It's that time of year again, time for our 2010 Putting Our Heads Together Poetry Contest.

Anxiety disorders and Migraines tend to be comorbid conditions, meaning that we can have both diseases at the same time, but neither causes the other. Studies have shown that people with Migraines are more likely to have anxiety disorders than people without Migraine disease. The reverse has also been shown in studies.

Given the connection, I wanted to be sure to invite you to enter our Migraine poetry contest.

Writing can be a great way to express yourself and give yourself a creative outlet. Whether you're an experienced poet or have never written a poem before, you're invited to submit up to three poems for our contest. One year, the person who write the poem that won first place had never written a poem before! All entries must be about Migraines or headaches and must be poetry, not prose.

The contest will be judged by the National Headache Foundation, and winners announced in April in observance of National Poetry Month.

I can't enter the contest, but I'll share a poem I wrote here, one of my favorites...

phantom tango
 

the beat is faint, the dance slow

     so slow I'm not sure we're dancing

my partner is but a shadow

     waiting to become more than a phantom

 

the disco ball that so blithely

     cast shards of light upon my eyes

forecast my partner's arrival

     yet I had dared hope he would not follow

 

but the beat strengthens

     and the dance intensifies

the steps we've danced before

     are too familiar and unmitigatedly unwelcome 

 

we turn and dip, this direction then that

     an intimate tango

with each dip, my stomach rebels

     the dips so deep my head ricochets off the floor

 

he shows no pity

     but dances the dance his sadistic way

and when I am beyond spent, he departs

     without so much as a bow at the end

 

Migraine is a merciless partner

     a relentless partner

a murderess I would gladly become

     if only I could slay him
 

© Teri Robert, 2007

If you're interested, you can read all the entries from this year and from previous years..

Interested in entering? Check out the rules and entry form.

Good luck,

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© Teri Robert, 2010.
Last updated March 11, 2010.