wk5: CopyPat 3-1 vs. Soulstice 2-1 -- CopyPat 5-1

[Adonis]

AOWL Season IV, Week 3

OFFICIAL RULES:
Verses are due Thursday Oct 30th, extenstion to ALL, Halloween the 31st., 11:59p.m. PCT/2:59a.m. EST/7:59a.m. UK. There are NO extensions.

Verses MUST be a minimum 10 lines or a maximum of 48 lines (or 650 words).

Votes are due Sunday, November 2nd, 11:59p.m. PCT/2:59a.m. EST/7:59a.m. UK. Failure to vote will result in automatic sign out for the next week.



Topic:

No more Mr. nice Guy – Alice Cooper

Topic: Either or

Good Luck @CopyPat @Soulstice

[CopyPat]

Little Alice was a friendly fella. Grew up getting teased for his name. Dude was hella decent but lame, used to catch a beating in grade school and never seemed to relate. Loser dressed in the cheapest of ways: blue and red like the Mario game, with two suspenders to carry his frame. Grew the messiest, scariest mane, was putrid smelling and barely would play. Had a stupid yellow carrying case, with the cutest teddy right there on the face. A true contender for nefarious hate, these ruthless predators would tear into daily. Embarrassed, ashamed he.. never once snapped or went crazy. Instead was just sad but remained being, friendly un-taxed by the chasing, and getting such flack he was taking. Let it just pass him, un-fazed he, was generous to classmates.. amazing. Abnormally kind for a dwarf of his size, this short little guy was poised and polite. Teased relentlessly, but avoided the fights. And more impressively, was known to be nice. Quarter to 9 in the morning arrived; snowing and ice, and there’s slush flyin too. The cold winter bites on their bus-ride to school. The road isn’t dry and the bus kinda huge, so it coasts into slides and the bus driver loses control of the tires like “The fuck I’ma do?!?” Explodes in the side of a mud sty lagoon, and slowly declines in the sludge pile of slough. Most of the riders are stuck tryna move, and nobody’s silent as the muck slimes and goops. All of the children are panicking, screaming; but poor little Alice just casually breathing. See his short little status allows him the squeezing, to contort into gaps and unlatch to release them. Gathers them each from the straps in their seats, and helps push them out to his maximum reach. The longer they’re in there, the faster it seeps. No time for crying or a passionate speech. This, Alice can see, and forgoes the risk, despite time. Goes for it, this bite sized poser lifted sky high. Frozen with his pride, tiny shorty lived a giant life. And saved everyone on that bus but himself…
No more mister nice guy.

[Soulstice]

Please break open if you are traveling with live bombs
And the rather thick wick starts unraveling like pythons
freed from capture- your eye's caught on the descending flame
So shatter this. A charred Prius would be such a pretentious grave

This highway is as foreign as the flesh of the woman
Whose relationship I'd left in contemptuous ruin
I remembered the blueprints - 20 miles far and between
2 Overpriced McDonald's. While shiny stars in a sea
Of darkness unsheathed from the churning clouds
Allow me to notice new forsythias which dot the ground
Shrouding my focus - I wonder if she talks dirty now
I want to turn around - consideration is a potent drug
And i will. I missed my turn. I'm lonely, glum
The road's begun to coat my lungs in romantic aplomb
Preparing semantics. I smile. Take a glance at my bomb.

Break glass in case of crossed wires (blue and red) Inside are
strong pliers to disable the bomb's fire. REMEMBER: Youthful dread
resumes once confusion sets. If you can't consciously admit
Youre wrong then please also find a mask of oxygen within

This travelling's daunting. The horizon gives way to synaptic mirages
Ghosts of the past dance in scattered collages all over the pavement
Such haunting arrangements - paired with a cavernous wanting
That could challenge the catacombs of Paris. Either fill me with revenge
Or kiss me by your bed. Your waning moans combatting
the groans of my conscience. That figment on my shoulder
continues his whispers and supposing.

Shatter this poem to bits if your soul insists to follow through
This method is awful cruel. Why won't you see if she'll talk to you?
Inside is your losses, true - but there's love where theres hate
You can find it again in her, and then corruptions displaced
Her lovely face, her touch and grace, despite the tough
Times one can be redeemed from an unrequited love

Unrequited love.. I'm running on empty. I throw it in park
In front of your house. I felt so cold in the dark. Supposedly
growing apart can put holes in your heart. I remember that sexy laugh
of yours as I approach your door and again meet specters past.
The best won't last. I came home early, entered the bedroom, a coffin
Should not have been surprised.
Your eyes always shimmered when you saw him
Now my bomb is getting warmer as I knock upon your door.

Come on, I know you know this is rash. Leave things in the past.
Put your bomb down, forgive them both, get to letting things go.
When one hates.... Wait!? Is that HIM in the window.
Sorry, all that other shit I said was stupid as fuck.
You can find the Operating Manual for The Boom in the trunk

[Greed]

I was looking for a reason to vote for you copypat because the story was solid and to the point but in reality soul verse has a real slick delivery. Although he sometimes loses me I appreciate the effort and in the end you can piece together what had gone on. Not that I didnt 'get it', but lines like '2 overpriced mcdonalds' is only something that he himself can visualize. Idk. Actually rereading it I guess the house was between two mcdonalds. W/e.

V soul

[Zen]

CopyPat: Why you do this to me, Pat? I hated Alice at first because he was taking shit from everyday but then this motherfucker saves the motherfucking day and dies. Fucking broke my heart. I'm still crying hysterically right now in my Comp. II class and everybody's looking at me all weird and shit. I don't care. I liked this though. The rhyming was great as usual but in some parts I had to go back and reread what you wrote so I could catch on to the flow a little better. Besides that little gripe, this was top notch.

Soulstice: First off, the rhyming was very smooth. Each line read easier than the first and that's rare, especially when it comes to topicals. As for the story, it wasn't nearly as good as Pat's was. Pat's came off easily and it was easily to relate to. Long story short, it had the human factor in it. As for yours, I really couldn't tell where you were going with it from one stanza to the next. The positive of this was the writing, the negative was the content.

V/ Pat

[Certain]

CopyPat: This was the kind of storytelling that I know you're capable of every week: clear, clean, crisp and interesting. You had a cool little story that hit a lot of angles of this topic (the freezing death angle was unexpected but welcome). I mostly liked the play on "No More Mr. Nice Guy," as in, there's no more Mr. Nice Guy because our Little Alice is dead. The rhymes were on point, as always, though they started to slack a little by your personal standards at the very end. But I liked the decision to end off-rhyme, as it kind of brought the story to a close. The casual storytelling voice was relatable but muted some of the emotional impact.

Soulstice: Your style is so demanding but so rewarding. It's easy for readers' eyes to glaze over and drift along with your seamless phrasing, but you bury the meaning too often. I think your success in the Short-Verse Topical Tournament was partially due to you being forced to dial back your ambitions and partially due to readers spending more time on shorter verses. But I try to read everything three times anyway, and I enter your battles knowing three probably won't be enough. Here you strung together a nice little sequence of emotional resonance about the self-destruct sequence of trying to leap out of the friend zone. Could this verse have worked if it had simply been the sections in italics, with a little of the meat from the non-italicized sections to pad it out? I think that would have simultaneously made the verse more readable and more artistic and unique. Some of the images in the non-italicized sections were cool and provided a bit more of a human touch, but I don't think you ever fully emotionally connected with me, and part of that was the jumping between voices. The bomb stuff was more original and more clever. The vampiric metaphors in the final non-italicized stanza didn't work for me. Also, "unrequited love" always, 100% of the time, makes me think of Frank Ocean's "Bad Religion." This was a good verse, but you try to do too much sometimes, and that stands out in contrast to CopyPat's complete and thorough execution of a simpler task.

Vote: CopyPat

[dead man]

yea this is a tough one because both are so solid in terms of their signature approaches. soul of course is a master of phrasing. of unfolding scenes in long, spiraling rhyme demonstrations. often they are transporting and beautiful but at times, it can grow redundant and fall flat if there doesn't seem to be enough flesh underneath the surface. your colorful fabric is stretched too thin sometimes. does that make sense?

you could have compacted this into something immensely more effective in my opinion. kept your basic idea and simply compounded. cut some more "showy" segments, ie.

"This travelling's daunting. The horizon gives way to synaptic mirages
Ghosts of the past dance in scattered collages all over the pavement
Such haunting arrangements - paired with a cavernous wanting
That could challenge the catacombs of Paris. Either fill me with revenge
Or kiss me by your bed. Your waning moans combatting
the groans of my conscience. That figment on my shoulder
continues his whispers and supposing."

this struck me as mostly descriptive. which is great in some contexts because you are fully fleshing out your ideas. it worked against you this week, however, when matched up against a writer (in CopyPat) who fires poisonous darts directly at his targets, rather than taking a more calculated route. there is no psychological warfare. only buckshots

these battles are so great, particularly this season, because there are such stark contrasts between how paired writers have been manipulating their topics. it makes it so the verses are not necessarily taken in as individual submissions but as part of a dynamic. i find myself reading and re-reading the works in relation to one another. which is, in my eyes, a cornerstone of high-level competition.

thanks to both, first and foremost

my vote goes to CopyPat

1

[asylum]

copypat - you introduced your character well, and worked your way into the store decent. i think there could've been a smoother transition into the action part of the story, but you squeeked into it pretty well. didn't really see it coming, but the cliche ending line really worked for you here. i enjoyed the piece as a whole.
soulstice - enjoyed the rhymes and mechanics of your entire piece. just was a little broken up, and i'm not really sure what happened. but i'm leaning towards some kind of carbomb at an ex's houe that was located in the trunk? idk. no climax really... would've enjoyed some description of the explosion. the third stanza wasn't your strongest. you did a great job writing, but didn't tie it up for me as well as i'd have liked.
/v copypat - and by a close margin. i just feel like his story was more complete. if soulstice would've pieced it all together a little more of finished off stronger, he would've easily gotten my vote.

[kannon]

copypat. fuck your lack of stucture. lots of rhymes though. i dont like the whole "start a new sentance, but its still part of the multi" shit. i mean the, "just let it pass him, un phased. he..." line. i felt like at some point, you got a bit repetitive talking about how kind he was, and friendly, and then added that he was known to be nice. we get it. anyways, cool piece. i do like your word flip on the topic.

soulstice. pretty cool. parts were really well written, parts were kinda okay. i kinda like that the whole thing is focused on his thought process during the drive to his ex's place. I actually wrote a very similar piece a few years back. i think my main complaint is that he kind of felt indifferent. kind of just telling a story of love that ended in murder. rather than actually fighting with his decision to take another life. if that makes sense. i wanted him to struggle with the thought.

close one, but ill edge to copy.