Young Writers Society

NaPo

#1
It was summer
Heat drilling down our skin
In thick freckled lines.
The tennis courts sang
With tension and hard red clay,
You played until darkness fell,
Not that it stopped the sweat
Beading through my shirt sleeves,
We were captured there,
Two feet alined on either side
Of the thin clear net.

#2

i walked blind through the river
reeds like small hands curling
about my ankles the wind was a gully
deep and mournful under the thick stars
i stood staring upward as though it might change
the way the story read an archipelago
reflected in cold divination star to star
like lovers at their end

So beautiful, Pengu, i really love these <#

#3

There is no point to me;
I know you thought we’d only be a minute
in the stacks of this dusty library
and now we have been here a year,
marking time by the shelves and the scents
of autumn coagulating by the door.
I brought us here knowing this would happen,
as it has always done. For every moment I steal
I will regret it ten fold until the next time
my hand is linked with another and they say-
“Where do you want to go?”

#4

Gratuitous,
like too many stars
falling from the sky.
How can we sing
through time speeding?
This breath is caught by light
breaking into our mouths.

#5

They railroaded me.

Five hands pulling and shoving
until the metal was my face
and I understood what it meant
to be penned like cattle.

It was only once,
their cool dark stares making tremours
through my skin like a disease
I couldn't stop, or name.

It was quick,
like a scythe tearing through wheat,
leaving the seed lying gutted
and alone on the gold ground.

It was only once,
I never saw it coming and it was quick,
but that doesn't seem to make it better,
when all I remember is salt on my tongue
and the thing without a name.

#6

My skin is a kiln,
steam filtered through pores
and breath.

Perhaps that is why
when I touch you, everything
is wrong?

I taste desert dreams
and a mirage on the tip
of my tongue.

Inside I am making
something beautiful
and it is taking too long.

Shattered words lie
against the table, your hands,
cracked in the spaces
we both loved.

#7
I fixate on my grandma's hands,
the knots which make her bones,
the ribs pulled together that shape her palm,
purple splotches aching between
finger and thumb, knuckle and wrist.

These hands wring water from washing,
shake as they tie the peg back around her waist,
rattle as they clutter spoons into bowls in the sink.

I am reminded of my grandfather
when I think of her raw hands cracking eggs,
the way she shoos dust from the mantle,
plucks sharp thorns from dusky pink roses,
he must have met her when they were steady.

What it would be to see her stand straight, if small,
walk toward the door and out without a moan,
her hands unencumbered by cane or bag.

This is my grandma, shrivelled and slow,
and her hands that are blossom bruises
still hold my attention. She is, still, mine.

Ok but you still have to write a poem EVERY DAY, you can't store them up XD

#8

There are worlds of me
caught up in the atmosphere
of a spider web spread across my mouth.
I taste it there on my tongue,
silk wrapping like chains
I could break if I considered
the small deaths of spiders.

Instead my hands grow weary
from holding out in appeal,
if you could only see your way
to snapping a cord or two
I could begin to breathe again,
lungs deep and aching in autumn light.

(This is a lie we both know:
I have swallowed so many things
if I breathe they will tumble out
and crawl back to begin again.)
If only you could.

#9

I have marrow carved from my bones
by the hungry connoisseur,
small spoons scraping my sides
as they empty me out, one mouth at a time.
I taste like ash and eucalypt;
my country is inside of me,
beating as though it belongs.
They left me intact, the fierce hunger
gnawing at me now I am feather light,
but I cannot eat, they have sewn me shut
to keep the flies out.
Maybe tomorrow they will slice through
but maybe not.

#10

And the sun came up,
radiant, angry rays streaking
down my face, a matador
gaze bleeding through the clouds.

I became the bull,
Taurus ploughing through
an underbrush of brick and steel,
wounded before I left the gate.

The sun does not know mercy,
she slivers pain into my eyes
and I am down, licking wounds
that tomorrow will not heal.

Her own small death is later,
couched between stars and grey slate roofs,
I am full of sympathy
and the taste of things to come.

#11

Narcissus drank of himself
every day that he lived,
eyes full and drowning.
He could have dreamed of love
so grand that it could shake
a foundation, like Goliath
tumbling to earth, as Sampson
weak through love's betrayal.
Even Narcissus could not dream
of a love I have for you,
saying such would be knives
to the tongue for a summit-seated god.
Mere mortal, I am free to say it
over and again, I love you.

#12

It is hard to remember that stars
do not exist solely for us to agonise over -
they live in a time so alien we cannot fathom
how they came to be simple light
pressing on our atmosphere,
shaping the world as surely
as an artist decorates a ceramic bowl.
We had function and form,
and now we have beauty.

#13

I know your name.
Sometimes I whisper it at inopportune times,
wrapping my tongue around unused sounds,
a child fumbling for articulation.

You could think I had forgotten
the way your hand was smooth when you touched me,
you took my hand as suddenly as you let it go.

I am allowed not to know
the way my body convulsed with sobs
the first night we let you go.

I know all of this.

I forget the date, forget the words
texted one Sunday afternoon;
"Tonight a memorial for our friend" perhaps.

It matters that I do not know where you are
in relation to me or otherwise.
Could you find me now?
I have moved on.

I tell myself that to make it true,
mouth tripping over your name at three am
(more damningly at four in the afternoon).
I do not need our friendship to live.

A truth I tell myself at four
only to unravel at three,
lips pressed to the sound of your name.