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Yep you did.....no worries I just transferred it to 'Short Story'. Pob lwc/best of luck in the competition

Missing entry

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Hi Nathan.....when did you post your story and what was the title?

Untitled by Olamide Lapite

West Coast Eisteddfod Online Poetry Competition 2017

I heard somebody say no one knows what tomorrow holds
Well I can tell you that i do
Because I know tomorrow lurks behind the beautiful moonlight
Waiting to pronounce it woes on me as soon as the sun comes up
Even as I am still caressing yesterday's bruise

At least I know that if tomorrow is a Monday

I will get flogged at school

The principal said my overworn uniform shames the school

I know that if tomorrow is a Tuesday

I should follow Mama to the market

Tomatoes trucks arrives on that day porters make a lot money in that day

I know that if tomorrow is a Wednesday

I will join the beggers at the church gate  to hurl out prayers like missiles at passersby for a penny

I know that if tomorrow is a Thursday

A slap is as show as death for mama

Because my drunkard father comes home to steal some cash

I know that if tomorrow is a Friday

I'll be making promises to mama under the moonlight with tears in my eyes

Even Mama knows tomorrow

That is why she has always been begging me to be strong

It is at this point that we dream

Yes we dream but we don't know

What tomorrow holds

LIFE IS A JOURNEY NOT A DESTINATION (The icy metaphor) by EMMANUEL CHIKA PRINCE

West Coast Eisteddfod Online Short Story Competition 2017

It felt cold and lifeless in my hands and yet I knew my life depended on it at that moment.

“What, so you are not going to share?” Ada asked sassily

I pretended like I didn’t hear her speak, kept my gaze trailed on the sparkling sun and hummed Ed Sheeran’s ‘Thinking out loud’ with a bit too much zest.

I didn’t want ITS essence to erode in my hands, it would be as painful as watching the eyes of a friend fade into oblivion, never to wrinkle in humor at your dry jokes.

So I took my first scoop, swabbing my tongue over its smooth cone with practiced speed and amateurish delight.

“Hmmm…” I moaned in exaggerated ecstasy

Ada looked at me with disgust on her face

“Gross” she muttered

But I knew her theatrics.

“Would you want some?” I offered

She seemed to ponder on it for a while, keeping her gazes fixed on mine, searching for any trace of mischief.

But I’d gotten too good at this to be thrown off guard. I kept my expression cool and apologetic.

When she had ascertained my intentions as pure, she replied with feigned nonchalance

“Not really, but since you asked, lemme see what’s so good about it”

I smiled mischievously and thought to myself:

“You’d think she has learnt by now”

“Do you really want to know what’s great about it?” I asked still smiling

“Huhh… yeah, I just said that” Ada replied impatiently

I pounced on the moment with the reflex of a street fighter

“It’s great because I know you are not getting even a sniff of it” I said laughing in my trademark baritone

Ada wasn’t thrilled at all, she pranced dramatically away from me, muttering under her breath.

I took my second scoop, this time flickering my tongue over its edges for a while and digging into its soft core, when I retrieved my tongue, it carried with it a promising scoop of whiteness.

I couldn’t wait for the big finish though I wouldn’t mind either. I wanted to experience that big sigh and cool feeling of satiation that comes with the last taste of coldness.

I walked towards the car still humming gaily. Ada was seated at the front still pouting indignantly.

I ignored her completely, no one was going to spoil this experience for me. At least that was how I felt until Daisy reached out with her tiny fingers in appeal

“Ice cream!” she exclaimed in pure delight like she was promised one.

I groaned. I was determined not to fall for the cute kid trick that was always played to perfection.

I turned to my left and caught Ada staring at me with amusement on her eyes

“What?” I queried knowing fully well what she meant

She just kept daring me with her eyes.

I pretended not to notice and kept scooping generous portions with my tongue, praying for the ultimate big finish.

Finally it came and I had my cool satiated feeling stamped by a big sigh.

But when I turned to face the other occupants of the car, all my elation came crashing down.

I drove in silence thinking of possible ways to make up for my wrong.

Finally it all boiled down to replacing their thirst for vengeance with an icy and sweet substitute.

As I watched them go through the same emotional curve like me, it occurred to me that I had just found an apt metaphor.

The pleasure of life is not thinking about living it and everything stops when we start recounting our past glories.

EMMANUEL CHIKA PRINCE.

updated by @ceri-shaw: 11/26/17 09:29:57PM

paradise by Phlaurel Possible

West Coast Eisteddfod Online Poetry Competition 2017

updated by @ceri-shaw: 11/26/17 08:40:40PM

Lines Composed Upon Abergavenny by Mark Stevick

West Coast Eisteddfod Online Poetry Competition 2017

    Learn here thy stem and true descent.

 

      Up from the fens leapt the sun’s morning,

      cleared the brick millrace

            and light foot stepped

      the greening fields awake,

      the slept cows unbuckled.

 

      Out of the sounds flew the dove’s mourning;

      bell and bleat corralled

            the tilting stiles,

      the bramble hedges squared

      in the slope of my sight.

 

      And down the lanes went my own walking,

      dashed the nervous hares

            in the glad land,

      the sun that day to ring

      a year upon my hand.

 

      Into the shires crept the church spiring

      piers and pediments;

            a steeple clocked

      my birthday’s chimed advance

      toward the motionless dark.

 

Under the elms spilled the tombs’ dumbing

      stones, supine or prone,

            in such collapse

      as carves the countenance

      a mortal epitaph.

 

      Then in their rooms the bells kept turning—

      for the graving ground

            all pinned with mums

      and with these natal eyes.

      Now let this sun be sheathed.

New online bilingual magazine: parallel.cymru

General Discussions ( Anything Goes )

Hi Neil....diolch for posting. Can we interest you in a promotional interview about the site?

Ceridwen’s Gift By Paula Hammond

West Coast Eisteddfod Online Short Story Competition 2017

When Rome attacked Ynys Dywyll our ancestors met the invaders at the shoreline. Across the storm-warped waters of the Menai Straits, the armies faced off. On one side, the polished brass of Rome’s finest. On the other, black-robed furies, flickering in torchlight, throwing spells at the wind.

Terrified by the curses of the druid swynwr, veteran centurions stood paralysed in the mud while archers mowed them down. Caesar learned that day what mages have always known: words have power. Words are performative. In chapel, when the Minister says “I pronounce you man and wife”, it’s the saying of it that makes it true.

Now, more than ever, this is the word we live in. The word where words become truth. Give voice to your needs, your desires, hates, and fears, and they become reality.

No one knows exactly how it happened, but we all know why.

There were just a few at first, then suddenly they were on every street. Pulsing, barely-there Boxes that were so intangible you could pass your hand right through one. For a few days they were an internet sensation but, when every attempt to examine them had failed, people lost interest. They became part of the scenery.

It was the children who first called them popty-pings, because that’s what they looked like. Microwaves. Even though popty-ping is just baby-talk - not real Welsh at all. Later, in The After, someone gave them a much grander name: Ceridwen’s Gift.

Ceridwen lived many centuries after Caesar’s legions died with curses in their ears. Hers was the time of the Angles and Saxons, when new invaders came to take what wasn’t theirs. And, like the Romans, they too found themselves bested by magic, for Ceridwen was a powerful enchantress, possessed of a cauldron of inspiration.

She was a monster too, this Ceridwen. A giantess, crooked and foul, who ate her servant in fit a rage, when he drank the potion she’d intended for herself. Magically in the way of these tales, once consumed, that servant became her unborn child. That child became Taliesin Ben Beirdd - our people’s greatest poet. A song-smith and a spell-singer whose words united us against the savage Saesonach.

That is how we have always fought, we Welsh. With words. We are a nation descended from mages and mystics, bards and balladeers. We have always played with rhyme. Prayed with song. Used pen and paper, ink and imagination, to craft dragons, wizards, and saviours with enchanted swords. To cast spells that embolden our warriors and diminish our fears.

For a long time though - after the Boxes began to open - we were afraid to talk at all. To even sigh a loved one’s name.

Collectively, our nation hushed herself. Our schools sank into soundless study. Our pubs became temples to buttoned up bonhomie. Our theatres hosted Mummers’ plays, where performers mouthed words to silent spectators. Our lives became subtitled with dumb horror.

In a world where click-click had long since replaced chit-chat, we suddenly discovered that emojis weren’t enough. We craved human speech. The inflection, the warmth, the thrill of susurrate subtexts.

The world we found ourselves in was hushed but never peaceful. We were counting the seconds between lightening strikes. At least once a week, someone would snap - pushed to the edge by the gnawing pressure of the unspoken. Often the noises they made were nothing more than desperate yowls. Anguished roars. Primal screams. The need to be heard.

But sometimes their voices were real, and true, and desperate. Verbal torrents, that poured out the human experience in all its tormented, damaged glory. Then the Boxes would open and, activated by their words, would spew Monsters from the Id.

Before the coming of the Christ, the swynwr and the enchanters forged unholy alliances to keep our people free. In battle they would call on the dormarch - fishtailed hounds, who rode the clouds and consumed dead souls. They befriended the gwyllion - beguiling spirits of lonely highways, who led lost legions to their doom. They knew the given names of the demonic afanc who feasted on the flesh of the foolish. And, while no man may own or command a dragon, they knew the ways of y ddraig, and counted them as friends.

But nothing our forefathers summoned from The Other could have prepared us for the Monsters of our own making. The creatures we fashioned from our petty frustrations and suppressed desires, made flesh by the power of the Boxes. Each was pitiless. Each could only be stopped by the death of the one who had spoken it into being.

The horror of this almost broke us. Could you kill your own child? How many deaths would it take before you ended what they had unwittingly had begun? Many wouldn’t. Couldn’t. And those who did lived on in mute grief.

We became a nation coddled in caution. Never too drunk. Never too angry. Never too alone. We secretly prepared for the worst. Stashing drugs. Drink. Planning how best to end it, should it come to that. We slept with our mouths taped shut. Just in case.

It was the Voxes that saved us from madness. At last we could talk again, even if our ‘voices’ were just speak-and-spell machines.

For a while we were so happy, clicking, and tapping, and marvelling at our cleverness, that we didn’t hear anything else. Didn’t notice that the children had started talking again. Popty-ping nonsense words that somehow robbed the Boxes of their power.

Our forefathers had used words like ‘llwyd’ to describe the ash of ember, the grey of rabbits. A quality of hue rather than a colour. The children had learnt that the Boxes had no poetry in their souls. Ambiguity confused them.

They borrowed and blended new with old, weaving spells around an ever-changing lexicon. They crafted words that made sense without making sense. They hung meaning on what wasn’t said. On rhythm and intonation. They fought these new invaders as our ancestors had so long ago: with magic.

Together, our people regrouped. Became a nation of new bards. Words became our resistance and the Boxes our unwitting salvation.

THE END

WHEN JUSTICE HAS MASTER by Wale Ope

West Coast Eisteddfod Online Poetry Competition 2017

When justice has master,
the truth will sag like the breastbreast of old granny.
truth will die and decay like a dead plant
and unity will remain an unborn child.

when justice is bossed,
corruption will flourish like an ever green tree,
leaders will deny people the rewards for their sweat,
and followers Will raise sword of cheat against one another.

when the light of truth is murdered,
the sun will set and never rise again,
the moon will sleeep rather than light-up the town,
mothers will bath and grace in disgrace,
fathers will cross their border
to have a taste of bride-price harvest in another man's room
and children in our households
will be breeds out of matrimony.

when justice has a master,
the gods will go crazy and spit infertility into the land,
God's Temple willwill be asylum for corrupt leaders,
sayings of the scriptures will be bent in favour of injustice,
lies will be fashioned like the truth,
our society will wear colours of pseudo-unity
and we will all dwell and survive in disunity.

updated by @ceri-shaw: 11/24/19 06:16:51PM

Sewing Starlight - by Molly Seaman

West Coast Eisteddfod Online Poetry Competition 2017

She left me alone

with only traces of starlight

tucked away underneath my fingernails,

left from when I tore at her.

 

I have only traces of starlight

to pocket as mementos

of moments when I didn't tear at her

and we were sewn together.

 

I pocket mementos

like they are needles and thread

that I can use to sew us back together,

make our bones sing duets again.

 

I have neither needles nor thread

to sew myself back together.

My bones need hers to sing duets again,

and presently my bones are lonely.

 

I cannot sew myself back together.

Without her I am not incarnate

and my bones are lonely.

She left me alone.