wb :

Just to remind us of the importance of standards (of beauty, wit, language, grammar and whatsoever thing things) I've looked through the archives, picked what i thought were the best (even the gratuitous one I wrote myself, heh) and collected them in this post for all of us to marvel at. We will improve! Because most of my output for the last couple of years was crap, I'm afraid to say and rather disappointed to note. We will improve!

by Eli:

Chinese New Year
is the time to shed your old skins
like a snake. Pack rats
should not be cowed
by the mountains of memories
crammed in boxes, but be ruthless
as the tiger. Out with the old!
And tomorrow, as the rooster crows,
you can pig out on cakes and civilities
til you're hoarse. Pineapple tarts and
rabbit sweets are particularly good for this.
Just don't behave like a bull
in a china shop when goaded; only children
get to monkey around. Your thrice-removed
cousin's cat stretches,
yawning like a minature dragon.
Even it is dog-tired.

the stadium at night
seems to be preparing
for something
involving the universe

little satellites round
the bends, thoughts weighted
down by apples in a bag with

homework and long bus rides
- spurting from their shoes
the remnants of rain

by Derrick:

Sonnet 43
Deliverance is still an age away.
You know it when the skies are tinted gray,
The hue of seas that burst in ragged spray
Upon a night which parts in shreds and rags
For pins and pricks of light, the morning's dregs.
This is the night that births another day,
That spawns the brood of men which everyday
Are, drowsy, dragged from concrete cliffs and crags
To stir machines of painted metal slags,
Each sputter, chokes on smoke, another gags;
Scarce older than the trees, but looking hags,
Parading puppets dressed in tattered flags-
If these are children of the earth, I say
Deliverance is still an age away.

by ryan D:

http://www.fanfiction.net/s/2568843/1/

by Me (heh)

IN 3046
I ran into a minstrel
on the red road outside town
he was singing for his supper
and he looked a little down -

"these are the last days
'fore time comes to an end
and we have spent our centuries
to break and then to mend

our pity, our art, our built-up things
our craftsmen lifetimes-wise
but the world will end tomorrow;
so now we improvise!"

adam