...Adding to an already crowded field, here are my two poems to be submitted to the contest....just in time, too!

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The first, a song (think of a medieval bard singing a vilanelle)
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A Prayer

Golden sands below and sky above blue,
Flooding waters that gave birth to bread,
Please make the old again the new.

Quietly from your gentle hands we flew-
Though we all still could be fed
By golden sands below and sky above blue.

Magical market swept us to a place no one knew,
And to this death so many others were led-
O, please make the old again the new.

We left the temples for one god untrue;
He, not They, said that we should not wed
By golden sands below and sky above blue.

We left the place where flax and reeds grew-
Now flax and reeds are only dead.
O, please make the old again the new.

We left our clay, we left our mud bricks, too.
Now by science’s spark we can only read what was said
Of golden sands below and sky above blue.

Those to whom we plead, our wills must flow through,
For our dream can no longer only live in today’s bed-
With golden sands below and sky above blue,
We will make the old again the new.

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And now for poem the second, of my own style and composition.
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Cyclops

(It has seen them all-
the bastards, the brigands,
the lovers, the liars,
the weak ones.)
That unflinching, lidless eye
staring at my bloodless desire
from the embryonic pits-
immovable, unrelenting,
belching borderless doubt
(the quest for the solid handshake)
without word, without vision-
always perceived against
the furious flames and
coals at my feet
melting sand into glittering shrapnel.
Drums and horns,
the great labyrinth threaded,
and unthreaded-
bloody avatars
championing the murder-

and now I find the deliciously crimson stake
in my hand