Seventh annual Valentines Poetry contest to be held February 13


	Seventh annual Valentines Poetry contest to be held February 13

The Seventh Annual San Pedro Sun Valentine's Poetry Contest will again be held at Fido's Courtyard. The year's most looked forward to poetry reading will take place on Friday, February 13, 1998 at or around 7:00 p.m.

As in the past, there will be two categories for writers, foreign and domestic. The contest will be announced on the Sun's website (http://ambergriscaye.com/sanpedrosun). Entries from foreign readers are welcome. The Sun will also be accepting resumes for judges. One foreign judge, (perhaps a subscriber who will be visiting at the time) will be selected to serve along with two local judges. Judges may not submit poetry to be judged in this contest.

Along with the new criteria for judges, is a new rule for the contest. Poems may be humorous or romantic, however, only one entry per poet will be accepted for the contest. The San Pedro Sun will publish as many poems as possible, for the reader's enjoyment, before the contest.

At the gala Valentine's Eve reading, poems may be read by their authors, or if the author wishes, their poem will be read by Master of Ceremonies, Dennis Wolfe. Mr. Wolfe will be performing the M.C. function at the contest for the seventh year.

A number of prizes will be offered in both categories (foreign and domestic). A list of the prizes will be announced in coming editions of the newspaper.

Entries may be dropped off at the newspaper office; cyberpoets may email to sanpdrosun@btl.net or mailed to The San Pedro Sun, P.O. Box 35, San Pedro Town, Belize, Central America. Here are some of the entries received:

Jessica

The way I feel right now
I don't quite comprehend
This great melancholy inside me
burns with enormous pain
It tells me that I've never known
of true love, but yet something
tells me that it's not true
I lay here in the darkness now
with only five candles flaming
I'm lingering for something that
I do not know anything of
In the deep, dark pit of my lonesome
heart, I need someone to love,
but no one is there
The only love that I have right now
is that of my own family
I am in need of something a bit
more than just family love
I need someone to fill the dark
pit that is deep in my heart
that is affixed by only one string
I know of only one person that
could do any of such a thing
Yet, I am afraid that she no longer
loves me the way that she used to
I convict that even if I spoke to her
the way that I feel and got on my knee,
she'd never return to me
There are very beautiful pictures in
museums that you can't touch
I know that those pictures must come
alive at some point in epoch
I know this for a fact because I see
the most ineffable picture of all
prance around me everyday
I hope that one day it will all change;
it must and has to change
I cannot live without being able to
once more touch that picture
It was a picture that I once could touch,
and marvel, and feel with pride,
a picture that is named Jessica

by Chet Graham, received via e-mail

The Cracks
N.L. Morgan

Why does she not answer me?
Does she not know of the pain I go through each waking hour.
The pain that threatens
my very sanity.
The pain I welcome to my lonely heart
for it shall be better than the emptiness I have grown so accustomed
too.
I know she is above me,
that I am but a grain of sand to her gaze.
A grain of sand that is more and less
and could be no more.
I have thrown my voice in the wind to her.
I have emptied my feelings into the rivers
that lead to her.
But she flies no more in those winds,
she swims no more in those rivers.
So I grow restless in my dark.
I grow weary in her light.
I know I may never be again
in those arms
or even in the treading path
of those words.
But to give up is to realize
there is nothing more I want
there is nothing more I need,
that there is a crack in
my once flawless jadedness.
And I must let the
cracks grow deeper.


	Seventh annual Valentines Poetry contest to be held February 13