Senior Category(ages 15-18)

Samantha Jory-Smart, Mind Odyssey, 2017

Odysseus slouches in my mind, slumped in the classical
cluttered corner. He sulkily searches for old acquaintances,
but Polyphemus left yesterday.

At length he brandishes Homer’s works with a sigh.
He should have heartily laughed at his adventures
but now he is as jaded as he was during his time with Calypso.

Restless, he shuffles along to the mind-corner
with walls bedecked in cascading gods, grabs an old
horseshoe, thwacks it weakly at the wall.

Once, Zeus speared the Earth with rippling energy
called glory. It was a lightning bolt taster
for heroes sprawled across time; their minds flooded
with the desire to defy death and achieve immortal prestige.

But immortality made everything boring.
The gods were wrong in Odysseus’ droopy eyes,
deathly sirens, leaving him plastered on the rocky coast of time.

Odysseus says he was foolish,
now left to perpetually wander between brains.
There is no Ithaca to travel to,
not one conquerable monster, except his own humanity
elongated beyond its years.

He is left to shake his fist at immortal gods scattered
in mortal brains, and hope to bump into them forcefully, violently,
and regain his honour long buried in the past.

Molly Crighton, the red-figure vase, 2017

they:
the stop-motion flashes of the dead age
the gone age (gone pictorial)
and they:
must think us gods
for their spears are the width of a brush stroke
their helmets as sturdy as clay
and surely in the thousands of years
we have learnt something?
they implore us,
“have you scaled Olympus yet?”
“have you met Zeus?
“tell him about me,”
they with their remnants
and ever more distant memories—
“tell him i’m a hero
“and of how i fought this man
“and won.”
step backwards,
squint,
and they are smears of black against—
this once glistened in the sun.
coruscating bright with water,
the scarlet red of it spilling over the lip
and rising up the columns
like a red sea
like wading knee-deep through a battlefield.
and women with their dresses
hurried by it like a breath of bright chalk
and the sounds of life and
the real of what now is so long lost
and the sun god hadn’t died
and still filled them with a sense of divinity
and heat
and—
they are very small in their glass box
with sides rubbed smooth with hands
where now only gloves can touch.

Georgia Kirk, Dido's Poem, 2017

In fields of fire and forks we fled
running wild, hunting love?
While we ran reckless and disillusioned
storms clouds brewed
slamming rods of electric red
into the Earth, into my heart.
They made their home in my soul
sparking my perfect curse - my eternal fire

Rainstorms did nothing to quench the inferno, only spurred the devil on.
With every clap of thunder, it grew
with every strike of lightning, it roared
burning so bright, I was blind
emitting the darkest plumes, I couldn’t breathe
but among Heaven’s hellfire I had never been more alive

I took a husband in darkness and in shame
then flew regretful prayers on singed wings
feathered in guilt, to the depths of Hades
I felt him breathe on my neck
followed by the eyes of a corpse
everywhere

As I fell from a pedestal as high as grace
you decided then it was time to let go
I fell back to Earth with a crack and broke every limb.
Screaming to you in sweet delirium I ripped off my mask
and watched it disintegrate and scatter in the heat.
You were once irridescent in star studded sunlight
now, a vacant ghost crafted in my past
...my hand slipped right through you.
I was a stranger to sanity.

You clipped me.
I’m now flightless, weighed down by pure white wings
coated in charcoal, dusted with ash
so thick it chokes me,
But as I wait for you, I willingly suffocate

Nowadays I wear a snakeskin cloak, I’m draped in green
but I can shed it as quickly as they held me down
and wrapped me in it against my will

In solitary slumber I see you
In clear constellations I see you
In such intrusive intensity I felt no pain…
but I felt
everything
and that was the death of me.

The day my heart stopped, my city did too
The day my heart stopped, was the day I lost

you.

Stephanie Lester, The Doll and the Hero, 2017

A shock is what they said had caused him to pale,
forced his marble eyes to match those of her doll
If not a shock, then a great tiredness
A gathering of dust to conceal

With hands of iron, bronze and marble
A caricature of life once lived
She could not see how those legs
Had walked among the gods

She decided his blood had frozen,
That he no longer had a sword
But still she fogged the glass
When she asked the man
“How do you do?”

She wanted to know what he thought,
Not where he lived, or how he ate
She wanted to see whether he was really there

If hammer turned to flesh,
He could not turn and run
Perhaps, she thought,

This man is less real
Than the doll hanging limp in her arms