good poem.

girl you crazy

so if I were in your class and you said write a sonnet, would you be okay if I said

OH! I thought you said BONNET!


I would be the brat in the back who would keep it up until you said-- Anna follow the damn directions and zip it.


I think that I shall go with Stella Dora
yum

 

[Angeline]

girl you crazy

so if I were in your class and you said write a sonnet, would you be okay if I said

OH! I thought you said BONNET!


I would be the brat in the back who would keep it up until you said-- Anna follow the damn directions and zip it.


I think that I shall go with Stella Dora
yum

It'll be a cold day in hell before I get to teach the kids I work with how to write a sonnet. I'd be more likely to be asking them what rhymes with sonnet in which case bonnet would be fine.

There's this bookcase in the room where I teach with one book called "Interpreting Poetry," and I sigh every time I pass it cause I want to teach that, but they keep giving me the 5 and 6 year olds, so I'm more involved with those fine points of difference between long and short vowels.



PS mmmm. Stella D'oro chocolate biscotti. Is it lunchtime yet?

 

[Angeline]

girl you crazy

so if I were in your class and you said write a sonnet, would you be okay if I said

OH! I thought you said BONNET!


I would be the brat in the back who would keep it up until you said-- Anna follow the damn directions and zip it.


I think that I shall go with Stella Dora
yum

Oh, I did have to separate two bad boys last week who wouldn't shut up about Star Wars. I spoke to them verrrry sternly.

ee said omg you dommed them. lol. (he's a sick old puppy.)

 

[flyguy69]

I'm very flexible.

.....

So, apparently, is Tristesse.

 

[sandspike]

ok

This basement thing sounds cool. I'll be there.

 

[PatCarrington]

This basement thing sounds cool. I'll be there.

my basement was the scariest place this side of the River Styx.

i think i can do this.

 

[annaswirls]

my basement was the scariest place this side of the River Styx.

i think i can do this.

wondering which side of the river he is on......

 

[Angeline]

I'm going to write about our cellar. I have many many memories of it. Actually of various cellars in places I've lived. But I'll write about the one where I was a kid. I don't like to think about the one where we lived when I went to college. That's the one where my mother threw out all my Beatles cards because they were taking up too much space (one box!). I want to cry every time I think about it. The poem would be too sad.

http://www.thebeatlesplace.com/images/cards-1.jpg

 

[PatCarrington]

wondering which side of the river he is on......

the hot side.

 

[annaswirls]

I'm going to write about our cellar. I have many many memories of it. Actually of various cellars in places I've lived. But I'll write about the one where I was a kid. I don't like to think about the one where we lived when I went to college. That's the one where my mother threw out all my Beatles cards because they were taking up too much space (one box!). I want to cry every time I think about it. The poem would be too sad.

http://www.thebeatlesplace.com/images/cards-1.jpg

mine are still in my parent's attic! along with the mirror, 45's and other paraphanalia.

aren't we both too young to have been Beatles fans?

 

[annaswirls]

the hot side.

apparently I am too, summer has arrived in Baltimore.
hot diggity dayum.

 

[Angeline]

mine are still in my parent's attic! along with the mirror, 45's and other paraphanalia.

aren't we both too young to have been Beatles fans?

You are.

On the other hand, my 13-year-old loves the Beatles.

I had complete sets of every series of Beatle cards. My sister and I had a great scam going where we bought Beatle cards for everyone at school and opened the packs verrry carefully and took out the ones we didn't have and replaced them with duplicates. lol. What a little sneak, huh?

And I had magazines and some very rare things from fan clubs. And she threw it all away--even the three hairs my father swore were from Ringo's head. I'm still traumatized.

Is that a cellar poem?

 

[bogusbrig]

aren't we both too young to have been Beatles fans?

My brother was born in '64 and is a Beatles fan. I was born in '55 and never was. They were just too uncool for my generation but by the time of the accidental conception, birth of my brother and his growth into an obnoxious teenager the pendulum had swung back and it was cool for my brother's generation to like the Beatles.

On the whole I and my peers still don't get them, although we reluctantly admit there was some talent and originality there.

Sexual intercourse began
In nineteen sixty-three
(Which was rather late for me)-
Between the end of the Chatterley ban
And the Beatles' first LP.

Maybe I'm just resentful but Beatle memorabilia is best put in the waste bin.

 

[wildsweetone]

This challenge sounds interesting. I think I'll make an unofficial attempt, everything aligning.

 

[BooMerengue]

This is a part attic poem and a part cellar poem. It's the best I can do combining them. I just don't feel much like writing poems anymore, but this just sorta popped into my head, so here it is. I didn't wait cuz it doesn't really fit either contest. Oh, well...

He sat down on the porch step;
his shoulders slumped as he sighed.
"Whats the matter, Boy?" his old Grammy asked
"You ain't found nothing to do?"

"I went to the attic, Grammy, and it was empty."
She nodded and watched him.
"I went to the cellar, and it was empty, too.
I can't find nothin' to do around here."

"What'd you expect to find, Boy?"
"I thought there'd be some old toys maybe,
like the ones you told me about you had
when you were little."

"Lemme tell you something." she said
as her barefoot slid out and rocked her chair again.
"If there was anything in that attic,
it'd be my history- not yours."

"If there were any old bones in that cellar,
it'd been me buried them there- not you.
I learned the hard way, son, you can't
live another's history. It'll drag you down.

You got to live your own. You got to start fresh.
Only thing I got to leave you is my words.
You take 'em and learn 'em. And hold them deep.
Whatever comes your way you live it best you can.

Don't keep no souvenirs. And whatever else you do
promise me just one thing?
Don't build an attic or a cellar in your house.
Keep your house alive, and clean,

and keep your history to yourself.
Your kids will love you better for it."
His shoulders straightened and his smile came back
as he said "Lets go catch a mess of catfish, ok, Grammy?"​

raw and unedited. thats me.

lol

 

[sandspike]

I'm out

Too creepy. Will post "open the cellar door'" tomorrow in the new poems.
I'll come back and read what happens.

 

[BooMerengue]

Too creepy. Will post "open the cellar door'" tomorrow in the new poems.
I'll come back and read what happens.

Creepy?? Why??

 

[wildsweetone]

Mine's turning out quite strange too sandspike... the dark side coming out methinks. Though mine's slipped out before lol