Collaboration Project #1: Poetry Tag (COMPLETE!)

From the shores of Poets Who Blog comes a collaboration poem. My line is the fourth (P.S. (10-29-07) also the 11th and 12th, (10-31-07) also the 15th, (11-06-07) and the 19th), and italicized. I’ll add the rest of the lines as they appear.

Update (11-06-07): There are now two versions of this poem. On one hand, the poem is still in progress at Tom’s Fallen Verses, where it has one line left until finished. I have offered to take the last line, but i already have 4 lines in this poem, so if someone else wishes to take the final line before 6pm today, you are more than welcome to have it. Here is that
version.

Final Update (11-06-07): No one claimed the final line, so i wrote it. Both versions can now be found in Poets Who Blog as well as here.

The sound shook his bones
like a cymbal
crashing fast against his soul,
a soul detached from mind and body,
shivering in the dark
and fearing the coming light
he fled to a dingy back alley
and waited. A wind rushed
to meet him at the end
with that terrible sound wound through it,
and all he could do was wonder if he remembered to lock his front door,
or if his memories would be taken away with his sanity,
He crouched down, curling into his grief,
And all he could do was fight for water memories and gas-lit stoves still on
and a cardboard castle, while an insensitive queen
did battle for the pawn of man, within his fragile mind.
Shiver-shake went the light, coming from the mind and body. Memories wet.
Like quicksand, the struggle pulls him tighter to the light,
and, tired of the fight, he let it pull him into the downward spiral.

The other version, from a comment in Sara’s Aspiring Romace Writer, comes courtesy of J. Ponce, who completed the poem as follows:

The sound shook his bones
like a cymbal
crashing fast against his soul,
a soul detached from mind and body,
shivering in the dark
and fearing the coming light
he fled to a dingy back alley
and waited. A wind rushed
to meet him at the end
with that terrible sound wound through it,
and all he could do was wonder if he remembered to lock his front door,
or if his memories would be taken away with his sanity,
He crouched down, curling into his grief,
And all he could do was fight for water memories and gas-lit stoves still on
and a cardboard castle, while an insensitive queen
did battle for the pawn of man, within his fragile mind:
fragile from the brilliance of imagination splashing against the brow,
Fragile from the intensity of doubt and sincerity,
Caring, yet daring you to be more than you’ve imagined. You’ll see.

How this works:

It’s a game of poetry tag. Be the first to post TAG in the comments. Then take these lines and add one, in a post on your own blog, along with these instructions. Whoever adds the nineteenth line then takes the poem to Poets Who Blog and puts the whole poem in the comment section there. Each person who plays need to also mention what site you were at when you found the poem so that other bloggers can follow the breadcrumbs back to this poem. You can play more than once but not twice in a row.

I took this from Aspiring Romace Writer for the 4th line, The Ravyn’s Nest for the 11th and 12th lines, and from Derek’s “…eats bugs” for the 15th line.