Photo Contest 3

Contest Winners

1st Place - 12. Tainting Eden by darkdescartes
2nd Place TIE:
5. Trapped; Perform by JenniferStarling
15. Would She? by AStormOfSilence

Contest Details

Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to write a poem INSPIRED BY THE PHOTO. The photo appears in the preview. Please view the deviation description for a link to the original deviation.

Contest Entries

1. The Pretense

My façade is intolerable, but oh so comfortable.
I’m not willing to let go, don’t make me let go.
Your face is so affectionate, mine so concealed.
If only you knew what I’ve been hiding.

I’m hiding behind this mask with a smile.
I always seem pleased, but all the while…
I’m killing the part of me you love.

I’m hiding behind this mask and I’m crying.
I’m living a lie and the whole time, I’m dying…
Dying to tell you the truth.

I know it’s not healthy to cover and cower.
But I feel at home, locked up in my tower.
It isn’t me really that you look at, I know.
Regardless though…
Doesn’t my pretense look pretty?

2. What’s Wrong With Me?

What’s wrong with me?
I told you I’d make you happy,
And do what you want.
Then, I turned and
Became selfish to my desire.

I gave you what I knew you enjoyed so much,
But as soon as that was over,
And as soon as I was done,
I said what I knew you didn’t want…
But I made you do it anyhow.

I love you so much,
And I’m surprised with how much
You put up with me…
For I treat you horribly,
And I deserve nothing good that you give me.

What is wrong with me?
Why am I like this?
I just want to make you happy …
By all means necessary.

What is wrong with me?
Can you tell me that?
Why do you treat me so great?

I deserve ever little ounce of pain that
You unleash upon me.

What is wrong with me?
I can’t stop thinking that,
For I truly am curious …
What is wrong with me?

3. Fool’s Game

trail
       i
        n
          g

delicately reminding a turned back,
black,
and impenetrable.
the past,
               shadowy past,

has not forgotten,
will not forget-
although you try to hide

behind the clown face.

you sad, surprised, suddenly sombre clown,

you fool!

to fool only yourself
for in doing so,
you achieve

nothing...

except to darken The Shadow
as the illumination of

who you really are

brightens,
reflects...
and gradually turns you to

> poison <

ivy of your past
as it delicately reminds,

trail
       i
        n
          g

(ing-ing-ing)

4. contrast;mimickry

The bindwood; the lovestone composes the wall that she must lean on -
granting strength to either safety or disaster, a gamble she's grown used to
like the path of the divine. She proclaims herself the star, the follow spot
chewing on her feet doesn't protest, but doesn't pronounce her
as either a hero or a prop, just makes everything else dark.
Her watchface smiles 10:08, wearing beneath its face
somewhere in the core of time, the truth of AM and PM.
Her hinokiface smiles onnagata kabuki kabuku the singing the dancing
bizarre prostitute. The mask is used to her duality, and leans on her calmly.
She expresses, with her entire body, and her face, the scenes of sonezaki shinju,
unsure if it's bunraku or kabuki, but ready to meet her audience
and ready to see the face of god. The flowering path between her arms
leads out into the world, where there is no light, where the kuroko wait for her return.
Who was she? She carved and painted that mask herself. Who is she?
The black and white dance together on her skin. The ivies behind her
carry life and destruction. The watch she carries holds a lie of truth.
The mask hiding, transforming, protecting, scaring, the world becomes a trance
where only she and the god are alert. Quietly It notes that the insects that live under leaves
are hiding, transforming, and protecting themselves; they're scaring It.
But the ivy cannot be removed. All worlds blend together in the theater, where the human hand
and god's meet for the first time. It seizes the eyes of the mask and in the same motion
becomes a puppet and an insect, while the female lead is, by time's thick strokes,
moved between the profane and the divine. The Ivies carry her, the Watch holds her,
the Mask wears her. The black and white dance together on her skin.

5. Trapped; Perform

trapped
trapped, she thought, and a wall
lay behind, and it blocked
and it blocked
what was eating her mind
what was gnawing, her thoughts
her thoughts, they were
tearing
ripping and tearing
and screaming and light
and light
and light started glaring
BLINDED
defenseless, defensive, relentless
relentlessly glaring, the light
cast a shadow
her shadow, it cast her
a dark sort of specter, macabre
the shadows of leaves, not a wall, not at all, but a
living (disease)
it was growing behind her
alive, there to spite her
to fight her, ignite her
and screaming, the blocked it, the light
she was trapped
she was trapped in the light
every detail was showing, it left her
transparent
her flaws all apparent
and now a request she had almost forgotten
PERFORM
and she dreamed of a crutch
in her clutch,
and her crutch was her act
but if she doubled back through her life
to the times when she’d started the act
no performance would ever be asked
to be rendered, no need to be clever
or light as a feather
and the light would be shining on somebody else
and she would be watching
and free to be dull
to be boring and simple and just an
observer, consumer
but now it consumed her
she’s started it now, and she’s gotten on stage
and their eyes were all on her, they’re waiting,
they’re waiting
they’re waiting to judge her
she drew in a breath

6. Dark Mistress

Behind lust
I see the
gnawing pleasure

In its self
I feel my capture

Without touch
sight
taste
nor sound

I feel misplaced

She is my mistress
Dark and cunning

She is sweet
and bitter

Yet she...
is dangerous

I want her
she brings
my burning desires

My beads of sweat
and clenching muscles

My sighs of pleasure
and screams of pain.

I draw to touch
yet she runs away

My fleeing mistress
Dark and deceiving

7. I’m So Normal

A morbid night
In a flower garden.
Trying to lighten
The atmosphere.

Screeching violence
In my face.
All because of this mask
I wear to protect me,
From you.

My eyes choke back
A drop of shame.
All I tried to do
Was make you laugh.

8. PITCHED

Pitched,
presently a boding iniquity
Encrusted,
imperceptibly bejewelled,
addicted to these conditions welcomingly
cast into vegetation
am I dusk
paramount to assume your wits and swallow,
hard and fast.

Fabric
drawn intimately on the cross
as self-adorned by repugnance as by …
oh, carry on then … gape
fix your eyes upon the shelf, whereby the feeding
is set in motion
marvels of conception uttered.
… this blind and bangles,
sternly weighed hang with time,
and hem in these would-be wings,
notches, names,
mottled and mislaid.

Gifted
with enlightenment,
discerning smirk from scowl?
central
Not if truth be told,
still by no means sound.
Angulated consideration convulses,
inflexible and impervious stuff
linking length and expanse, rusty besides greatly
awareness.
Thick?  Currently concealed as glare is simply
Dare.

9. Masked Feelings

A mask...
Just another face to hide behind.
A shelter for your feelings,
the ones you don't want us to know about.
The only feelings you show through that mask are the ones exspressed on it.
Hate, sorrow, someone shy and unkind.
The black marks on it show the groups of people you have shed your hatred on, the people you have given your pain to..
The white shows your sorrow and the shy person you are..
You are sad.. hurting.. isolated from everyone.. that is why you are shy and don't like to be kind to people.
they were never kind to you...

A mask... a part of you..
The part that hides the better you and shows the worst..

10. Night Cave.

Waiting, in the night cave, to step into the dream.
Tonight I am a ghost in the waking world.
Tonight I fly over the lake when the fish are leaping.
I fly over the meadow where butterflies dance.
I look down at the cats sleeping on the verandah.
They sense my spirit, wake and look up at me.
I land, enter the house, move amongst its people, unseen.
There are two middle-aged sisters.
One of them has two sons and a daughter.
They are all getting ready to go out.
I move with them to the door to bid them an unheard farewell.
I go back the way I came, fly over the meadow, the lake.
I find myself in the night cave.
Dawn steals the shadows from the walls.

11. Shadow’s Pursuit

Knowing her mark, she uses her wiles.
Sweet seduction -
It works like a charm.
She’s turned her back, she covers her face;
Try though she may,
Her charade will fail.

No one should know, but everybody does.
Her convictions
Are far too intense.
Those who would have her fall to her death
Know how she feels.
Know that she still feels.

So she falls.
So she’s torn.
So she hurts.
So she’s dead.

He looks around, can’t find her out there,
Wonders if he
Is to blame for this.
Holding her close
(No longer in reach)
He cries for her, longs for her heaven.

He decides that it is time to fight
For her dear soul,
For her blessed Earth.
He finds her mask
Fallen on the ground,
Putting it on, becomes one with her.

So he knows.
So he’s sick.
So he waits.
So he’s dead.

12. Tainting Eden

Black and white butterfly bushes
shake under thousands of
wax figurines, far too perfect
to please the warm West
(where they'd melt anyway).
Some Japanese god
trained an army to harden
warm flesh into matchmakers'
fodder. Plastic was born.

13. Remove My Mask

I wear the mask to hide behind
It’s lifeless cowl-undefined
I’m all alone,
Running from home
While shadows distort my mind.

They dance in darkness drunkenly
They reach and touch me- freezing me
My fear holds sway,
I run away.
While night is laughing evilly.

Remove my mask and you will see
The tears I’ve hid so long from thee.
Wipe the pain from my face;
Lead me gently from this place,
Now you’ve seen reality.

14. A Regretted Marriage

I gaze at the light
of my life
which casts
my dark self
well into the past,
well behind me.
It illuminates
my figure,
yet some darkness
still graces my being,
as if to say
lovers do not
complete each other.

Sometimes
I'm the armless shadow,
inoperable
without guidance
in this garden of despair.

Wedding ring and wristwatch
are cruelly ironic
and a tonic
for my agony.

I am dishonest;
true feelings concealed.
I try to untie
this superficial covering,
but strings dangle
from its permanence.

This mask
is the aftermath
of an incomplete companionship.

15. Would she?

One photo of you engraved to memory
A last performance to your grand symphony
The curves of your moves, the curves on you
The way you walked, one hell of a view

One photo of one night of one beauty
One regret for one man of one missed opportunity
One spot light to sear the mistake in my mind
One lost night to remember for all my time

You asked me to attend your show
Reserved me a ticket and demanded I go
I was to foolish to see the hints you sowed

So I brought a camera to capture the evening
The whole time watching never believing
That tonight was you’d be leaving
And tomorrow Id be left grieving

For one photo, one woman, one show
One question with a answer I’ll never know.