Weekly Contest
Classic poem of the day
BEFORE THE CATHEDRAL in grandeur rose
At Ingelburg where the Danube goes;
Before its forest of silver spires
Went airily up to the clouds and fires;
Before the oak had ready a beam,
While yet the arch was stone and dream —
There where the altar was later laid,
Conrad, the cobbler, plied his trade.
It happened one day at the year's white end —
Two neighbors called on their old-time friend;
And they found the shop, so meager and mean,
Made gay with a hundred boughs of green.
Conrad was stitching with face ashine,
But suddenly stopped as he twitched a twine:
" Old friends, good news! At dawn today,
As the cocks were scaring the night away,
The Lord appeared in a dream to me,
And said, " I am coming your Guest to be!"
So I've been busy with feet astir,
Strewing the floor with branches of fir.
The wall is washed and the shelf is shined,
And over the...
member poem of the day
These are early poems of mine, written in my teens during high school and my first two years of college, with a few poems perhaps a bit later.
Nevermore!
by Michael R. Burch
Nevermore! O, nevermore!
shall the haunts of the sea
—the swollen tide pools
and the dark, deserted shore—
mark her passing again.
And the salivating sea
shall never kiss her lips
nor caress her breasts and hips,
as she dreamt it did before,
once, lost within the uproar.
The waves will never rape her,
nor take her at their leisure;
the sea gulls shall not claim her,
nor could she give them pleasure ...
She sleeps, forevermore!
She sleeps forevermore,
a virgin save to me
and her other lover,
who lurks now, safely smothered
by the restless, surging sea.
And, yes, th
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