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[Cryxis, Prince of Doom]

I already said it was 

[Urist McScoopbeard]

Argh, did I hear poetry? Avast:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Encender

It seems to me quite strange,
from where I cannot say,
that the burning of the torch is to last all night and day.
It’s bearer’s burden’s strain,
mania in closely followed suit,
that the brighter it may burn shall darkly brightness’ colors mute.

It seems to me quite strange,
that from this we cannot stray,
but without that night, then there can be no day.
That night does cause us pain,
but in darkness lies our route,
that whether we shall find the light once more or ever dark dispute.

Hardened, and bed-weary, we travelers do obey:
Our skins, our hides, and brightest gems
do a shell develop.
Saddened, crossed, and most of all
a feeling of fetid, rearing hatred,
we do a shell develop.
But in the end, the strangest thing
is to these lonesome strangers:
The flame is trapped inside them.

What then do we carry?

one of three pieces I did for school!

EDIT: That one's a bit dark so take this one instead:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Of A Missing Poem

This, thusly though,
of rhyme, meter, and row
is here drawn by master hands
of quiet, quickly cometh.

Of whence, I withered that
south of where we lay,
she did in fearless, dreading
breathe, travel north to stay.

stayed ‘neath such blackly raven locks
so did courteously cradle
a fount, so finely splendid in day,
so at night did darkly tremble.

Fearful that, of which steady soul enabled
hides those raven locks and famished fount
from dreading’s dungeon fabled, in
fides me naught for southern seas and days.

[GiglameshDespair]

Prompt 1

Spoiler: Karma is a truthful lie (click to show/hide)

The monster lay curled, sleeping. The soft breathing was the only sign of life – the almost imperceptible movement of the monster’s chest. It was small. The creature’s malnourished body was gaunt with bones showing through skin, the hair was long and greasy, hanging in thick clumps. A chain shackled one thin leg to the brick wall. It was dark. Light trickled from a filthy slit of a window like pus oozing from a wound. The tiny cell stank of sweat and despair, though the monster had long since acclimatised to the smell.

The monster was dying. It had gone far too long without food, with only the slow leak of stagnant water down one wall to drink. The jailers had abandoned it, or so things seemed. There had been another monster, chained with it, but it had gone long ago, leaving bones. When the monster had got too hungry, it had gnawed on the bones, but any meat was gone, lost to time and insects.

The person – though it was not a person at all – who entered the cell did not go through the door. It did not go through the window, either. The form it took was too large for the window, but such a matter wouldn’t have inconvenienced it in the slightest. It simply was there, all of a sudden.
“Hey.” The not-at-all-a-person said gently. “It’s time to wake up.”
The monster moved about a bit before it finally woke. It startled at the sight of the not-person standing in its cell, and it shrank back. The not-person regarded it with kind eyes.
“Not even a name, huh. Just a monster.” The not-person muttered, more to itself than the creature before it. “Listen, monster… no, I’m not calling you that. I’ll guess you’ll do without a name, at least until you make a choice. I…” it trailed off again. The monster was cowering, wordless, mouth full of jagged teeth gaping. The not-person sighed. “I don’t do this for everyone, you know. Be grateful.”
The not-person was suddenly different, with no stages in between. It became an animal, non-specific - just an idea of an animal with soft fur and affectionate features. The monster slowly reached out and ran a hand through the fur. The not person had lied, of course. It always tried to take the kindest form. But lying came to it easy. The not-person was a lie at its fundamental core.

The lie murmured gently to the monster, the mouth of the animal-idea not moving.
“Now, I’m going to offer you a choice. You see, I’m something that could be called Karma. A balancing force. There’s no justice, but people dreamed hard enough there is. But there’s different kinds of balancing, you see? You’re the focus, so you’ll be the balancing act. Two options for you.

Option one. You deserve a little good happening to you. I take you away. You become something more… fortunate. You’ll become someone kind and generous. A good life, a happy one. You don’t have to be a monster.”

The monster’s arms twitched, holding Karma. It jerked as the cell door swung open, hinges silent when they normally screamed. The dim corridor seemed to creep into the cell, bringing air less thick with must and dust. Karma sighed.
“Let’s call that the window option. Then there’s option two. The door option.”

Karma seemed to shrink as it talked. “Just as you deserve good, they deserve bad. You have a chance to become what they called you. A real monster, for a time. An evil spirit, stained dark with hate and blood. Bad Karma in person. Or in not-a-person.”

The monster growled and started to crawl towards the door. As it moved, it changed, becoming more and more monstrous. The gaunt limbs began to stretch and warp.

“If you do that… I can’t come for you again. They called you monster. They were wrong. You’d make them right. That doesn’t mean much to you, I know. But you’d fall outside the cycle. No second chances.”
The monster paused. It looked back at Karma.

“You don’t have to forgive them, and I’ll come for them in time, in my own way. You won’t get the satisfaction, but you won’t care, if you come with me. You’ll be in a better place. You’ll see the sky. The stars. Your sister told the stories, until I came for her with the same offer. She chose me.”

The monster began to move back towards Karma. The twisted body untwisted, altering back to the starved child it had been before. Karma was once again a human form, offering a hand. The child took it. They began to fade. Eventually, all that was left in the cell were a crumpled form between scattered bones and a distant whisper.
“Good choice. Now, I’ve been thinking where you could be reborn. How about somewhere with a lot of sun…?”

[hops]

All my love poems use way too much technical words and comes in the cynical variety.

Yeaaaaaaah I guess the good and bad thing about poetry is that it is really good at being a judge of character.

(Also I like my poems that way)

[Arx]

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Marc ran the knife over the whetstone. One way, skriv, turn, slide it back, skrov. Then turn it over, skriv, skrov. Skriv, skrov. He spat on the stone again. Skriv, skrov. The sun hit the horizon, melting the trees into molten light the colour of the welts across Marc's face and neck. Skriv, skrov. The rocky hillside was silent, except for the ringing sounds of the sharpening: skriv, skrov.

Ka! The shards of the whetstone spun off a rocky outcrop. Marc stood alone in a field of rubble. Across the blood-red rocks his shadow stretched long and black, longer by far than his height. The outline was scarred and jagged by his ragged shirt.

He started across the barren savannah, knife held in two hands, swaddled in the remains of an abandoned skirt. His shadow followed him, edges fluttering and distorting in the disturbance of his passing.

A boy slunk into the camp as the sun died, his shadow infinite and nothing. Fires sprang up, shadows dancing and leaping. He ducked into a tent.

Ack! He cried out as the lash bit his face. The camp sank back into ominous silence. Men should have been laughing, eating, gambling, quarreling. Instead, they sat in tense silence.

Feeding on the life of the sun, the moon rose huge and red. Shadows stretched long. Men vanished into tents.

The moon's stolen essence flooded the world. Marc's shadow stretched long into the silent camp as he limped in. He pulled the rags around the knife off. A long crescent was added to the shadow, the rags flapping in his hand like the end of a robe.

With a graceful overhand movement and barely a sound the side of the first tent was rent asunder. The awkward figure slipped through. It stepped out the other side, drops rolling from the long shadow. As the canvas of the second tent silently split, black liquid oozed out from the first tent, pooling like liquid darkness.

The disc of the moon touched the horizon again. Marc walked out of the last tent. His shadow was impossibly long and skeletal, ragged edges sticking to his skin. Darkness poured off it, collecting behind him as he walked. The avenue in front of the tents was black, a black so deep that the dead light of the moon glanced off it in red bars rather than touch it.

The moon's stolen vitality was exhausted. Marc stood in a half-ring of monolithic broken rocks, pitch-black and standing taller than the tallest man.

Shadows infinite or extinguished, an otherworldly figure unfolded from the darkness of the rubble on the ground. Immense horns rose from a face twisted into a horrific form, limbs like sticks in rags stretched too far, and misshapen fingers spread, bent at wrong angles.

For the first time in days, Marc spoke without screaming.

"I have done as you asked. I have come for my reward."

The figure raised its hands to the sky, the rocks flaming with an unholy light. As their shadows stretched onto the open plain, the reaper and the god, Marc stepped forward. Darkness flew off his shadow in rolling drops as the knife sparked in the light of hell, falling to sink deep into the chest of the demon.

"I do not receive. I take."

The rocks flared as the figure screamed, shadow flying out and collapsing. Marc reached down and lifted something to his face, affixing the great antlers.

He turned and strode out of the circle. The rocks faded, and darkness rolled to his shadow until it stretched into infinity.

This was intended to be a bit of an experiment in writing in the style of the Bantu oral tradition. It, uh, didn't exactly play out like that.

I'm not sure whether I like it; I'd really appreciate any criticism anyone feels like throwing at it.

Also I guess it's kind of for Prompt One.

[hops]

Deadline's next Sunday.

[bahihs]

Deadline's next Sunday.

Why?

[hops]

It's just an arbitrary date because I forgot to set the deadline, and I wanted to give everyone who hasn't submitted anything one more week just in case.

[GiglameshDespair]

I submitted Monster.

[bahihs]

Alright, I'll have to withdraw my story then. It's not finished yet and I won't have any time this week to finish it.

[Cryxis, Prince of Doom]

((Prompt one sounds like someone could make a story about sentient bacteria or viruses infecting a person, that would be fun.
Prompt two sounds like the World War Z movie, won't spoil anything from it though ))

[bahihs]

Actually, it turns out I won't be withdrawing my story because I just finished it

I had a lot of fun writing it and I hope you guys enjoy reading it.

[WillowLuman]

Mirror shards
I should pick them up and try to see which way they go but
Puzzle pieces
How do they fit together? I don't know which way they go
Shards of glass
Seems like a lot of trouble just to pick them up,
Like I'd cut my fingers but
I don't know which way they go, how they fit together
It's probably just from lack of trying
But I don't know which way they go

[Urist McScoopbeard]

Mirror shards
I should pick them up and try to see which way they go but
Puzzle pieces
How do they fit together? I don't know which way they go
Shards of glass
Seems like a lot of trouble just to pick them up,
Like I'd cut my fingers but
I don't know which way they go, how they fit together
It's probably just from lack of trying
But I don't know which way they go

Critique incoming:
You've got pretty good imagery implications (its not really imagery, but it gives a good sense of what is happening and is easily relatable), but my god is this prose-y. There's precious little rhyme and rhythm, the second being more important here. I mean, what is to stop me from reading it like prose other than your formatting?

It's fairly obvious that this isn't meant to be some singsongy poem, but you need rhythm, and the way to do that here is with alliteration, assonance, consonance, and where it fits: dissonance. Repetition like you have in the poetic lines including the phrase, "I don't know which way they go" works between stanzas, but otherwise, unless it's a list poem, it doesn't ADD anything.

That's my two cents on it, others might feel differently, and you probably do too, so god speed to you sir and keep writing poetry.

[WillowLuman]

I'll take it to mind. It came about as mental vomit on the frustrations of ADHD.