Sta.sh
the features and congratulate the artist!
`jade-pandora! 
For all of the featured artists: If you receive a DD for one 
Although the contest deadline is approaching in less than four hours,
This article’s deviant spotlight: featuring the lovely *UntamedUnwanted. She has offered to answer a few questions as well, to tell us a bit about what inspires her writing and which piece in particular she favors.
This was the fourth year I've run this contest and this was the hardest to judge thus far! The overwhelming amount of
amazing entries to this contest made every decision almost impossible to make. Never before have I had such
incredible difficulty narrowing down the entries to three winners. Following in step with last year, because there were
so many amazing entries, I am including a few honorable mentions along with the winners.
I want to thank all of you for your amazing work, for your efforts, for
creating such amazing pieces of poetry. Not everyone can win, and
believe me I wish you all could. Whether you won or not you should be
incredibly proud of your work. These pieces have been truly wonderful
and by simply creating something for this contest you've given me such a
beautiful gift. I adore literature and I have a special place in my
heart for poetry. Every entry has meant something to me, and I hope, it
has meant something to all of you. Thank you so much and I hope to see
all of you again next year for the 5th Annual Poetry Screams Prompt
Contest.
Interesting Contest Facts: Total Entries: 92
Total Entrants: 57
Most used prompt: Graveside Serenade [16 Entries]
Least used prompt: Stalker [1 Entry]
Prompt Breakdown: Graveside Serenade [16], Descent into Madness [15],
Smile like a Scythe [11], In the Glow of Candlelit Eyes [10], The Dying Season [10],
A Debt of Bones [10], Haunted Star [7], Nightdance and Shadowplay [6],
Autumn Kiss [4], Shapes in the Void [2], Stalker [1]
Winners1st Place"homunculus" by *anachronoxian
Prompt: Shapes in the Void
homunculustendrils, tangled in shadow
coalesce out of the void
furtive, curious, fearful
exploring tentative forms
expanding, recoiling
congealing, morphing
proto-limbs shudder, emerge
shufflling, shambling out of pitch
acrid flowing gases, reeking
ammonia, cloves, bile
misting, condensing
green, gray, lambent
droplets on stone
brazier cold
ashes gray
sigils marking
unclean epithets
struggling appendage
paws the darkness
the umbilicus dissipates
smoke serpent fading
dim memory
reds and purples
dark fluids, amoebas
warm, womblike sea
throbbing, pulsing, confusion
stygian expanses
distant luminescence
ethereal, alluring, forbi
=dreamsinstatic 2,000 points
A Six Month Subscription
A One Month Journal Feature
Inclusion in Friday Night Features
#CRLiterature 1 Year Subscription
#CRLiterature 1 Print of Choice
#Poetry-Screams Journal Feature
#Literary-Visions Journal Feature
=SitsUnderWaterfalls Inclusion in #Writers-Workshop Special Journal Feature
`LadyLincoln 200 Points
*TheFinalHikari Journal Feature in both #xWritersUtopiax and #Writers--club
*intricately-ordinary - Critique
=TwilightPoetess Commision (A Poem up to 30 Lines; topic, genre and formatting chosen by the winner).
*Dani-the-Naiad Spotlight Feature
`IrrevocableFate Journal Feature
=Echostar08 - 3 Month Sub
*kamcalste - Spotlight Feature
100 points donated by *dragon-fly-to-me
150 points donated by *dietcocaine
`Memnalar Feature
=Sammur-amat Critique
2nd PlaceAutumn's Kiss by ~Sapient-Butterfly
Prompt: Autumn Kiss
Autumn's KissChilling whispers chase away summers sun,
Fingers caress, coax life to end.
A gentle kiss, from red stained lips, signal autumn has begun.
Night draws in, the day is done,
To darkness's will the world shall bend.
Chilling whispers chase away summers sun.
The golden harvests long have been spun,
Now fields lay barren, no more to append.
A gentle kiss, from red stained lips, signal autumn has begun.
Drained of colour, the world turns dun,
Off to the horizon all things do blend.
Chilling whispers chase away summers sun.
Enveloping warmth the new season does shun,
The promise of winter on her breath doth descend.
A gentle kiss, from red stain
=dreamsinstatic 1,000 points
A three month subscription
A One Month Journal Feature
Inclusion in Friday Night Features
#Poetry-Screams Journal Feature
#Literary-Visions Journal Feature
=SitsUnderWaterfalls Special Journal Feature in #Writers-Workshop
*TheFinalHikari Journal Features in #xWritersUtopiax and #Writers--club
*intricately-ordinary - Critique
=TwilightPoetess Commision - (A Poem up to 30 Lines; topic, genre and formatting chosen by the winner).
`IrrevocableFate Journal Feature
*kamcalste - Spotlight Feature
`Memnalar Feature
=Sammur-amat Critique
3rd PlaceCarving Constellations by =LadyofGaerdon
Prompt: Haunted Star
Carving ConstellationsDoctors carve out constellations,
stitch star maps into my skin,
a web of scars, a path to take
to find myself again.
My scars are sewn of haunted stars,
constellations but half-drawn;
ghosts of star-fire whispering words
that fade out with the dawn.
They took my rib from me,
ground it up, reformed it,
turned it into Eve;
made a girl with my own name:
a girl they say is me.
My fragile face now hers,
our spirit splintered,
she stands for nothing
I once stood for.
Deep scars fade
before their meanings are deciphered;
yet more maps unfold
=dreamsinstatic 500 points
A one month subscription
A One Month Journal Feature
Inclusion in Friday Night Features
#Poetry-Screams Journal Feature
#Literary-Visions Journal Feature
=SitsUnderWaterfalls Special Journal Feature in #Writers-Workshop
*TheFinalHikari Journal Features in #xWritersUtopiax and #Writers--club
*intricately-ordinary - Critique
=TwilightPoetess Commission - (A Poem up to 30 Lines; topic, genre and formatting chosen by the winner).
`IrrevocableFate Journal Feature
*kamcalste - Spotlight Feature
`Memnalar Feature
=Sammur-amat Critique
Honorable Mentions
monkshood and rueand i was born on the first day
of the dying season
long-limbed and tender-tongued,
a debt of bones
and satin skin and
borrowed heart beating beneath
the swinging sword
of time.
a shadow brushed my
wide eyes into sable,
kin to the cold ground
beneath the jeweled leaves
dancing on the breeze
like fading embers,
a brisk
autumn kiss
dipping deep into my lungs,
the whisper of ghosts
from a haunted star
shrugging softly across
the shivering night.
every one of them warned me
about you.
pay no heed to monkshood and
you'll line your pockets with rue.
i read my fate like a fortune-teller
in the glow of candlelit eyes
CharredWhen life gives you a mental breakdown
you make lemonade
yellow paint, sugar
(blood if the mood strikes you)
just lately I'm a sundial countdown
my psyche measured by solar
positions and shadows but
before all this came the cerebral hydrogen bomb
picking up speed as it tore through the
atmosphere
incinerating my perfectly stacked life with
all the subtlety of a rusty cleaver
lungs filled with fire
brain pumped full of doctor-ordered pesticide
gasping for air and coughing up enough charred rubble
for a funeral pyre
The Glow of Candlelit EyesAlone in dark decay and dust
on old wallpaper floors
-spark, fizz, hiss-
a scant stick on scorched fingers
the glow exposes shaky shadows
flickering against the soot
Close to the floor, concealed by cloth,
something shimmers twice
Feathers of flame dance on glistening black
wet and shimmering still waters,
They savor the silent sensation
this impassive camaraderie from the
moons in another pair of eyes.
The yawning window welcomes a gust
levitating curtains and hair.
It shatters the moment,
murders the gleam
the swain recoils and
vanishes between the cracks.
Never trust ladies with scythes for smiles.i.
these god-hands are barbwire's,
snagging & scarring everything
they touch.
ii.
black tongue bleeding sweet ichor
along the guarded walls
of skeletal frames.
iii.
'i want to taste heaven.
it rests there,
just beneath your bones.'
iv.
he is a god dog
made of scythes & scalpels,
sewn together with weak thread.
v.
and she is
Autumn Carnival: Poetry Screams ContestPrompt: Smile like a scythe
Only backward are those cryptic concepts clear; seen in empty lots of lost sound.
She is a wicked twist; a graceful grin, slashed topsy-turvy on a mutilated marry-go-round.
Beaming like a fiend once every halloween.
It is a sickle sweet thing, held in the teeth of a snarky snear;
curved like a content cat, relaxed and radiant.
Alluring deathly slits, silent, sweeping, seeping closer.
step-by-step
inch-by-inch.
You should have never come around; these dank reaping grounds,
but you couldn't stay away from this haunted graveyard town.
She is sliding sickly to your soul
her hands snaking up an obsidian bl
The Killers - Draft TwoSmile like a scythe grins grimly into the forest
As the roaches roll and writhe in the underbelly.
A jackknife cry; the predatory owl encircles the trees
and presses in close, closing off the air ways.
Choking - smoking - the ferns expelling fog in fear
and it wriggles and worms over the clinging mud.
It claims boots for a moment, an experimental suckle -
It spits us out and we trudge forwards, breath baited.
Perfectly baited for the hostile world around us.
We clamour, collapse, wheeze and sneeze and sob
Through gaps between trunks, find the spaces and aim:
Ready, aim, fire - into the fearsome night air.
A flurry! An overexcited
Requiem Fall:
A slip
A decline
A loss
You have been all these things to me at one point or another.
Fall,
Did my heart
Did my hope
Did my home
All this for the rak
'darling' is just a name.we are amputees severing
our own smiles in each other's post-coital
whispers. singing
in shrill piano song.
we wear our
trebles like smiles.
like scythes.
--
we are as frail as the whites
peeling from trees, cigarette smoke
singing glory to ceiling fans.
you tell me, with a smile like a scythe
'darling' is just a name.
"and love is just a game." the whole room
becomes as taut as your cheekbones. "just
a game, with you."
my memory is too smogged to remember but
i hope i left that day. i hope i
never came back.
leaves caress each other in your
wind. voice pleads for the omnipresent.
it was then that i wanted to know
if
settling debtsknuckles paste and sweat like
storms clutching ribs of grave-
yard gates ripples in the grass
like waves pave the way for
buzzing swarms --
wide wide eyes and there you lie
tipped over by the undertoe: a
slough of hands behind the fence
off beneath you go
fallingi.
i met you in fall
while i was too busy
with the changing leaves
and the changing tides
to notice the shocking
blue of your eyes
when i did
the sun was as high
as we were and the
sky azure as they
ii.
the next season i
needed your warmth
it wilted with the trees
a gap between us filled
with silence and cold
i fell
in sync with the
world like dying
iii.
last year we couldn't
touch without breaking
my own rules and i
dreamt every night of
reaching out and
closing that gap again
and i missed you
more than the sun
or it's warmth
iv.
this year i've been
too long untouched
too much unknown
to die with the season
or mourn your warmt
The Season!When the season arrives
it is terribly unfashionable
to breathe, to blush, to beat.
The deadest dance
is a lame waltz,
all bloodless hands, cold feet.
Oh, everybody wants to be dead!
It’s terribly modish
to catch influenza and wilt,
to bubble with cancer
take a knife to the groin,
to cascade to the ground and rot.
It’s a craze! A romp!
A lark! They say,
you’ll see the cosmos’s frozen heart,
perceive the language of stones,
and laugh
at the living, alone and inept.
It’s the season:
even the living paint themselves corpses,
bruised and ragged and white.
All of us want
to be deader these days,
to admire ourselves finished, complete,
a painting, a novel,
a famous museum,
a “look what I made, what I did!”
So put on your shroud,
for this is the season:
it’s horribly chic to be dead.
A Season's Echo of PassingRows of dried corn stalks bend
with the wind that
thirsts for rain
that will only come when it has died
and the ears of corn cease to rattle.
And the thunder's distant laugh
will chase after the snakes
heading for their mounds on higher ground,
their husks abandoned-
the flash floods may yet pass them by.
Nursery RhymesThe night had gone red with ribbons -
They flowed from the veins of her
[once semi-functional]
Congratulations
to the winners and everyone who was involved with this contest. I am
extremely grateful for your support, donations and promotion. Most of
all I am supremely proud of being a part of something which resulted in
the creation of so much magnificent art. Check out the winners as well
as all entries and give them some
because they all deserve it! You can view all of the winners here:
Fourth Annual Poetry Screams Prompt Contest Entries
See you again in October of 2013
for the 5th Annual Poetry Screams Prompt Contest
Huge congratulations to all the winners and honorable mentions, and to everybody who entered. And of course to you for holding this wonderful contest, one I anticipate each year. Looking forward to the next one
Lol, does it have the same result with homework though?
It is such an honor to receive an honorable mention as well