[oats]

Eng:

Disturb dust on a summit’s peak as I blush from a cutting breeze,
disrupt each shoulder holding the burden of allies, and lies,
past lives crushed under bloodied feet: heart thumps (a drummer’s beat).
Cardiac movement’s hardly that prudent - exuding lust if lovers sleep.
My spirit is hungry; stomach’s weak: untouched by the coming feast.

The most immediate strength of your verse here is your complex rhyme schemes. Coupled with the loftiness of your language, and this is one of the strongest verse mechanics-wise of the tournament thus far. Really strong writing. The allusions to past and future lives were tough, but meaty. Once I got access to the content (took a couple reads), I really loved the idea of past lives strewn across the mountain underfoot your bloody boots, killing the past to move forward. Equally loved the coming feast of the future, how it portrays a certain hopeful confidence for what the future holds, but how it's in the future and thus isn't real; you're still hungry in spite of it. Really strong opening section.

Glories of yester-yore are ineffective gauze - hesitant lips caressed a
desolate jaw (it was never much more) - a present exists: at best the
rest is thought. Schematic, presuming you can plan, mentally,
a pattern’s renewing as ancestor’s hand gestures span centuries
but one’s path isn't proven. My mantra is brief: Man’s meant to be.

Maintaining the top-tier wording and language impressively, good shit. love the image of nostalgic pride being gauze to cover up wounds - which is ineffective. The "hesitant lips" to "never much more" was good writing, but I struggled to connect it meaningfully, kind of felt like a reference to a youthful love lost stapled in there. But I could be just reading it wrong. Loved the "at best the rest is thought" line. Not a new idea by any means, but a really fresh way to present the idea. The focus on the past here was well-conceived, though I wonder if it unbalanced the verse a bit, seeing as how the opening section was a good mix of past/future imagery, then this part was primarily past. Nothing juts out as incongruous, but something to think about. Ancestor's hand gestures span centuries is a great, vivid line. I would have liked if the "be" was italicized or something, to put emphasis on the overall theme of living in the present.

I exist in the now, the air whips with a sound my mind garners,
to live in the past or look to the future’s stasis, so why bother?

You held back the complex language here in exchange for clarity, which I like. I do appreciate the metaphorical mud to dig through, makes for a fun, rewarding challenge, but if I'm straining throughout the whole verse it can be detrimental. I think this provided a clear look at what the rest of the verse is about. If you only read the verse once, I don't think you'll get much out of it. But I've read both of these verses several times by now, and this closer really helped me make sensible conclusions about the rest of the imagery upon further re-reads. So it was really effective, and I like the spin on the topic - took a more positive route (cross your fingers that certain doesn't vote), and you mixed in genuine thoughtfulness with intellectualism, which is very difficult.

Overall, this is a really dope verse imo. I hope other voters take the time to read it through more than twice, because its density is offputting at first. But the content starts to align and take shape after a couple more reads, and the verse takes off from there. This was excellent writing start to finish.


Pancake:

She'd strike the piano. The ivory was silk.
Auburn haired. Angry; there was cilantro in every tile she'd pluck.
Allegro, with a twitch of discord as she played the notes
against the smile's she struck ignoring her layered tropes.

Opening was a bit shaky writing-wise. This could be because there was a firmer reliance on the end rhymes in your schemes than in Eng's, so "silk" and "pluck" was a little jarring for me. The writing was elegant with a touch of contemporary angst - not many imbue their word with as much emotion as you, and yet you have never (to my memory) crossed over into melodrama, even briefly. It's an edge you have over pretty much everyone else. Cilantro in the tiles was odd to me though. Though I didn't like the rhyme, pluck was a great word to use to describe a frantic pianist at work. Strong start overall, a couple of minor irritants but nothing of significance.

Painting the keys. The 'Hello Kitty' ironic emblazement
as a stroke against the hedonistic. Punk rock, her sonic displacement;
playing sharp keys in the place of harmonic arrangements,
re-arranging the monotone sonnets she played with.

Loved the image of playing the piano like painting. I'm a sucker for pianos imagery tbh. The juxtaposition of punk rock/hello kitty/playing classical music was effective, and it made a lush backdrop of her character through small details. Dope. I guess there is a certain monotony to harmony. The parallels of her piano playing taking an individual shape and breaking free from the tradition alongside her unique demeanor and appearance was well-received.

She's a dream for a catch; finding a note in the meager,
amongst the local parochial seekers. You trying to grasp at a ghost in the ether;
long gone once you realize the soma's aware;
why bother when you've already lost the most that was there, never to better your chances.

The rhymes picked up a bit, which I like. "She's a dream for a catch" is a unique turn of phrase. It reads oddly at first, but it has a suggestive current to it. The addition of spirituality worked here with the message you were aiming for. That is (how I see it, at least), that this woman is playing out of a sense of loss. I took it as she lost a lover of some sort, but is now finding herself through the process, much like she departed from what she had been used to playing on the piano. But that chord of individuality is so fleeting and difficult to grasp, much like grasping a ghost in the ether (excellent line, btw). That moment of freedom vanishes upon self-awareness (soma, another top-notch choice, to outline her as a shell of consciousness), so why bother? Go back to playing the Brandenburg Concertos or something. The content of this last part was great, though I wasn't as thrilled about the change from describing "her" to addressing "you." Nothing major, some people get hung up on it, but I do like it as a tool to generalize and create a greater sense of implication - this woman is YOU, the reader, we are all part of this human experience and here is a single example of it in a microcosm. So in that sense, it works, but I think it would have been better had the last 4 lines stuck completely in "her" or "you" language, not try to blend both of them in it. The last line not rhyming was cool I think, though I'm curious to see what others say about it. It leaves a bad taste in your mouth, in a good way, by punctuating the final thought for us to leave with. Not many people would even try that, and you made it work.


Vote: Well fuck. I must have read each of these verses 8 times now. I should have chosen a different match to follow up on, because I've been really indecisive about this one. Eng clearly outwrote Cake, which is crazy for me to type tbh, because I don't think I've ever seen an instance where someone even slightly outwrote him (myself included). But where Cake lagged in literary finesse, he more than made up for in the background narrative and humanity of his character, accessed through well-planted details. I give the slight edge to Cake's angle and overall writing strategy, but the few hiccups stippled throughout his verse gave enough room for Eng to snake this one with a less novel central idea that was presented well and executed nearly flawlessly. I will be really interested to see how this turns out, because I've changed my mind several times about this, one of the closest matches I've had the pleasure of reading in recent memory. It sounds trite, but it really does come down to personal preference, as both are deserving of the win here. Frontrunner for BOTW.