It's time for the community to pick the Slam Challenge 11 Winners! Steemians, we need YOU!

The 11th Slam challenged authors to make a poem based on the theme of "Message in a Bottle". The competition was funny, poignant, hard hitting, and everything in between! It's rough to pick only four poems with so much talent, but thems the rules.

Poetry is difficult to critique because good poetry can mean something to everyone. Considering that, I want to post the four selected poems in their entirety so the community has a chance to read them again.

VOTING

In the comments section I will list each poem and anyone in the community can vote for which selection they like, or for all of them! Please set your voting slider to 1% as these votes are meant to determine the winners, not garner rewards. The goal is to encourage, encourage, encourage voting and not have anyone worried about their voting power!

Please RESTEEM and help get the word out that Community voting has started!

Four Selections:

@sazbird I Thought I Saw You

I thought I saw you

Was I dreaming?

You took my hand

Wreckage strewn around me

The dream

My noble plan

I grit my teeth against the pain

As I lie here

On this sand

Fevered hopes for rescue

The sky, the seas

I scan

I pray this note to find you

Tell my love

As best I can

---

@verbal-d Greatness

If you've found this bottled message
You have just received your letter of destiny
Cherish every word written,
For this will bring about a climactic change
Your world will be shaken and crushed to crumbling dust

And from the echoing silence and rippling rubble, you shall rise
Renewed, refined, reformed
Into a blazing, blinding light of greatness
A swirling flame of transformative metamorphosis

Realize the depths of your abilities
You hold the power for each and every occurrence
From here on forward
And you shall wake your soul's 7th virtue that lies dormant

Speak it into existence, and it shall be
Be it beyond the thought of self
Become the warrior, the champion
The conquerer of your conquests and aspirations
Make a difference, breach the limits
And burrow through, tear down, and obliterate
All negative energies, dangerous opposition and any formidable obstacles

The only blockade that can halt your progress is your mind
Now unlock your potential, and let the possibilities
Implode from the inside out

---

@inphiknit Still Afloat

Corked,

Mostly upright,

I’ve lain over all the World’s Seas.

My only company,

The aged singsong of distant grey intelligences that I cannot know.

When the winds and waves give me rest from their torment,

In the stillness,

My brittle wax seal cracks in the equatorial heat.

The sun’s brilliance,

And the many years,

Cause the exposed inked letters of my edges to fade.

I do not know how much time remains,

But for now my meaning and purpose,

Rest hidden in the spiral of my parchment.

From the offending flotsam,

I escaped with but a chip struck from my vitreous armour.

It reflected green as it fell away from me,

Simply disappearing in the darkness below,

After one last brief flash.

Then,

It all nearly ended that summer I drifted around the entire Southern Sea.

Were my arrival just a few weeks later,

I’d be trapped and forever frozen.

Years passed,

My fears raised again in the rocky shallows guarding the New Islands.

Yet that dread,

Is as nothing to my desire to be found, and known.

I’m certain it was this need alone that summoned the currents,

To sweep me from this deafening, crashing threat.

The waves plotting to crack me,

Then the rocks to shred me from existence.

With Endless Water in my sight now,

I ask if the pain will ever end?

To whom I do not know,

Though somehow sensing I will be heard,

I call out and beg to be held,

To be allowed to breathe,

To know today’s purest air,

To complete my journey.

Though how to deliver this message after so much time,

After being so abused?

Or when found,

Will I be able to let go,

To unfurl my scroll and say what must be said?

Will I even remember the words?

Yes…

Yes…

After so many years,

Trust the currents to continue to reveal my path,

Truth in the strength of my seemingly delicate shell,

Trust in my spiral that locks its papery content from the flame of time,

For I helped make it,

With Great Care…

---

@girlbeforemirror I Deliver You Zero, So Be Your Own Hero

You have plucked refuse from the ocean,
It contains no wisdom, no potion.
Just an egocentric notion,
No healing tonic or lotion.

I locked up my truth inside of a jar,
And sent it away to someone afar.
My life was unraveling it was coming undone,
So I bottled myself as a prize to be won.

Do not invest in the words that you read,
It is only your thought on which you should feed.
My invalid existence has taken it's toll,
Empty promises bottled to revive my soul.

I have no answers,
No mystic advances.
No rhyme that is new,
No message that's true.

Garbage parading as treasure,
Over valued illusions of pleasure.
You won't like what I write,
Won't help you sleep at night.

No lullaby,
No alibi.
No cure for what ails,
No muting the wails.

I bring you no luck,
No fortune struck.
No lucky charm,
No nurturing arms.

Don't look to the oceans or skies for your truth,
Don't seek answers from mystics, or psychics or sleuths.
You are the author, the captain, the Queen,
You are the narrator of this scene that you dream.

Invest even a slither of the hope that you sling,
To distance spots in the sky, to the darkness you sing.
No one exists that knows who you are,
As well as you already know you're a star.

You don't need hope that is flung from afar,
Over the hardest of days you have survived so far.
So stop pushing away all the things you call shit,
Accept that it's yours, relax and just sit.

A well balanced life is an intrinsic factor,

It's not the opinions of strangers that litter that matter.

---

Thank you very much to all the poets and voters, readers and lovers

Voting closes at the end of this post's initial reward phase and payouts occur shortly thereafter

Thank you for spending time here.