Poetry Stretch Results - Opposites

The challenge this week was to write a poem in which two words opposite in meaning were used in both the body of the poem and the title. Here are the results.

Jane Yolen left this poem in the comments.

News/Noise

The ticker tape parade
masquerades
as news, but it is not.
Instead,what we’ve got,
is a noisy celebration,
elaborating
on polls, bumper stickers,
twitters, tweets,
buttons, sound bytes,
effluvial bits
that are merely guesses.
News regresses
quickly into noise
when there is no science
behind it, or math.
What hath
God–or at least Hearst
and the pundits--
wrought?
Writing on a dirty wall,
graffiti
with graphics,
the moving hand,
mene, mene, teckle uparsin,
and that is all.

copyright 2009 Jane Yolen

Kim Kasch also left a poem in the comments.

“Love or Loath”

Lo . . .

It’s easy to fall in
Yet the hardest game to win

I've loved then lost
and loathed the cost

It's such a wicked price to pay
when love is free to give away

Jacqueline at Neverending story shares a poem entitled Clean vs. Green.

Lisa Chellman at under the covers gives us the poem Blind/Sighted.

I tried hard to write a funny poem, but my poems and I are sailing through the doldrums right now. At any rate, here's my contribution.

The Long and the Short of It

“Here’s the thing”
she says
before launching into a rambling story that
grasps at fading memories and revelries

Interrupted by stops and starts
intrusions of other remembrances

“Now, where was I?”
she continues
describing the childhood kitchen where her mother
cooked meals for a growing brood
I remember only the kitchen table and chairs,
the apron my grandmother wore,
the pantry where chocolate treasures were concealed in a chip can

What does this have to do with Mrs Murphy’s daughter?
I wish I knew

The stories are long
my patience sometimes short

Still I listen for
my mother’s laugh
my grandmother’s whisper
past reverberating into future with
time moving ever forward
wondering how you summarize a life
well spent and long lived

It's not too late if you still want to play. Leave me a note about your poem and I'll add it to the list.