The Poetry Haul Challenge: Week 13

This week, we’re listening deeper.

This week’s theme: Poetry + Sound

We’re switching it up, poets.

For Week 13 of The Poetry Haul, we’re stepping into a new realm: sound-inspired poetry. Instead of the usual list of words, you’ll be drawing your energy, rhythm, and vision from a sound clip.

🎶 Your prompt:

Teezo Touchdown - UUHH (Instrumental)

Let the beat speak. Let the silence fill in your stanzas. Let the bass drop your metaphors.

Use the instrumental as a launching pad—does it make you think of a memory? A person? A movement? A landscape? A protest? A whisper? A scream?

This is your moment to feel the poem before you write it.

Your challenge:

🖋️ Write a poem inspired by Teezo Touchdown - UUHH (Instrumental).
🎧 Include a 30-second audio clip (of the instrumental, your voice, or other relevant sounds) in your post on Substack.
🗣️ Optional: Record yourself reading your poem out loud and include that audio too. Give your words voice.
📬 Tag your post with #ThePoetryHaul and let the community find you.

• Share it with us by [posting directly on Substack with #artstackpoets] and tag us ARTSTACK please remember to type @ with our name and click our account. From there our account should be highlighted.

• Share your poem in the comments or in our online art center (tag #ThePoetryHaul so we can find it!).

• Engage with other poets—this is about community, connection, and expression.

Need help with adding audio?
You can use sites like AudioMass or MP3Cut to trim audio clips and embed them into your post. Substack allows simple audio embeds in posts (just upload like an image or drag and drop).

Submission Deadline:
4/23 at 11:59 PM (your time zone).

We’ll feature a few standouts in next week’s recap and yes, we’re listening this time.

Never Enough Time

Never enough time

But so much time in my past

An age far down the road

How to make minutes last

In this state

At this date

Fast rate

But never too late

To try something new

Not a duplicate

Of previous fate

But a new way

To see

Feel

Learn

No time

No time to burn

Slowing down the moment

To feel

See

Be

Hear-

Here

Never enough time

But I know that this moment

Means everything

Sarah Hauser

---

Dishwater

by

Trusanda Lyons

I love the way you pour your soul onto paper, like discarded dishwater.

Bits and pieces left to be sifted through—

some identifiable,

some no longer fitting into the lines for which they were created.

A puddle of music,

a wash of color,

a deconstruction of your life—

pieces lingering on the abyss,

waiting for new meaning.

Pieces once lifted to the highest stature,

now drenched and lying on the dirt.

Each beautiful and meaningful in its own way.

Nobody, not even you, gets to define your life.

Read the remnants like tea leaves,

and let rain wash the rest away.

---

We live in an age when we duplicate the duplicate as we lust for something new in a duplicitous spiral of self infatuation

Six times removed and long since past a time of trying to understand

Living in a personal microcosm while consuming a tasteless microwave dinner

Plastic food and reality TV are the consummate evening fare and fertile ground for finding future leaders as we fumble forward hell bent on the consummation of our own destruction

Backing the backward speakers and letting blatant mistruths rule the day

The devolution of a people involved in the vehement veneration of the vile while valuing vice

Bowing to those who never state the truth as the state of humanity dissolves into a state of chaos and disrepair

When avarice becomes the reigning religion retribution will most assuredly rain down

A leveling brought about by our own hand, not some vengeful god

And all those who failed to see their own self importance and rampant wantoness will be the first to cry,

"What did I ever do to deserve this?"

dob david