Love Every Drop
Winning Entry by Jester
If we consider the body crudely as composed of liquid, solid and gas, then, my apple, my lamb, it is this that I love: your viscosity, every drop of you. For surely, of these three states of matter, it is liquid, the essential; the fat tears that spring from you are a marvel.
Your face, aged almost two, is plump and dewy, water-rich; an ad for moisturiser - all chubby babies are; deep crinkles in your wrists like joined sausages. Compared of course to old age, the great withering, skin turning to paper, muscle to powder... our waters drying up to leave us open-mouthed, parched parchment, our histories written on our perished scrolls of flesh. Although indeed you can die of wet rot as much as dry rot - my grandmother, fatally, had water on the lung; she drowned from the inside.
You're sick, sweetheart, a passing thing; and when you hugged me earlier I smelled the faint, day-old tang of vomit on your neck. And then you fell asleep, and I lay an inch away and smelled the thick fug of mucus, your breathing labouring wetly under a heavy tide.
It is this that I love, your essence, your humours, sweet or foul; and this I cannot hold, for as water runs through fingers we we cannot ever really hold another. We are two streams running together for a while before the flood rushes us on. What can we do but savour, savour, even as we turn to vapour, what can we do but love...every...drop; and every drop of you, I love.
Your face, aged almost two, is plump and dewy, water-rich; an ad for moisturiser - all chubby babies are; deep crinkles in your wrists like joined sausages. Compared of course to old age, the great withering, skin turning to paper, muscle to powder... our waters drying up to leave us open-mouthed, parched parchment, our histories written on our perished scrolls of flesh. Although indeed you can die of wet rot as much as dry rot - my grandmother, fatally, had water on the lung; she drowned from the inside.
You're sick, sweetheart, a passing thing; and when you hugged me earlier I smelled the faint, day-old tang of vomit on your neck. And then you fell asleep, and I lay an inch away and smelled the thick fug of mucus, your breathing labouring wetly under a heavy tide.
It is this that I love, your essence, your humours, sweet or foul; and this I cannot hold, for as water runs through fingers we we cannot ever really hold another. We are two streams running together for a while before the flood rushes us on. What can we do but savour, savour, even as we turn to vapour, what can we do but love...every...drop; and every drop of you, I love.
Featured Entry by Bocian
You must have heard of Nymphs and Satyrs,
Romping around in the nude in Greece,
The goaty boys bent on sexual matters,
The girly ones determined on peace?
Lots of artists depicted us, a good reason
To paint ladies naked in a summer season,
Bathing to show off their manifold charms,
Running away from the hairy lads arms.
All that mythology offered a chance
To show those females in graceful dance.
Ogle each lovely cushiony breast,
But don't neglect to relish the rest:
What can you see as they go and come?
Lots and lots of beautiful bum.
And don't forget our salty sibs,
The Nereids with well-covered ribs,
Who balance and bounce,
Frolic and flounce,
In the froth and foam
Of the ocean, their watery home.
And what about the ones who are dry,
The Dryads, living in the trees who try
To foster the forests, preserve their health?
For they, like us, are Nature's wealth.
We look so carefree, in arc and antic,
But inwardly we are fearful, frantic,
Not just in Greece but through the Atlantic,
And all the oceans and rivers,
For we are the joyous health-givers,
Those whose precise, perpetual prancing,
Whose ceaseless cavortings, doughty dancing,
Infuses all animals, birds and plants,
So each butterfly and bee may advance
In vigour, harmony and zest,
Preserving Life in perpetuity, lest
You humans permanently poison
The Planet, finalise the foison,
And madly murder what we feed
With our divinely ordered need
To perform our endless ritual ball,
Gathering in the Harvest of us all.
For every fibre of our fabulous flesh
Is full of the creative forces, which mesh
Within our gallops and gambles,
Our choreography and ambles,
And you, the wreckers of the World, all must
Before you destroy it and reduce to dust
The bounty, beauty, sacred trust
We all our bound within. Our lust
Is the life-force, so when we mate
We add vitality, reinstate
The glory and the pleasure,
The sweetness that is the Universal Treasure.
Your artists have understood that desire
Is the essence, the embers of the Fire
Which blow and glow within the heart
And activate each limb and body-part.
So, come with me, your brother Faun,
Join the ballet on every lawn,
Swim with Mermaids in swirls and twirls,
Become simply in your spirits boys and girls.
Sufficient to move your little finger,
So long as your lascivious love can linger
Somewhere within your heart and soul,
For we can cure you, make you whole.
But you must seek, as we do, to embrace
Each insect, leaf and lizard,
Romping around in the nude in Greece,
The goaty boys bent on sexual matters,
The girly ones determined on peace?
Lots of artists depicted us, a good reason
To paint ladies naked in a summer season,
Bathing to show off their manifold charms,
Running away from the hairy lads arms.
All that mythology offered a chance
To show those females in graceful dance.
Ogle each lovely cushiony breast,
But don't neglect to relish the rest:
What can you see as they go and come?
Lots and lots of beautiful bum.
And don't forget our salty sibs,
The Nereids with well-covered ribs,
Who balance and bounce,
Frolic and flounce,
In the froth and foam
Of the ocean, their watery home.
And what about the ones who are dry,
The Dryads, living in the trees who try
To foster the forests, preserve their health?
For they, like us, are Nature's wealth.
We look so carefree, in arc and antic,
But inwardly we are fearful, frantic,
Not just in Greece but through the Atlantic,
And all the oceans and rivers,
For we are the joyous health-givers,
Those whose precise, perpetual prancing,
Whose ceaseless cavortings, doughty dancing,
Infuses all animals, birds and plants,
So each butterfly and bee may advance
In vigour, harmony and zest,
Preserving Life in perpetuity, lest
You humans permanently poison
The Planet, finalise the foison,
And madly murder what we feed
With our divinely ordered need
To perform our endless ritual ball,
Gathering in the Harvest of us all.
For every fibre of our fabulous flesh
Is full of the creative forces, which mesh
Within our gallops and gambles,
Our choreography and ambles,
And you, the wreckers of the World, all must
Before you destroy it and reduce to dust
The bounty, beauty, sacred trust
We all our bound within. Our lust
Is the life-force, so when we mate
We add vitality, reinstate
The glory and the pleasure,
The sweetness that is the Universal Treasure.
Your artists have understood that desire
Is the essence, the embers of the Fire
Which blow and glow within the heart
And activate each limb and body-part.
So, come with me, your brother Faun,
Join the ballet on every lawn,
Swim with Mermaids in swirls and twirls,
Become simply in your spirits boys and girls.
Sufficient to move your little finger,
So long as your lascivious love can linger
Somewhere within your heart and soul,
For we can cure you, make you whole.
But you must seek, as we do, to embrace
Each insect, leaf and lizard,
Featured Entry by Maje
The Modern Curse
Drop down through the drizzle
through heaving salt into a horseshoe bay
a line of foam frothing from the mouth's of whales
mixing beige at it's edges
But this world here is without portents
(being of the common era)
no sagas sung for the love of gods over it's waves
here everyone is tightly measured, weighed
& all the old idols smashed & fallen
speckling broken forts
strewn in abandoned gullies
staining sheer granite cliffs
but their old spells are still
woven deep in our wild valleys - unbound
waiting
Drop down through the drizzle
through heaving salt into a horseshoe bay
a line of foam frothing from the mouth's of whales
mixing beige at it's edges
But this world here is without portents
(being of the common era)
no sagas sung for the love of gods over it's waves
here everyone is tightly measured, weighed
& all the old idols smashed & fallen
speckling broken forts
strewn in abandoned gullies
staining sheer granite cliffs
but their old spells are still
woven deep in our wild valleys - unbound
waiting
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