AOWL Spotlight Match #1: Frank (6-2) VS. dead man (2-2) [DEAD MAN WINS, 5-3.]

[King Ra.]

16 lines minimum, 48 lines maximum. (if agreed upon by both participants, you may go beyond the limit at your own risk.)

Verses are due FRIDAY 4/26 at 11:59 PST.
Extensions are due SATURDAY 4/27 at 11:59 PST.
(There is a 6 hour grace period following the end of the extension deadline. If you fail to post anything by the end of the grace period time, you will be given the no show loss.)

You must vote on at least 4 other battles and post links in the Voting Thread. For every absent vote, you will be deducted ONE vote next week.

Voting ends TUESDAY 4/30 at 11:59 PST.(Unless otherwise it may be extended another day at the most.)

You MUSTcheck in.

If you no-show, you will be removed from next week and have to sign back into the league.

NOTE:
Swaying, excessive freeposting, voter fraud etc. are grounds for vote deductions at discretion of the moderators.
Editing your verse after the grace period, after your opponent posts, or after the first vote (especially this)- as well as biting- are grounds for disqualification at discretion of the moderators.


TOPIC:



Good luck to both participants. @Frank @dead man

[dead man]

yahtzee

[Frank]

seen.......

[dead man]

they never understood. i only wanted to build,
knowledge fulfilled, often concealed, a philosopher's guild
inoperative villagers that cling to their pasts,
who pray for better days but never live for a chance
to experience a presence in a moment's retention
appearance and description never closer to essence
than a sense or a sound. stop breathing when it's better to drown
many quick to start their sentences non-sequiter bound
i tried to make them leave a life, objective as ground
silent solipsism. an exercise rejected aloud
i wanted to cry. knowing all my prophets will die
without an opportunity to conquer their pride
Gods also will die, yet their posters claim them wanted: alive
embracing tradition, claiming a vision consciously blind
tossed to the side. i taught for years my students in solitude
which facets of intelligence were crucial to constitute
not for truth, or honor. but liberation and choice
pray for a voice, scream and rip a lung for saints to anoint
it's unfortunate to see. i only wanted to teach
an apocryphal breach, til grasshoppers see their options increase
no deity or pacifist could promise them peace
i only promise a piece. ignorant and honest as priests
but limitation served to be the dominant beast
tempted by ineptitude and awkward retreat
to casualty. to ancestry. to a doctrinal leash
common deceits, grandparents and "i gotta" beliefs
banished from their village in 2003
walked Europa ever since, a wandering sheik
i told them there was life outside, a planet for apes
building shiny bullets lit aflame to hatch an escape
there's more than this. there has to be. don't panic, relate
i'm just another bastard child of passionate faith..
in something else. love and health. i wanted to know.
craved knowledge for roses concrete-laiden, blossoming growth
bounty on my head, i've since been walking this road
they never understood. just stood there watching me go.


i can't help you, if you won't let me





black

[Frank]

Mary Jane tied the birthday balloon ribbon round her wormy wrist.
Her nerves twitched; pinched with pressing her luck - her dirty syringe.
Her eyes rolling back in her head with vertical, circular spins.
The merciless twin and the conservative twin.
A virgin being converted by her twin into flirting with sin.
Around the block - around the curve of the bend -
Up and down the street on the curbs in mini skirts with her friends.
Mary Jane wasn't into BOY; she wasn't a nurturing fem.
She grew up sturdy in dens with 10s of her brothers; all courteous men.
Her hair was curly and red; crystally colgate smile, permanent grin.
Heroine would compliment her on how purty she is.
How girly and thin -
how a curvy twig with scurvy hips could lure to bed any man she burned it with.
Heroine was jealous of Jane - her earthy scent; her worldly sense
She tied on the tourniquet for her sis in an earnest attempt to curse the bitch..
Artificially inseminate her with the birth of bliss.
Her sister put out a cigarette; a turkish blend; (blowing smoke into my murky lenses.)
She looked cured and trim.
Golden yellow sun rays kissed her with pursed lips of, a burning tinge.
Her eyes absorbed the Ultra Violet surge and then
She turned the thread around her wrist until, a purple print emerged on her railing thin arm like A surgeons pen.
She hurled her din; black venom churned her gibbs. She whirled a bit.
Hot and cold flashes; like a wind running through a furnace lit with bourbon wicks.
Mary inserted the syringe; introverting her extraverted sense;
blurry mix; absurd defense system notifying the body of unsecure events; Her Blood circulating, swirled and swished through out her body syrupy thick.
Deserted and stripped - Blood curdling, dripping pearly from malnourishment.
The needle makes her skin squirm and curl her fist.
Her cloudy red eyes luringly lit.
Her frosty skin color mellows into a amber flare - spurning a cyst.
The bedroom door shuts out the party; that splurged on gifts.
The ''don't disturb me'' sign is swirling - stiff -
"Happy Sweet 16th Sis..."
Her sis swigs a 5th of liquor; swerving from the sip.
Mary Jane reaches for a can of Coke and it bursts into fizz.
The birthday balloon ribbon slips on her lifeless wrist and swirls into her purses pit.
She slips into unconsciousness and spirals further out of her disturbed abyss.
Her pulse quits; her brain short circuits; her soul disperses; and lives.
Growing up in a small town in Middle America where the curfew is 6.
Suburban kids experiment with drugs; escaping from the currentness of reoccuringness.
Are we putting roofs over our childrens heads or circus tents?
..
Mary Jane lay lifeless under curtains. ripped! passed exertion - it doesn't take a brain surgeon to determine death.
You've got to find yourself first and then everything will follow like a herd in kept.
Steps heard admist the service mist. The urn is swept. With
The feathers from a nest atop a churches crest.
Backwards ways our winding roads have lead us to nowhere, but a hearse, a ditch,
The chime from heaven - the serpents hiss - the orchestra merged and split - the turbulence.
..
The only journey is the journey within.
In the candle smoke of burnt wishes -
The smell of teen spirit -
Heroine over did it; Mary Jane's body was rolled into a bag and burned to a crisp.
Once cremated; her friends all took turns to smoke her ashes -
..
"Who's turn is it??"
..
They're passing the pipe to you - take a preserving hit.
..
Mary Jane flourished once she got to the other side of the perfect ridge.
Where the grass grew unconcerned and lush - untouched by earths fist.
Mary stabbed the ground - stern with her stick - covered her eyes - to observe where she is.
Heroine appears in a murderous glitch.
The balloon on Mary Janes wrist drifts into the sky like a curious blimp.
Helium hisses from her lips as she blurts to her sis.
'Gate way drugs.. They get you no where.
But it's worth the trip.'
..
I know well what I am fleeing from but not what I am in search of -

yet.

[Mike Wrecka]

epic battle. this could very well be the final right here if they are in different divisions. not sure but ya what a clash of styles. Deadmans methodic, complex and supreme structuring against Franks free spirited flow that bucks traditional structure but ends up with a cadence that seems next level at times.

dead man - its been too long since you dropped a verse in this league. nobodys verses flow better for me than yours and I really relate to your structure cause I think we have somewhat similar styles. this verse was dope. the flow was sick. content wise it was otherworldy. the story kept me interested. only thing I think it was missing was some more multis. not that the lack of them detracted from the piece but I think it would have added to it if you threw some in there.

Frank- well francis this was a cool story that got better as it progressed. I really enjoyed the section where the girl went to the other side which really brought it all together with the picture. the flow was good, in some parts great, in some just ok. this was your usual style, which is good, but minus the tongue in cheek humor. and I think the serious side of frank was cool.

real tough to decide. like I said epic battle. two dope verses but one outshined the other by a slim margin imo and that was

vote - dead

[Objective]

Dead Man: Your intro throws me off. Not in terms of the amazing imagery you present or anything in regards of the fluent and easy to follow flow that's obviously there, the intro or the rhymes in general, but it's the very fact that your grammar and punctuation fucking sucks to the point where you present your sentences likes this;

they never understood. i only wanted to build,
knowledge fulfilled, often concealed, a philosopher's guild
inoperative villagers that cling to their pasts,
who pray for better days but never live for a chance
to experience a presence in a moment's retention
appearance and description never closer to essence
than a sense or a sound.

No capital letter to start off the sentences, no capital letter on ''I'' and your overall grammatical errors should have been the same errors that should be enforced on the pieces I write (as a foreign writer on this site) or in the classroom to third graders. Punctuation is important help the reader catch your flow and with lack of commas later on in your piece I get thrown off even more and got to re-read some sentences due to that.
I would easilly have overlooked the ''I'' shit, but overall it annoys me. This is a spotlight match so I figured I should tell you how much it actually draws my attention from the shit you're actually saying. I might be the only one, but in battles like these shit that throws off readers may as well cost you a vote if the pieces are equally great. Yes, I'm a bitch and a whiny brat when it comes to this and I easilly ignore it on the forum and elsewhere on the net because I realize this isn't a fucking classroom. But truth be told that in a battle or writing in general you should be more aware of how you present your stuff. If you ever wish to look into what writing might hold for you outside of netcees, and the internet as a whole in the future, you should think about looking into improving these aspects as it can only give strength to possible works you might want to put in a portfolio or whatever later on. I don't know what you want from writing or if it's just a hobby that will never venture outside of netcees, but you obviously got something there that could be worth experimenting with later on in terms of prose, poetry or short stories/novels. If grammar is hard for you I would suggest running a word correction in whatever program you're using to write your shit or an external program for such things.

Beside of my long rant of bashing on you for errors, the piece itself is actually pretty good. I liked most of the stuff you were saying and the story is cool enough. You describe things that are easy to grasp. The wording might be a bit fucked here and there though, ''Gods also will die'' for instance. I think it would read better if written like this; ''Even Gods eventually die'' which also sounds allright enough with the following sentence that ends with ''consciously blind''.

All-in-all a great piece that presented the topic given well with a few annoying errors as a reader in terms of errors.

Frank: Enjoyed the intro and looking forward to read more. However, I think you repeated the word ''twin'' a bit too much, but that's nitpicking similar to me writing a long rant about Dead Mans grammar. The entire paragraph is kinda long as compared to the others but that doesn't matter at all. I enjoyed how you described the events and the relationship between the two of them. Very great narrating along with a rhymescheme that was complex at times yet easy to follow. Interesting end of the paragraph as well; ''Are we putting roofs over our childrens heads or circus tents?'' Hah, nice!

Second paragraph was great as fuck and thickens the plot. Especially enjoyed this shit;
Backwards ways our winding roads have lead us to nowhere, but a hearse, a ditch,
The chime from heaven - the serpents hiss - the orchestra merged and split - the turbulence.
^Dope!

The third paragraph tells you more about Heroine and what a sly bitch she is once you hang out with her. In terms of rhyming I couldn't get the ''smoking her ashes'' to work with the scheme which sucks donkeyballs.

Everything after that was dope in terms of the rhymescheme and flow you had going throughout except for the previous fluke and wraps up the concept you were trying to convey. I enjoyed the creativity of giving these substances names. How it all intertwined with the picture given was really well done in my opinion and I loved the concept.

Vote: Frank. Both definately had great verses but I think Frank was simply on a different level with his piece. Definately looking forward to read more from both. Allthough my rant towards Dead Man might make people think otherwise I actually enjoyed the read quite a lot when I looked past that shit on the second read though.

[zygote]

Deadman, the language really captured the themes of desolation in the picture. Also, you went a step further and made the theme of 'rebuilding' which was logical to follow on from destruction. Had the feeling of a post-apocalyptic story without getting sidetracked on describing the apocalyptic event. (Kind of like the movie Road where they never explain it - E.g., "walked Europa ever since, a wandering sheik" gave image of those kind of films). The overall feeling taken from this was like the reflections of self-aware person in a world of desolation where the other people are not self-aware.

Frank, a lot of your verse was focusing on physical senses, color and sounds, it gave a good poetic-like writing tone- E.g., "The chime from heaven - the serpents hiss - the orchestra merged and split - the turbulence." However, some sections feel like an overload of adjectives - E.g., "Her cloudy red eyes luringly lit. Her frosty skin color mellows into a amber flare - spurning a cyst." There are other similar parts as well, these strings of descriptive words like this ruin it for me. The reading feeling going through these extraneous words is like pulling weeds. Especially, for this picture - thought all the grand descriptions did not fit the with theme of the picture.
Voted for Deadman.

[NYCSPITZ]

dope battle. It was close but got black here, usual dope flow and laconic impact which fit the piece and ended with a bang. Lots of quotables. Frank with the nice story that I enjoyed. I particularly liked the descriptive aspects of the trip, seems like u packed a lot of art in there, plus I liked the attention to detail in Frank's i.e. curfew @ 6 in a South American country. Cool underlying themes like death/afterlife. Your verse gained momentum and my interest the more I read and if u kept that pace up at the beginning it's anybody's game but Black got it this time imo

[Split]

Dead Man.
Interesting you brought Black back for your verse this week. Symbolic or careless?

I enjoy reading into your verses. Perhaps you played with Legos as a child, and the process astounded you. Psychology's kind of like building blocks, right? You don't create a story backwards, you create an idea backwards.

Anyways, on topic. I enjoy reading into your verses because your wordplay, devices, descriptions all fit within these little blocks, that you then flow together into your story. And while it is hard to look back on say, a memory or movie and examine its significance, it is quite easy to look back and create any number of definitions for a moment or scene. When used in these discrete chunks, there is one connotation that makes them flow on a metaphysical/ meaningful level, like a path of least resistance, and I caught this once before- in your playoffs verse against Essen- it was like a spark of gunpowder lighting across colored sands through the verse. Here, I feel like I caught it again- hard.

So it made this cool descriptive effect, where since everything aligned in terms of story, the descriptions were mad aligned too.

For (what I perceive as your method, maybe that's not u at all lol) your method of storytelling it either clicks well, or washes and fizzles out. Here, it was crisp and beautiful.

anyways, the guru slash teacher/ student metaphor was and excellent match for the picture... I felt like there was a strong tie to your life in the leaving having not truly taught conclusion... I don't know you, so I can't say. But I feel the one-way directionality of the picture was nicely reproduced in the way you expressed regret at bringing light and not enlightenment, awareness and not consciousness, and a path but not a journey.

FrankFurter.

Ok. Cool verse. Repetition was used well but also overused, in my opinion. It was cool how you tracked the two and their different journeys given the same circumstances... Awesome play off the picture. I feel like you really throttled yourself in the line limit though, the characters motivations weren't clear and it seemed very crucial to interpreting the story. The mirror symbolism was strong but also like polishing a corvette whose timing belt has slipped a notch. I definitely feel like your story would have had a KICK. If you had relied more on the reader for piecing it together. I definitely know what it's like when you put too much faith in the reader and no one knows what you are talking about, but here everything was muddled for me. Still a good verse especially when put into context of the topic, that covers up nearly all of these storytelling criticisms


So, where dead man has a strongly focused narrative that uses eclectic and hazy eyed storytelling, our friend Frank has a wide spanning landscape that uses highly concentrated and intricate detail. Dead Man had a hit of heroin and Frank had an LSD come up. When read and referred to the pictures, Frank's works as something that you are constantly reflecting on, while dead man's is like a before/ read verse/ after view the picture again. I really, really enjoyed the way Black expounded on the perspective on the picture, his verse really came alive


V/ black

Dope battle

[Zen]

Great battle.
dead: Very poetic vibe to this. Loved it to be honest especially the prophets will die section. That shit was very well written. No parts of this seemed to lag it kept going at a constant pace throughout and for that props. Nice piece and welcome back to the league man.
Frank: An epic verse here this week. Great story told here and pretty amazing you kept up with the same scheme throughout however many lines your piece was. Very nice. This piece seemed to start slow and pick up steam about halfway through and never let up and came to a pretty decisive close. Very impressed with this piece Frank.

All in all I gotta go against the consensus and vote for Frank. Great battle though guys.

[Dove Dozer]

editing my vote later please dont close

[ZeeDee]

Dead man, this was good from start to finish to show the character outgrowing his home surroundings and making his way into different societies. Realistic and payed nicely with the piture. The narration was superb as well. Almost every stanza of flow was smooth to read and made this enjoyable to go through. Some unique word choices for rhymes that was impressive as well. The character build of this piece was nice as well as you can fel it happening and side with the character as he leaves.

Frank... honestly... didn't think you were going to have enough to beat this, but you surprised me a great deal with this one. The imagery was on a spectacular level.. so even though the story of dopefiend is kinda eeehhh... you made is like a documentary of a dopefiend with all the great and graphic details.... that's just the imagery.... the flow was fire even with the stretched lines and the continual rhyme is something very few can carry out and still keep it fresh within the content as well as not reuse the same words when continuing the same rhyme pattern. Toic wise, it fits the picture.. you took the time to paint the character very well and I was feeling that. I know how difficult it is to carry a deep flow for a long sequence and still build the story and develop everything right.. you did these elements very well and I'm impressed...

This was defintely a great battle... this has my vote for botw.. great job fellas... both of you impressed me, but one was more impressive in the format... both have great narration and descriptive details... but

Vote frank.. just impressed a little more..

[Fig]

Crazy battle. 2 finely crafted narratives with 2 unique writing styles behind them.

Deadman, I loved reading this, not only for its content, but for the scheme and overall flow of it as well. The word choice here was very strong, but nothing felt too overpowering.

many quick to start their sentences non-sequiter bound
i tried to make them leave a life, objective as ground
silent solipsism. an exercise rejected aloud

Frank, your flow here was disjointed as hell, not in a bad way at all though. The characterization was a lot stronger in this piece I think, but the story didnt really come together until the end, leaving me partially bored at first. Still a great piece

V/ deadman

[Frank]

Originally Posted by nO gOoD!

editing my vote later please dont close

take your time

[Atheist]

read both verses twice over and if im been honest im drunk as a benchmans fart, in terms of the the mechanics both were flawless, (head in hands while i think), imagery was on point with both verses, this is like asking whats better, chalk or cheese, on this occasion its cheese, (frank) sorry i can bearly type atm, but as far as both verse go on the whole I got frank. (ill give a more in depth reason when i can).

[King Ra.]

Not happening, Kooj. Lmao.

DEAD MAN WINS, 5-3.