AOWL Week 10: Vulgar (2-0) VS. TopicalDood5 (4-0) [VULGAR WINS, 7-3.]

[Split]

16 lines minimum, 48 lines maximum. (if agreed upon by both participants, you may go beyond the limit at your own risk.)

Verses are due SATURDAY 4/23 at 11:59 PST.
Extensions are due SUNDAY 4/24 at 11:59 PST.
(There is a 6 hour grace period following the end of the extension deadline. If you fail to post anything by the end of the grace period time, you will be given the no show loss.)

You must vote on at least 4 other battles and post links in the Voting Thread. For every absent vote, you will be deducted ONE vote next week.

Voting ends TUESDAY 4/26 at 11:59 PST. (Unless otherwise it may be extended another day at the most.)

You MUST check in.

If you no-show, you will be removed from next week and have to sign back into the league.

NOTE
Swaying, excessive freeposting, voter fraud etc. are grounds for vote deductions at discretion of the moderators.
Editing your verse after the grace period, after your opponent posts, or after the first vote (especially this)- as well as biting- are grounds for disqualification at discretion of the moderators.

TOPIC:
“Strong friendships seldom depend upon frequency of visits for their strength and meaning. While [I] have had too few occasions to be with you…..I draw deep strength and inspiration from our bond…”
Lyndon B. Johnson


Good luck to both participants.

[Vulgar]

Check.

[Soulstice]

Its my finals week but itll still be a good'un

[Soulstice]

ill definitely need an extension

[Vulgar]

granted

[Vulgar]

To My Old Friend, Primal Instinct:

"You’ve shown me so much patience so I’m paying respect
We’ve known each other since Ancient Sumer and Acadian texts
We used to bleed Mother Earth dry & drug her with Ritalin samples
Now I realize that I was just too aggressive for most women to handle
You were my protection from killers at dawn & thieves in the bare chill
Seeing as the concrete jungle’s full of demonic creatures you can’t kill
It’s formulaic - how we travel from place to place like nomadic herds
Even though we’re past the hunter-gatherer phase, iconoclasts submerge
We’re becoming too bionic, taciturn, elders cemented as lepers
Still cavemen… but with a mortifyingly dampened sense of adventure
A Benz and some dentures seems to be the prominent goal
Coming to terms with the cold world we live, marching to the opposite pole
Trying to comprehend that it’s useless to live through our columns & domes
My dear friend, you wouldn’t believe all the property rights loops I’ve had
Territorial disputes have me fighting to keep the roof intact!
In a war through paperwork and lawyers, clauses and fine print lines
My Sprint’s fine, but I sprint by through time shifts as tribes sip wine
Because even though we’re past the hunter-gatherer phase
we’re Sony Walkmen traipsing through a wasteland, its sunken caverns ablaze
The human spirit has become a trivial matter. An interchangeable shell.
Family units broken. We file “the strong survive” on Miscellaneous shelves
My cardiovascular strength isn’t even good enough to pace in this cell
I’m an indentured servant to bankers, it’s hell, but I’m thankful as well
…since this predicament has managed to put me back in touch with you
Maybe we can sit by the campfire and discuss life, smoke a dutch or two
To connect with you again as a companion would bring this compulsion down
It would be an understatement to tell you that my sanity’s been thrown about
I told them “Foreclose my house?!…I think you should close your mouth,”
Try to visualize the days I kill - living in the City of Piers
Comrade, I’m trying to pay my bills with the tip of an obsidian spear!
Too many deductibles to tax, corruption in the pacts, I’m gullible to attack
“Sign this please?“ Might as well yell a war cry as I cut them through the back
This is the Earth’s land, not the vicinity of some guy in a suit
Or a tyrant, a brute, who tries to reduce population while acquiring loot
I tried to compute, I was David pondering what Goliath would do
A biproduct of this barren environment…a stranger in an empire of coups.
I felt your presence envelop me in the form of a twitch, something in my face
Then representatives from “government” got bludgeoned with a mace!
This is class warfare at it‘s most primitive, books were banned from our kinships
Martin Luther King’s “Why We Can’t Wait…to be animalistic,”
Let’s consider the Kingdom of the Earth as lawless, and Avalon as mythical,
The Origin of Species converged on a thousand paths of Babylonic principle
What are we then, sir, hermetic Moors? Sympathetic, pure?
I’ll spill as much blood as necessary upon the steps to the Ziggurat of Ur
They say all of this civilized folly is mental…since the days of the reptiles.
They say society is becoming too gentle…I say we’re becoming gentiles
What say you?"

[Soulstice]

Follow the Leader

“Strong friendships seldom depend upon frequency of visits for their strength and meaning. While have had too few occasions to be with you…..I draw deep strength and inspiration from our bond…”
Lyndon B. Johnson

1960; People's Republic of China

Thirty million: the invisible numbers.
Dry blistery tongues, struck with miserable hunger
Praying for the considerate kiss of a gun to bring infinite slumber
The carnivorous sun beats on victims like symphony drums
Until skin is vermillion in color; a charred agrarian slave is
Paid in various grains, while the General reaps incomparable wages
Invariant matrices riddle the nefarious state - People's Communes
An endless cycle of labor, the whispers of evil call you
And you work until your feeble fall through - coerced into service
Till your used up and collapse before a metallurgical furnace
Vertebrae curving - under the colossal weight of this hostile state
Rebels abducted and vanished at the witching hour..
Their blood drips from the lips of Mao's vicious scowl
With no device to limit power - his subjects collapse like broken vessels
- The apathy of an open desert beneath the Sun's angry flame
is The helm and call of his scary reign -

1977; Democratic Republic of Kampuchea

Villagers huddled in filthy corners
Skin stretched thin over ribs, these victims tortured
In this prison, corpses riddle floors like sickened portents
Of the grimness forming -
It tumbles in to the prison in the form of Cambodian villagers
Those abducted - stolen, imprisoned till the end of their eroding existence
It's so cold - they're either frozen or prone to explosive conniptions
And they're eyes hold the visions - they've recently seen
Desperate stares tell of the red Khmers
Like a fever dream - their families huddle in little shacks
As the Santabel exhibits its vicious wrath, they'd strike and maim
With rifles trained, they'd lock up survivors - the violence drained
The blood of traditional thought - any eminent scholar
Would be left crippled to rot in disgusting tenement squalor
The entire peasantry slaughtered by Pol Pot's scythes of destiny
Eliminate dissonant talk - the most primal weaponry
And let the survivors raise crops to be stolen away in government trucks
For a leader who assumes that next to nothings enough
Stomachs rumbling, surrendering, become another drop in the ocean
Another corpse in a mass grave, another captive in holding...
- This savage controlling Cambodia, this psychotic sovereign
Finally recreating his dream of a genocidal apocalypse -

[I]Countless thrones have designed a virulent victory
That can inspire a mind like a child in infancy
in science, we stand on the soldiers of giants
But government sails on the bloody tides of history

Once in power, Pol Pot began a radical experiment to create an agrarian utopia inspired in part by Mao Zedong's Cultural Revolution which he had witnessed first-hand during a visit to Communist China.

Mao's "Great Leap Forward" economic program included forced evacuations of Chinese cities and the purging of "class enemies." Pol Pot would now attempt his own "Super Great Leap Forward" in Cambodia, which he renamed the Democratic Republic of Kampuchea.
http://www.historyplace.com/worldhistory/genocide/pol-pot.htm

[Zen]

Vulgar: Beautifully written piece here. Nearly every line in this was thought provoking and genuine. You got an excellent way of saying something very profound and meaningful and putting it in a simple way for readers to enjoy. It's a great piece on the decline of our nature into more materialistic goals which I agree entirely with you on that. The line that really I think encaptures this piece the most, or at least stood out to me the most was the line about being David and trying to act like Goliath. Excellent piece I really enjoyed this.
TopicalDood5: I'm very familiar with Mao's Great Leap Forward plan and know that it was not any leap forward at all. Great to see someone write about this. You captured the violence of it fairly well. As for Pol Pot, a lesser known leader who comitted one of the world's worst genocides, this piece didn't do justice to what they suffered and I don't think any piece would to be honest. You still managed to capture the terrible living conditions and torture they endured under him but Pol Pot was one sick fuck forreal. After reading this piece though and seeing what you've done in past weeks I'm almost sure you were rushed this week but nonetheless it's still a good piece.

All in all this was a great battle but I've got to give the edge to Vulgar.

[Just Write]

You’ve shown me so much patience so I’m paying respect
We’ve known each other since Ancient Sumer and Acadian texts
We used to bleed Mother Earth dry & drug her with Ritalin samples
Now I realize that I was just too aggressive for most women to handle


Family units broken. We file “the strong survive” on Miscellaneous shelves
My cardiovascular strength isn’t even good enough to pace in this cell
I’m an indentured servant to bankers, it’s hell, but I’m thankful as well…
since this predicament has managed to put me back in touch with you
Maybe we can sit by the campfire and discuss life, smoke a dutch or two


This is the Earth’s land, not the vicinity of some guy in a suit
Or a tyrant, a brute, who tries to reduce population while acquiring loot
I tried to compute, I was David pondering what Goliath would do
A biproduct of this barren environment…a stranger in an empire of coups.

vs.

1960; People's Republic of ChinaThirty million: the invisible numbers.
Dry blistery tongues, struck with miserable hunger
Praying for the considerate kiss of a gun to bring infinite slumber
The carnivorous sun beats on victims like symphony drums
Until skin is vermillion in color; a charred agrarian slave is
Paid in various grains, while the General reaps incomparable wages


Invariant matrices riddle the nefarious state - People's Communes
An endless cycle of labor, the whispers of evil call you
And you work until your feeble fall through - coerced into service
Till your used up and collapse before a metallurgical furnace
Vertebrae curving - under the colossal weight of this hostile state
Rebels abducted and vanished at the witching hour..Their blood drips from the lips of Mao's vicious scowl
With no device to limit power - his subjects collapse like broken vessels- The apathy of an open desert beneath the Sun's angry flame
is The helm and call of his scary reign -
1977; Democratic Republic of Kampuchea*Villagers huddled in filthy corners


Skin stretched thin over ribs, these victims tortured
In this prison, corpses riddle floors like sickened portents
Of the grimness forming -It tumbles in to the prison in the form of Cambodian villagers
Those abducted - stolen, imprisoned till the end of their eroding existence
It's so cold - they're either frozen or prone to explosive conniptions
And they're eyes hold the visions - they've recently seen
Desperate stares tell of the red Khmers
Like a fever dream -



this was a battle of the titans, i loved both pieces for different reasons. vulgar, you have like buddah said a nack for putting a powerful message into elegant vocabulary and still making it come off proper. you're definitely one of my favorites having read a couple things from you now. i really enjoyed your take on this (in my eyes) difficult topic, the benz line really got to me and i definitely agree that our view as to what is more important in life these days have been tainted. anyways all in all beautiful drop. tropical, again you started off strong as well and while im not as familiar with the references you made i did enjoy this for the most part, i dont know if it was (and this is speculation) you being intimidated against vulgar or you just being rushed but from what i read last week vs what i read this week it just seemed a few parts were forced due to the vocab and also some of the parts i got lost in. technical wise this was sound. the above lines were my favorite, as with vulgars. anyways between these two great competitors it could have gone either way but im going to have to go with vulgar for just a more favoritable verse in my eyes. bravo to both of you.

[Soulstice]

-_- i can assure you it wasn't intimidation
thanks for voting though

vote links here

[Just Write]

since this will probably be cleaned up shortly do you mind me asking who won those battles? dude dont get salty over a silly comment. i can delete it if you ask pretty please .

[Soulstice]

you can bold and underline it for all i care. im just casually informing you

and it was a tie on pr (it was a contendorship battle and we tied 1-1 somehow)
i think he was using an alias on the poetry on rb, but i dont really remember my poetry battles anyways

[Soulstice]

AHHH that was you? i remember that name clearly. rb had a few obscure poetry heads that only posted in poetry leagues and forums. shame it died, rb had some good poets. was it haiku or normal poetry?

and yea split clean this up lol

[Red glare]

Vulgar. Now I know what it's like to read 60+ lines lol. It is mentally challenging, and I don't want to be challenged. I just like to breeze through the rap, sum it up in a few words and keep it moving. This piece was rather lanky but it wasn't intricately complex to compensate. Just a easy going flow highlighted by the lets smoke a blunt line. That line really put the piece in perspective for me as a laid back, 'I'm just gonna kick it with you' kind of flow. A lot of lines but they weren't really necessarily crucial to your rants development; more like you just wanted to write a lot of lines this week loll. I've seen you drop way iller. I wasn't pleased with your work this week. 'Nothing going for this verse. I am looking for quotes but I would be reaching. Maybe writing is your bond and kinship friendship? Looking for a connection to the topic. Can't wrap my mind around ambiguity right now. Hope to see you full strength in a few weeks.

TopicalDood5. The thoughts are bouncing around with a confusing candance. The footing of the first verse is not grounded enough to really stabilize a solid foundation for the rest of the verse. I feel as though you maybe should create a recognizable flow and then break off into your pattern frenzy; because otherwise the reader is just jarred with rhythm, but the actual meaning is lost in translation. "It's so cold - they're either frozen or prone to explosive conniptions" Great line - it really was the beginning of the momentum you failed to create within the first stanza. The schemes your fond of worked well there until the last few lines were you once again took your foot off the gas; creating a passive like segway into a even 'passiver' finale. The singsong schemes had a fade feel to them; but they were not conclusively powerful; where as a more traditional scheme may have succeeded with that. But again, you have your own style. Your writers voice began to shine through and it clinched the battle for you.

Overall. Tough battle to judge. Vulgar was simply in the scheme of things but he also conveyed a voyeur hippy user friendly verse that I favored in contrast to a experiment of ABCDEFG schemes lol. Problem is, Vulgar verse had nothing going for that verse. No quotes or direction. Where as TopicalDood5 took on different facets of the topic; bringing more depth to the table. A real wishy washy flow but the better material and substance;

Battle could've been better MVGT TopicalDood5

Vote - TopicalDood5

[IamBenT]

Fascinating and awesome battle.

Vulgar - came with that trademark high vocab style with tons of description and a flow that only fell off in a few places. From beginning to end, structuring it as a convo with Man's most ancient drives, was a great way to bring focus and direction to your piece. Great use of references and this is a stellar example of engaging and thoughtful topical writing.

This is the Earth’s land, not the vicinity of some guy in a suit
Or a tyrant, a brute, who tries to reduce population while acquiring loot
I tried to compute, I was David pondering what Goliath would do
A biproduct of this barren environment…a stranger in an empire of coups.

Wonderfully executed and brilliant really

Topical - Damn, some parts of this verse are absolute fire. I felt that you did justice to the topic, but got bogged down a bit with description (which happened to me this week as well). The history was a refreshing take, educating me on some shit i did not know, the images you use are vivid as hell and everything is crafted really well with the exception of a few lines here and there. I felt it lacked the same cohesion as vulgar's verse but was still very strong.

Damn Two more contenders on my list for VOTW, but definitely BOTW in my eyes.

Vote -Vulgar edges it out for me this time. Sick!

[ZeeDee]

Vulgar, very strong in narrative diction, flow and the details of what seems to be a letter to. Close friend from the format... the details seem more general and doesn't really expand on the topic of a timeless friendship.... but in some ways it does and I did like reading it as well.... very nicely executed and very broad with your display of comparison examples.... I would say this is more along the topic of the decay of society or evolution, but it does do enough on this topic too... there are a lot of lines that are worded nicely and caught my attention... you went through awie variations of examples of showing the weaknesses within the capitalistic systems of government we live in and did more to make t amusing with light hearted punchlines of reality in this system can even contradict iself just by living within it.. that was pretty cool...

Topical, I like you detailed format, flow through me off a lil bit, but the narration was so great, that was easily overlookd. Nicely narrated and the progression of the timelines in the details were drawn with good imagery to clearlysee the conditions you're describing. I don't see anything in this that draws a connection to the topic of a timeless bond with someone you don't see often, which is how I translate the quote. It seems like you're stating that China and Kampuchea have that relationship, but none of your details explain that connection, just show maybe similar mindframes between vicious countries in Asia.... not tryna sound like an arrogant and over opinated reader, but I think this would of been better to do with countries that you can express a clear bond through... like the US and the UK, which is historically interesting to this day... or lybia and syria... terrorism might be an old topic though.... even this example woulf of been better if you put some clear bond or connection between the countries other than similar styles of vicious rulers. I did enjoy this very much regardless and your research on this seems to be done good as well...

Vote Vulgvar... seems to fit the topic more... hardest decision I've had all week...

[Mike Wrecka]

wow dope battle. both brought a very sick verse.

vulgar - I have to say this is the best piece ive read from you. and ive read quite a few. usually your stuff is enlightening content wise. but I never really connected with the flow you use. well that wasn't the case here, the flow and rhyme scheme were really amazing. and the quotables are too many to list here. one of the better verses ive read in this league thus far. and that says a lot. I thought that the use of the title really brought the reader right in to what was going on. it was a tactic that worked well.

topical dood - very sick verse man. you guys both killed it. the direction you took was cool. the rhyme scheme did seem to occasionally have a hiccup here and there, but ya very sick verse like I said.

vote - vulgar

topical would have beat most verses this week but he ran into the probable votw. good shit guys two enjoyable reads. thanks

[Nigma]

I just spent 10 minutes typing out a vote and got a punk ass internal server error. I'm not retyping it because I'm going to bed, but I vote for Vulgar. Problem? Fuck you. If this were still hosted on AoB it would have saved my message, and not had an error to begin with.

[Cereal_Killa]

Vulgar:

Lol at the title, nice.. umm wtf what an opening bar.. I shall continue to read :)

“We’re becoming too bionic, taciturn, elders cemented as lepers
Still cavemen… but with a mortifyingly dampened sense of adventure”

^fuck me.. look I aint gonna quote any more lines, this verse is pure fire my friend

Look dude, you are 100% pure talent.. I mean, I love when your write your heavy imagery driven sci fi but in all seriousness.. this piece right here, dope.. I would rather you deal with internal struggles and emotion more often, purely for the fact you are so brutally honest and direct.. Your writing is advanced in all areas, but your vocab is fucken outstanding.. here you have a verse “dear old nicki” type style.. lame right but then you flip the shit out of it.. You capture elements of why our primal instinct was, is and will always be needed.. At the same time the verse is direct at himself as a decision.. “do I loose my shit or do I stay sane” – “do I take action or watch the place fall to pieces”
This verse was ill..

Topical:

Oh shit, your play on this topic was outrageous.. the misinterpretation from one man of another.. That was off the chain.. Up front no one ever, EVER recognizes what Pol Pot did as even happening, people just focus on the Holocaust, it took nearly a life time for people to acknowledge Idi Amin and his dictatorship/genocide.. So I am beyond impressed.. Lyricaly you matched vulgar.. Hands down.. This was brutal, I am thrown how magnificently you have taken a vicious tyrant learning to become this way.. from the positive nature of a revolutionary.. just like WOAH mate..

Vote = topicaldoodez

BOTW.. or for the rest of the month shit.. I aint playen, look you guys matched each other in every writing aspect that the style you each went for needed..
So then to me it came down to the play on the topic and the style itself.. it was the only way I cld decide..
The material that doodez covered is next to unheard of.. I mean I could go speak to 100 ppl online or in person and I would be lucky if 10 people even knew one of these people.. let alone both.. Where as vulgar’s primal instinct choice is more common – not common just more common – even though it was an amazing take on it.. Topical flipped the shit out of his but with a completely fresh subject matter whilst still getting his point across..
So here, i think vulgar you needed to merge to near dormant emotions not just one.. that shit wld have been crazy.. to me i think that wld have flooded topics verse.. and won it in my eyes..

AMAZING both of you.. thanx

[Dove Dozer]

Vulgar - im loving the flow on this. Reading it was enjoyable cause i could vibe with it. A nice constant stream of thought on this. Nice vocab, it painted a vivid picture. So props for that. Your piece was pretty smooth all the way through. I enjoyed it. Using a lot of metaphors was a nice touch

Topicaldude - also a very nice piece of work here. Your mechanics were also very nice on this and you had so many quotables on this as well. I like how you had a little jump forward in time and kept things so relevant. Props on this as well.

A very hard battle to decide a winner on. Cause they both wrote so well.

Im voting for topicaldude though.

Amazing battle - very tough to pick a winnerr

Sorry vote is so sparse.. im on my phone.

[King Ra.]

5-3. Re-opened for more votes.

[Aesthetic]

Vulgar:

Insightful, incredible wording and knowledgable. Really cool choice but a little unsettling considering primal instinct isn't known too this day; we have no idea what a feral human is like or the way they act.

TopicalDood5:

What's up with all the political topics.

I wasn't really sure what you were trying to get across probably from my lack of knowledge on mao and pol pot; only know of them by word of mouth.

I enjoyed the reality of the piece and like how the ending wasn't happy like a fantasy.

V/Vulgar had a better choice and felt easier to connect to..

[Split]

Vulgar.

so this is what happens when you take seven weeks off from competitive writing... cadence was superb. where most top shelf writers have sets and series of well put together multis accompanied by strong wording, your syllabic beat/ rhythm really seems to emerge on a macroscopic level.
saw it when I read your verse from start to finish without stopping. traditional scheme switches are superfluous/ do not rely on consonance or assonance, simply fall in place in your meter. really lets you take whatever direction you want, lyircally. bravo

translation. flow was butter, start to finish, and carbo-lubed up your caloric fodder while we sat in the darkness waiting for you to illuminate your story.

the story itself, unwound very nicely. im not sure how to summarize it. awesome


A Benz and some dentures seems to be the prominent goal
Coming to terms with the cold world we live, marching to the opposite pole
Trying to comprehend that it’s useless to live through our columns & domes
My dear friend, you wouldn’t believe all the property rights loops I’ve had
Territorial disputes have me fighting to keep the roof intact!
In a war through paperwork and lawyers, clauses and fine print lines
My Sprint’s fine, but I sprint by through time shifts as tribes sip wine
Because even though we’re past the hunter-gatherer phase
we’re Sony Walkmen traipsing through a wasteland, its sunken caverns ablaze
^insane.


TD5

It tumbles in to the prison in the form of Cambodian villagers
Those abducted - stolen, imprisoned till the end of their eroding existence
It's so cold - they're either frozen or prone to explosive conniptions
And they're eyes hold the visions - they've recently seen
that really worked for you

i feel like your rhyming was not quite as effective as Vulgar's, overall, but was still nicely done. really started connecting at the end. I like your choice of phrases, they are powerful by themselves ("Pol Pot's scythes of destiny" lol nice) and are good components to work with. like metallic K'nex.

in terms of the story itself, it was structured and delivered well, but at the same time didnt work the topic to its full extent. there was no AHA moment, no proverbial snap of the noose where your eyes open wide before the close, and yet it didnt seem to be stitching together a spacetime-fabric that displayed your mantra on a banner.

basically, it developed in the womb exactly how it should have, but after both stories were birthed, Vulgar's simply bitch-slapped it down a link on the food chain and ate its damn pudding cups.

V/ Vulgar

[King Ra.]

VULGAR WINS, 7-3.