Once You See It You Can't Unsee It Legs

PROMPT: Once you see (know) it, you cannot unsee (unknow) it.

It could be ...awareness, knowledge, a sight/sound/touch/taste/smell, a memory, etc. ... take this where you will.

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I enjoy brevity, haiku and great poems of all sorts, even short stories. Not so much into (forced) rhyming. Please write using rich imagery (to the extent that you can) to make me realize (feel, hear, picture, know, etc.) what you are expressing. Stretch yourself. Reach DEEP inside. Or make it funny. Make your submittal impactful. This will obviously best appeal to me.

Please know that my mind (the less used right brain dominated by the left for decades) often struggles to comprehend the very abstract and/or extremely metaphoric, and most likely I'll IM for your feedback in explaining. Please do not be offended by any such query, or don't bother entering ... just be inspired, write and post at your site instead.

Proper use of syntax, grammar and punctuation (if any) matter to me and could make the difference whether your poem is selected as finalist or ribbon recipient. Please proofread your submittal.

If some great entries are made, I may add HMs and/or points to any/all ribbon recipients.

I comment honestly, kindly, appreciatively. So, if you're not into frank, hopefully helpful feedback, you may not want to enter.

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20 JULY - I CHANGED TO ALLOW PRE-WRITES, WHICH BETTER BE DARN GOOD & ON TARGET! ... ELSE DQ.

Contest ended on Sep 02 2014 05:42 PM PST

Judging Notes

It's been challenging to make rankings. I even asked finalists to participate in a jury of your peers; but of 15, only rec'd feedback from a few. Considering this, I re-read each repeatedly, and here are the results ...

Some poems, though somewhat weak in poetic quality, spoke to the prompt undeniably and I just plain like the sentiment. Others, I feel are tremendous poetically, yet speak to the prompt only tangentially or less than others. Some cases, I had to split hairs and recognize poems most appealing to me. Others, although I stretched and tried, I couldn't correlate to the prompt even though I greatly appreciate the poetics. Ultimately, some seemed too comparable to differentiate in ranking. So, I'm opening a 2nd round to this "contest" (hate this notion of competing poetry), and will invite a select few finalists who haven't received ribbons yet to enter your same poems there. I'm adding 3 HMs to both "contests," which will receive 100 pts rather than the default 30. Please look for the 2nd round and appreciate those ribbon recipients also.

Re this round: A key aspect of the gold recipient poem I appreciate, is the impact of what we have seen/known that cannot be unseen/unknown … the tension, the conflict -ongoing- presented by the tormenting experiences and/or lessons learned that make us question and grapple with what we actually believe or consider reliable as "truth" … and, all too often in life, we're confronted by seeming paradoxes. Yet, we proceed (most of us), sometimes resolving paradoxes satisfactorily - as though not truly conflicting in some grander scheme of things; other times, remaining in the QUESTion … sometimes satisfactorily, others not.

Too long winded. Please read the entries, at least finalists, and see for yourself the challenge ranking, and appreciate the fine poetry. Thanks all for entering! Oh, I'm still commenting … and will to all entries.