Forums → Art, Music, and Writing → Periodic Poetry Contest - Theme: Touch of Truth (Page 390, due Jan. 28)

my them isn't wind. sorry.

Sounds strange.........

Zaork: It's a bad name for what I was trying to describe. Sometimes the phrasing gets awkward when you try to shape it around the rhyme. Generally it's when people use odd verbs and syntactic oddities rather than prepositional phrases. Be careful when ending the line with adverbs, gerunds, or adjectives that you don't generally find at the end of a sentence.

Sounds strange.........

Son of a bi...scuit! man am i mad! i wrote a nice poem, and guess wat happend? *BAM* lets let the freakin internet go out for less then a second, just to piss this teenager off! Now i gotta write another one...
And i cant think of one right now. i'll write one later. dangit...

I haven't done any form of long poetry for a very long time, and especially not writing to a theme, but I decided I'll give it a go and see if I still enjoy writing. I like the theme of wind, so to go with that I'm going to try to turn the Shinto creation myth into a poem. Hopefully it comes out okay.

Fujin's Charge
At the dawn of time, all was naught but a great cloud
As These separated the heavens and earth were born
Earth was a great muddy ocean and âneath heaven it cowed
Between the two a sprout came up, devoid of thorn

Soon the sprout grew great and strong
And itâs flower gave birth to the First God
This god was wont to be alone for long
It looked upon the world, and simply gave a nod

The god caused Izanagi and his wife to appear
The first God made them to finish his creation
Upon the bridge of heaven, a rainbow, they cast a spear
It was thrust deep into the heart of the ocean

When Izanagi withdrew the spear, the water curdled
It fell as stones and gave birth to the islands of Nippon
Izanagi longed to see these islands with life enkindled
He took his wife and made their home upon the maiden

All this time the lands were bathed in opaque fog
That served as barrier âtwixt the Earth and Heavens
So Fujin was called upon to drive away the smog
He rushed to Earth in response to his holy beckons

He unsealed his bag and loosed the winds upon the world
They whipped and swirled and danced across the land
Driving forth the mist and filling the Gate 'tween the worlds
His task was done, the winds were loosed
Fujin sang and pranced as the zephyrs moved to his command
And finally Sun's sweet light kissed creation

I'm going to try a free-verse poem that I hope will convey the wind cycle of destruction to reconstruction, like beach erosion.
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Wind's Artistic Nature

Many a ship has been tossed about with sudden gales.
These angry tempests that appear, as if, from nowhere.
Causing fear in the bravest hearts.
Reducing them to mere machines,
Like automatons, devoid of emotion
They concentrate every effort to keeping the ship afloat.

When the tempest reaches shore it's as if some half-crazed artist
Has lost control.
Ripping the once beautiful tall dunes in jagged chunks and
Haphazardly flinging the sand to obscure destinations.
With violence the tempest causes the roads to disappear and
Inland waterways to be choked with the very sand that was
Stolen from the beach.

Centuries old trees, once majestic, gracefully draping the roadways.
With huge canopies of naturally air conditioned shade.
Are now reduced to gnarled and ugly stumps.
Perverse, grotesque in form were killed instantly by the salty sea.

Decades old homes built too close to the shoreline are obliterated.
Leaving behind, in the tempests wake,
A grim reminder of natures uncompromising force.
"To the victor belong the spoils" by, William L. Marcy,
Comes to mind.
As if the tempest has some hidden agenda?
To reclaim the sand for its own design and
Paint a different
Masterpiece.

Winds of Change

Change has come again
It has drifted in like a well known lover.
Though I am no lover of change.

It floats over to me
It caresses my face with false reassurance.
And I know they're all lies.

The winds of changes are blowing
And they're taking me away, from all I know
And all I wish to hold dear.

In this typhoon of diversity
I am the lowly sailor madly clinging to his sloop.
Hoping only to ride out this storm.

Zaork: It's a bad name for what I was trying to describe. Sometimes the phrasing gets awkward when you try to shape it around the rhyme. Generally it's when people use odd verbs and syntactic oddities rather than prepositional phrases. Be careful when ending the line with adverbs, gerunds, or adjectives that you don't generally find at the end of a sentence.

Is it just me or is this contest dying?

Because I nearly forgot Parsat is a noob of the North (read as: wheat eater who only understands Mandarin) I had to change the words to fit the rhyme and I'm not even sure if it's grammatical anymore.



I am particularly not fond of the use of dui. Will provide translation if necessary.

Well, well, ya rice-eater from the South. My traditional is a bit rusty, but thankfully I know the characters. I think the "hui"s in the poem are the weakest points; but then again, classical Chinese is definitely not something I would hold anyone to. As to the meaning of the poem...tell me if this translation sounds about right:

The wind blows about the mountains and the snow,
From peaks they fall in order, (I assume this is what your "dui" is supposed to signify)
Those flakes fall, curving and twisting:
Dandruff on your head.

The rhyme scheme is distinctly Western; the traditional rhyme scheme for a shi is AABA. As for the content, I don't think I'm equipped to judge it really unless you confirm my attempted translation. (although o_0 was my expression when I read that last line...was slow to get the punchline)

Realized after the fact that it was really "Western", but heck, I'm too American, so that's a given. The last line is supposed to stand out against the rest of the poem as in a haiku or the couplet in Shakespeare's sonnets. Also, I'm with the Taiwanese who say Traditional > Simplified. What I love about the language is how the ordering of characters can change a phrase and how such simple characters can have different meanings. Your translation is what I meant more or less. (I'm assuming you got 'ordered' from 'aired'.) You're probably better at this because I know the words better by sound. (Yeah, I'm mostly illiterate. :P)

I'll give the more bare bones literal translations.

A more literal translation:
Mountain snow, the wind blows
From peak, downward ordered
Curving and twisting, flakes fall
Head has dandruff

This one's along the traditional rhyme scheme, but is a bit lacking, but I'll take this as my official entry.


From the peak, downwardly discarded
Curving and twisting fall
Mountain snow is blown by wind
Dandruff on your head

From the peak cast downward
Twirling as it falls
Snow from the mountain is blown by the wind
Dandruff on your head

Traditional is definitely prettier, but simplified is more expedient to write (at least to me).

Like that revised one much better. Chinese poetry = win.

AW COME ON. I don't understand traditional! Bleh. So uh. Can people still post entries?