Post by Wille-Harlia on Nov 6, 2023 12:02:55 GMT -5
After a week of voting, we have ourselves a winner for the October 2023 Poet Laureate Contest!
Join me in congratulating Pantso on their victory with "V" for Victory as well as commiserating Kingdom os Alto Mare (The Final Victory) and tomkmaniac (The Eternal and Multitudinous Victories of Glorious Tomkmenistan)!
"V" for Victory
I signed a V at the man
who bagged my groceries
when he said "come again soon".
He smiled and raised it right back at me.
I nodded and went about
my business for the day.
That little sign,
a simple signature
of strength, confidence, and cheer . . .
All that firework emotion implied and
summed up succinctly in a gesture
flashed and forgotten in thoughtless moment.
Where are the parades?
Where is the celebration and spectacle,
the towering monument and glorifying speech?
Where are the lengthy toasts,
the flags in windows, precious moments shrined forever
in digitized high resolution?
Gone and forgotten,
drowned in the tears
of widows and widowers,
Buried beneath the grief
of sons and daughters,
aunts and uncles, siblings and cousins,
Destroyed forever in the
roiling chaos of the conflicts
that gave us V for Victory -
and this trite little sign
of two fingers from a raised fist -
the V for Vanquished.
"V" is for the ash of dreams and
the sick sorrow of loss,
affecting joyful pride.
The Poet Laureate Contest will be back in February, so keep up the creativity, Islanders!
After a week of voting, we have ourselves a winner for the October 2023 Poet Laureate Contest!
Join me in congratulating Pantso on their victory with "V" for Victory as well as commiserating Kingdom os Alto Mare (The Final Victory) and tomkmaniac (The Eternal and Multitudinous Victories of Glorious Tomkmenistan)!
"V" for Victory
I signed a V at the man
who bagged my groceries
when he said "come again soon".
He smiled and raised it right back at me.
I nodded and went about
my business for the day.
That little sign,
a simple signature
of strength, confidence, and cheer . . .
All that firework emotion implied and
summed up succinctly in a gesture
flashed and forgotten in thoughtless moment.
Where are the parades?
Where is the celebration and spectacle,
the towering monument and glorifying speech?
Where are the lengthy toasts,
the flags in windows, precious moments shrined forever
in digitized high resolution?
Gone and forgotten,
drowned in the tears
of widows and widowers,
Buried beneath the grief
of sons and daughters,
aunts and uncles, siblings and cousins,
Destroyed forever in the
roiling chaos of the conflicts
that gave us V for Victory -
and this trite little sign
of two fingers from a raised fist -
the V for Vanquished.
"V" is for the ash of dreams and
the sick sorrow of loss,
affecting joyful pride.
The Poet Laureate Contest will be back in February, so keep up the creativity, Islanders!
