[Certain]

(I deleted my original vote so that this thread could be bumped back to the top.)

UnbornBuddha: I felt quite locked in to your verse during the conversation between the monk and aristocrat. Then you had the monk burst apart out of nowhere, which was a strange turn of events. I liked the way you shifted speaking styles for each character, and some of the rhyming was very good. You definitely stretched lines, and I thought you could have presented the dialogue in a more reader-friendly format and cut some of the explainers down a bit. We saw the duality of the topic and were forced to make our own judgments. There was a bit of stiffness, particularly in the non-dialogue asides. I think you can cut out a lot of your verbosity. It's tough for me to say no one speaks like that because it's presumed your characters are from an entire different culture, but the terseness was straining at times. Still, I liked the story part. But then you kept going, as though you simply had so many more things to say about this topic that you couldn't contain yourself to the interesting, albeit occasionally hard to follow and overwrought, story that you already had provided. Now, I'm not against breaking the wall and discussing the topic at hand; I've done it a few times in the past. But doing so here lessened the impact of the story, especially since you stepped outside of it without the goal of providing more context but rather wanted to explore other angles. More than anything, that seemed to be a sign of your inexperience. The topic should serve as a guideline and driving force for your verse, but your verse does not have to entangle itself with every small nuance of the topic every single time. Finding an approach and commiting to it often makes for a better read. None of that is to say that I judged you harshly for including those final 12 lines. But it's something to think about.

patrown: The use of the phrase "house pet" had me thinking this was going in a very, very different direction. Basically, though, Blue was a rich kid who needed sort of a project, more than a pet, and took Shane under his wings with the goal of civilizing him, but it failed. That's a pretty nice take on this topic, and you wrote it very well. This was immaculately smooth, both in cadence and diction. The rhyming buoyed the story along, and there were some very nice turns of phrase. I really liked the "dissolved the revolving door" and "cold asylum floors" rhyme as well as concept. You quickly added another layer to Shane's struggle through a nice metaphor followed by imagery. Where I had a bit of a problem is that he story sort of started to fall apart after that, as though you lost interest. The showing turned to telling as Shane's life as Blue's friend melted away, which is a shame. I love that last line so much, too. It's such a great twist on this homeless drug user getting taken in and made comfortable enough that he has his own favorite tie. This battle is tough to vote on because UnbornBuddha went about three paces too long while you went about three too short. But what costs you here is that your story wasn't as fleshed out as it needed to be to top his thought provocation. I could see this one going either way, for sure.

Vote: UnbornBuddha