Young Writers Society

15/30

a lost poem

there was a poem here
surrounded by floral patterns
and covered over with grit (and nausea)
and a thin layer of excitement,
that feeling you get every time
you touch upon something new.
and although i don't remember much of what it said,
it spoke to me of deserts, and oases, and bejeweled sand.

(the sun was sweating.)

and it talked of dreams, and dreamery, and how i did not belong
beyond the picket fence.
but i glanced at the world beyond
the hedge, anyway, because i thought to myself
that the clouds are not as opaque as they are
made out to be.

(instead, they are translucent,
like frosted glass.)

16/30


reminders sometimes~

what are you but brevity
on a sidewalk (that will not last
past its written apocalyptic mooring)?
or perhaps, you already consider yourself sparse, filled
with life, and decay, and various


but do you intend on staying here?


have you ever given each vein a name,
when it crosses your wrists like a rung
(to a ladder you are climbing--up, up, up)?
or is it vain for you to strike chords on your flimsy ligaments?

(there is beauty and then--there is Beauty;
please do not be confused.)

if the sky had the audacity
to meet you in the dark, in an alley,
with a thin strip of stars gleaming--
would you take its hand?
or would you run before the sky
placed the stars upon your shoulders?
(rock hard, burning boulders.)


the tough questions come in threes
and at nighttime, when you are
too steeped in denial to sleep.

(but wake up in the morning,
and think about it.)

17/30

blindheart, i still remember you;
it may cause an aching for you to know
but i have moved on.

and it gives me solace, even if
i am not entirely content yet
to know that i am not half the idiot
i was yesterday.

(so please forgive me.)

18/30


my trenchcoat dislikes tildes~

my trenchcoat is punctuated
with philosophies bartering wide,
plains, and rivers running upstream.
it is buttoned up with periods, lined
with lacquer
(and somewhere, you will find an interrobang,
sewed in schizophrenic lace).

my coat speaks to me of snug evenings
every time I open the door.
(philosophical thought: exodus is for the weak. stay at home.)
and sometimes, I marvel at the way
it speaks—never haltingly; it joins
disquietude together seamlessly.
(severely.)

on Friday nights I dare to wonder
why my coat is embroidered with ampersands,
and how they are eclectic and wild,
their twisted arms like devices
meant to torture, and maim,
and scar.

but never a tilde to wear; it is
as though my coat is frightened
of the philosophies it might speak.

(because its cuffs are pale white, like ghosts
in seafoam, dawdling.
they are yet learning how to swim.)

19/30

london: it has ceased to rain

my hedges have caught on fire
from last summer where
you set those firecrackers loose
(but forgot to light them).
I only saw them this night,
after you'd left your foster home
(on my front porch). the sky said
be witness to this:
the smoke climbing a rampart
to keep the storm-clouds company.

and I have a feeling
it will not rain tonight.

but my garden is now desolate, littered
with ashy footprints, like the cigarette dreams
you leave by my front door.

(perhaps you were simply being kind
by giving your dreams another friend.)

20/30



if only this were Idlewild

she is searching for kindred spirits
in all the wrong places, in cities
with too many souls to sieve through.
her steps are incessant, a pattering beat,
on the rooves of houses, and the grooves
of the sidewalk.
in the fracas of city life, no one can hear her—
city life, never asleep.

21/30

in which we hightail it to utopiapretence

'let's travel the world together.'

it is never with disinterest that the topic is broached:
wanderlust, you teaching me to drive.
it is euphoric, the thought of being with you,
the realisation that you will be there.

but recently, our discussions have been waning
to deceit, to trials—dark
and darker nights by the fireplace.
(we trick ourselves into believing
that dying embers are warm.)

I confide in you that I would like to write
about love, but never malice,
or heartbreak.

that is a subject I skirt around
every time I pull up in the drive.

(‘tomorrow, I promise, we'll go somewhere new.')

22/30

catching words before they fall has become my favourite hobby

my days are spent typing letters
to people who will never receive them,
to eyes that will never witness
this burning mass of regret.
because truly I am sorry
and if you could find it in yourself
to forgive me—
(I have run out of sealing wax; my provisions
include but my tearing flesh.)


my days are spent catching stray threads
and lingering ends of unfinished sentences,
because yes, I swear, this pain is true
and never worthy of imagery.

and yes, I swear, every morning comes
and beats off on some unshackled path,
but I am left waiting
for change to take hold of my shoulders,

for silence
to shake me awake.

23/30

I've taken to calling him Train Boy.

He is always there, relentless,
gripping the iron handles of morning
as though hoping—blindly—
they will steer him on.
But morning has become fragile
and old, heart
palpating, veins blotchy—
but visage: gentle, exultant,
beautiful,
even with the ageing lines it draws
against the clouds.

I can see why he hopes
that morn will help him;
but both he and the dawn are deprived
of truly seeing.

Because this town is monotonous;
it does not take kindly
to change, to withering, to woodrust.
If you acquiesce yourself to this, perhaps
you will survive. If not, I am sure
the boy could use some company.

He is there, on the tracks, waiting
for a train to run him over.
So go on, walk over to him; and welcome
to this town.

Allow me to drag my curtains closed
and forget about you until tomorrow morning.

24/30


my fingers have always held a fondness
for theatrics; they seem to envy the grace
with which ballet dancers bend to the wind
and leap with swanly precipitous queenship.

yet--my hands are too dramatic.
they forget that they cannot write the stars
asleep, or cause minds to roughen, or hearts
to spill open on the sidewalks of heaven
and heathen. my hands
are sometimes arrogant, and this
frightens me.

so I stuff them deep in my pockets
and only bring them out to sigh
with gratitude, poised
and erect, but nails bent:

please, hands, be nought but humble.

25/30

and they all lived ever after

the beast incarcerated the turnpike, sunk the well
deep into the ground, sketched 'sadist' on the walls in bleeding ink.
this is who i am, Belle, this is me, myself as you see me,
so if you are wise you will run far far far away.

the real ending to the fairytale is that Belle ran for the hills,
got married to a woodcutter,
and died a young death.
because there is no magic here, in this world,
and there are no happy endings.

the real truth is that Snow White's glass coffin
was shattered and looted in 1400. and the prince
poisoned the princess, because she was too strong a woman.
rapunzel cut off her own hair during the first world war,
took part in the suffragette movement, and mourned
Snow White because she was opinionated, and blind,
and because she had not been loved.

[my mother reads me fairytales, but she doesn't know
that the endings are always hidden in the spine,
too dark to reach out with plump fingers,
too sad to swallow down.]

'and they all lived happily ever after.'

26/30

If I hadn't forgotten my wallet at home,
I'd be gorging on a burger a la dajjaj.
But because I am stupid and lax,
I've used my loose change on the tax
and Aunty Jee's elaaj.



Little Bo Beep decided
that the goats were to be uninvited
to her summer fun fest
'cause sheeps were the best.
Poor Bo--goats dislike being slighted.

^SECOND LIMURECK EVUR

27/30

poem entitled 'rubbish'

Dedicated to @AdrianMoon for convincing me to write not-depressing things <3


Dear Brother,

I am writing to you to attest
that forever shall I detest
the stealing of chocolate bar marked #8;
you picked it off my 'moi' palate.
And if this isn't a crime,
then your face most definitely is.

28/30

quelle horreur! where is the sun?

it has gotten dark; of late, it is always
dark--i have a feeling the sun has forgotten
its place in the sky, and is running backstage
to escape the heckling of a displeased crowd.

because what are we but displeased?

the moon cannot substitute for the sky's Macbeth.
but the world seems to traipse along differential lines
of thought, because, they say, 'the show must go on.'

the world forgets that the curtains have still not fallen,
act two has stopped mid-scene,
and the spotlight ceased to work
twenty-four hours ago.

(the audience consists of bare bones and litterage.)

29/30

beetles in the attic

lucy is at it again, dearie, canvassing paintbrushes
on the ceiling and glazing them with turpentine
thoughts that are missiles in the daydusk, in the day
dreaming of wild places, and strange places
and places where our sentences run
away into the horizon, run
away

until they glimmer at the end of the a starched desert dew sky,
until my record player has stopped playing and these ideas
are clustered together

until the ceiling makes sense.

lucy is at it again, darling;

'it's been a cold, long, lonely winter.'