For hour four, I applied the prompt to a poem I had already started a few minutes before. First, the finished poem:

The dream is always the same

Who told bigger lies?
I know, it wasn’t a contest
but I’m always looking for that edge
You may have been better at it
but I made up the difference with sheer quantity
Our self-delusions reached deep into the core
planting the seeds that churned up the earth
as they grew into the monster that devoured us
and left us for dead
We pretended to be the walking wounded
but the truth had other ideas
We buried the corpses and moved on

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Here is the poem with all twenty lines, with strikethrough applied to the lines I removed.

Who told bigger lies?
I know, it wasn’t a contest
but I’m always looking for that edge
I think it was a toss-up
You lied to yourself
I lied to myself
You may have been better at it
but I made up the difference with sheer quantity
Our self-delusions reached deep into the core
planting the seeds that churned up the earth
as they grew into the monster that devoured us
eating far too quickly, ignoring its mother’s warnings
threw us up
just like mother said it would
(always listen to your mother)
and left us for dead
We pretended to be the walking wounded
hoping someone would take pity on us
but the truth had other ideas
We buried the corpses and moved on

(13 August 2016)