UDK Poetry Contest Winners
Reprinted on this page are the "winners" of the UDK Poetry Contest. Editors Phillips and Austin thank all of those who submitted entries, and only wish that more could have been printed.
Joy
and sidewalking down the tangled street
I skipped and ran
and laughed and
shouted tenderly
to all the tender people
Hey—you're alive!!!
Others are silent in tombs,
sleeping in wombs, but
YOU my dearest, darling miracle of brief protoplasm . . . WOW!
Doesn't that suggest a dreamful of wonders?
I danced round an old woman
and kissed a street sweeper
and made love to a pair of laughing eyes
and hugged a beautiful child
and laughed outright at the
frightening damn beauty of being alive.
Oh Sorcerer, just a glimpse I want of a future and a paradise in ecstatic combination,
As you my God would and will create them,
He said "yes oh human, oh yes,
Take this magic pill and we shall travel far"
We did—for soon in a dark and greenish tunnelish whirl I progressed
And in that dark and gory pit,
The bodies of a thousand children—each of them screaming my name,
For we had traversed hell and that beyond,
this was the future
But the Sorcerer turned to me and said,
"My friend you have seen the beginning of a second paradise,
You and all your kind have bridged the gap,
And now the future is upon you, man has destroyed himself
Today paradise will begin anew for the last man will die,
And never again will I the great creator
set loose such a being as you have been,
A being to guide his destiny and destroy the earth."
And the human screamed "oh God, oh God save me great Sorcerer!" So granting this last man's final wish Great God The Sorcerer raised his scimiter high And with a mighty blow he slew the final man.
Marilee Millett Stilwell freshman
She holds his hand
And he smiles,
As the first golden needle of light
Races madly across a purple sky...
She holds his hand
And he smiles.
As green trees with hypnotic strokes
Paint the sky on a soft spring day...
She holds his hand
And he smiles,
As his fingers touch her beautiful face,
Like a child seeing something for the first time...
She holds his hand
And he smiles,
As a tiny crystal of love
Rolls ever so slowly down her velvet cheek...
He holds her hand
And she smiles,
For she knows that his heart understands,
Though his eyes will never know
A Footnote For Our Time
George Longenecker Reading, Mass., junior
Have you heard that God is dead?
Died in bed.
Died in bed.
Well, did you know that Billy Graham is a millionaire?
yes.
maybe more, maybe less.
Tell me, what do you suppose the connection is?
Richard Cunningham Topeka freshman
Remember
From a nearby, faraway hope tree.
Did you see it, my loved one,
In your proud fantasy?
Spring shall come...
We ran.
You giggled
In mad Octoberness.
And a leaf fell
Renetta Engles
Ottawa freshman
Solitude
Marilee Millett Stilwell freshman
I am alone in a windowless room
alone with a Degas dancer who ties her slipper
she is intent upon her shoe and does not notice I am here
together we are alone
she behind her glass
I behind myself
Daily Kansan
editorial page
Tuesday, March 14, 1967
I am the idea of the Night And see in shades.
I see the Easter Bunny Crucified on a parking meter.
2
I see the mushroom above us hovering Cut into Chinese soup.
I see the victors Vomiting on their cream-of America broth
And again I can see them Reincarnated as damned Yankees.
I see the love of Mother Goose Perverted.
I see the children
crying on her grave.
I see Bob Dylan in a cage
Giving himself a home permanent.
I see Santa Claus
Blowing out the eternal flame on Kennedy's
grave
And singing Happy Birthday
In effigy.
I see the spider on the wall
Not knowing enough to die wilfully.
I see the President in his limosine
Wearing red earmuffs.
I am the shadow of the night
And see only vibrations of the dark.
Janet Sadauskas Prairie Village freshman
LOVE—1967
Love is the concoction of steel beams and buttresses
Skyscraped against the film of a night
When moving machines can go to dark places
And rub fenders and fingers at once until light.
Anne M. Spink Shawnee Mission junior
The sun brings with it some clarity and reason The night left behind with its tool box of greed Hides in the corner laughing and stabbing The day-poor reason-and softly it bleeds!
The blood drips slowly from invention to invention
The night creeps suredly and seduces the day
Until we find that only one named copulation
Has become the steal beam and foundation today
Our literary Maggots feed directly on the dead
Song For The Blind
Dennis W. Moore Wichita senior
are vaguely profound give virtuoso performances with verbs we've never heard of invent entire vocabularys in a week or two-
find followers
create a sideshow
wear costumes
forget that Art is only ever Naked
Many profane
the memory of Gide
gag their way across a continent
inventing sex
too
open caskets
gnaw on bones
inventing marrow
Utilize dope write masterpieces in delirium tremens or die inventing death
I cannot vouch for this
but I would swear to you that Art
has little to do with a rectal suppository;
that long after the little tap
of their hollow drum
falls across the top of time;
beyond all dream of doom
and further
than the might of light;
I swear to you that Art will stir her lovely, battered body beckoning— the circus being over.
Richard Cunningham Topeka freshman
For an instant,
Amid the flashing
Neon,
I had a
Glimpse of the
Sun.
Running forward,
Faster than I could
Move,
I sought to
Touch
This sun,
to capture it
And possess its
Warmth.
Stumbling,
And falling short,
The sun
Vanished.
And I am
Left with
Neon.
My neon Friends.
P
Brian Sulkis Prairie Village sophomore
tim
Alexander Brown Lawrence freshman
I w sai
I sit alone and feel the grey wind whirl around
me as it plays among golden trees.
A burning leaf tumbles past my ear and settles
on a last bit of summer's green.
A chill whispers to my bones that death is working,
and that the wake of winter is near.
If only man could die as beautifully as this.
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