Young Writers Society

A white mushroom blooms;
trees splinter and break apart;
much devastation.

1. socks rub against the carpet
and spray out little sparks
as he begins to pitch forward.

2. the impact force against bones
smacking the steps of the stairs
isn't nearly strong enough to break them,
but it can rip red rashes along the skin.

3. he hits his head against the hardwood
when he crashes into the bottom of the stairs,
and rubs the bump that slowly forms
as he pulls himself up.

4. wiping a stray tear or two from his eyes,
he winces and tries to put on a smile -
he thinks he has to look like a man.

5. she hears the commotion
and pokes her head out of the dining room;
he waves, and she sighs
and goes back to her work -
moron.

These are the men
who sink into their couches
and are fed spoonfuls of mush
by frothing babies who scream blasphemy!
when they hear so much as a word
out of place.

These are the men
who tipped to the right side of the boat
and plunged into the ocean,
but pulled out their crosses, stood on them,
and refused to believe they were sinking
while they, sinners, cast stones at the people
who sailed away on liferafts
looking for a bright horizon.

These are the men
who've never sniffed fresh paper,
flicked through the pages eagerly,
and learned to love the written word
like wise men do (unless, of course,
the words come dripping in tabasco sauce
from babies disguised with the masks of men).

And so I will not listen to them when they tell me
to praise the iron heart and the stupid leader
who wields it.

Ay Dios, nos perdona

When they tore down the house,
we (my sisters and brothers and I) found a pale white flower
nestled beneath now-broken floorboards;
we guessed it had been there for years,
kept alive by the steady dripping of water
from the leaky plumbing in the kitchen sink
that had doomed the house in the first place
(and so we suspected that the spirit of the house
had gone to the flower).

We dug it out, stuck it in a pot,
and passed it between us, so the flower would travel
to a new pair of hands every year
regardless of the distance between us,
and each one of us painted a circle on a petal of the flower
out of his or her favorite color.

We were young, but even we knew
that it would have to die eventually.
But when, despite the many times
someone forgot to give it water or food,
it survived and kept its faint white glow
in the nighttime, we were elated -
it was our nightlight, our green and white thread,
our birthday gift and present.

It saw hats tossed into the air,
stethoscopes lining the walls,
the inside of airplane cargo holds,
white-capped mountains spewing smoke,
newborns placed in their tiny cribs,
nursing homes littered with wheelchairs,
and rested atop funeral casket after funeral casket.

It only watches over me now.
I see their names and faces in each of the circles,
and halos sprout from the flower's faint glow.
It catches my tears and shakes gently in the breeze.
Perhaps it's taken their souls too;
perhaps they're all in the house now, in their rooms,
waiting for the final pair of soft footprints
to climb up the stairs, open the doors,
and give an embrace to last
for the rest of time.

I look forward to it.

The ship crashed onto the shore
and sprayed sand into the trees;
the first few men to come aboard
found the captain alone, slumped against the wheel,
cap casting a shadow over his eyes
and his arms loosely clutching two spokes,
keeping his knees just inches above the deck.

No time to waste - they didn't want Death to escape,
sprouting from his body in a swarm of flies and maggots
that would sting and eat their hearts as well.
The men sent boys back to town
and laid out the captain on the sand,
heaping block after block of wood on top.

The passing of a torch and the pile flamed,
spewing smoke through the palm fronds.
The captain's wife arrived just in time
to smell burning flesh and the skin flaking off
an arm that poked out of the wood.
She screamed and reached out, but they held her back -
a final touch, kiss, embrace, was not worth
getting herself ill or burning herself on the pyre
(no matter how much she protested otherwise).

And she still visits the beach every year
when she's certain that no one else will watch her
beyond the moon and the stars, whom she pleads
will take the bottles she throws into the sea
and carry them to the depths
where good sailor's souls lurk,
though she's never had an answer yet.

you never forget the city,
especially the moments when you hide
behind a wall, the windows around you
exploding against submachine gun fire,
and then you have to grab your rifle,
wheel around and - crack! crack! -
there goes a man, falling off the balcony
and crashing against the cloth roof
of a market stall (the only thing it sells now
being death, since all the living
either cleared out their goods or let planes
clear it out for them).

even when you jump onto the caravan's roof
(thanking god that He's pulling you out of hell)
and crouch down between blankets, you still hear
the sounds of screaming outside your bedroom door
while you cower beneath the bedframe,
up until the camouflage glove reaches for you,
drags you out, and tells you how the bigwigs
argued over nothing and did nothing and now,
now there's some tyrants to take care of
(but seeming to forget the last dictators
were rebels themselves).

i guess you never leave the city.

Sometimes I feel like I'm stuck;
there's a pigeon in the chimney,
screeching and flapping about
while spilling ashes from god knows how many fires
made in the wintertime for us to sit around,
dipping crackers into our hot chocolate to eat,
and my family wants me to stick my head up there
to chase it out with a broom that's always too short.

And the pigeon scatters soot onto my head,
turning Christmas memories into weapons
that plunge into my nose like fighter planes,
make my lungs recoil like they've breathed in cigarettes,
and cause my eyes to redden and water. You know,
when it isn't shooting worse things at me.

Guess what? I can't pull my head back,
my arms are trapped against the hot brick walls,
and nobody else even knows there's a problem;
I've got to put on a smile, hoping I can yank myself out
before the pigeon lands on my face
(because that's when everyone pays attention,
and I'm not a big fan of Schadenfreude).

I wonder what it says about me
when I find myself most free
if I put on a fox mask
and howl out my song
to the world.

Is there something buried
beneath pink flesh and tiny eyes
that will never rise to the surface
without a focus?

Am I lying to myself about who I am
because I'm afraid that no one
would dare to look at the real me,
wrapped in blankets and building fences
to keep out all the neighbors?

Or maybe it's both,
as though knowing the reason
would ever have stopped me
in the first place.

buried in the snow,
etched in the weathered marble -
yo quise morir.

When you would count the snowflakes
drifting onto the windowsill, he would sidle up
and tell you, "baby, every snowflake is unique;
then again, so is everything else.

And if everything is unique,
what is?"

You never peered between his lines
(and they always hovered in the air when he spoke),
or you would've seen the gray hand
grasping his skull when you swayed on the balcony,
his hands on your hips, his eyes mirrors instead of windows,
gilding your reflection and throwing the sun on it,
and the two of you kissed
like the missiles had just landed (damn North Korea)
and you didn't have the time or room for anything else
but emotion.

He thought he was trapped in a painting
where his cheeks were rosy, his eyes were blue,
and he was surrounded by waves of pallid and gray people
frozen in place.

And he thought the artist had suffered a stroke,
slumping over in their chair
before they could paint to life the passerby
to caress him.

And he threatened to find the eraser
to turn it on himself, a final act of defiance
by the man who never knew he'd drained the color from himself
and had thrown it into the prisms that made rainbows
to keep the rest of the painting alive.

the ice breathes.
it gasps to life on blades of grass
before the sun tinges the sky blue;
it crawls across windows in the morning,
creeping through cracks and soaking spiders
who try to nest among it and catch prey;
melts into puddles in the afternoon,
thanks to the barrage of arrows
Apollo sends as he flies on his chariot;
and seeps into the earth at night,
promising revenge against the tyrant
as it rebuilds under Artemis's watchful eye.

who among us can blame it for wanting to escape a death
that always comes for it in the end?
each of us casts our stars up,
hoping they stick to the walls of the world
before the scythe sticks in our chests.
though, then again,
we are the ones in hot tubs,
shriveling at the slightest piece of ice
drifting in from around us,
praying to Apollo for his warmth
and cursing his sister.

and it is hard to love the enemy.

A man on the street
once told me to know myself,
to find whatever boxes
can fit the writhing mass
of my mind, cracks and all.

I didn't think that a giant would come
to stomp on all but the most rigid boxes,
leer at me through rose-tinted glasses,
and tell me that my mind can only be bordered
by lines.

But if David could kill the Philistine Goliath,
so can I - I will smash his glasses with my stones,
tear out his Achilles' heels, and leave him
to lick his wounds while I plant my mind
where it will best grow into something
that I can understand and count on
when the giant comes back
(and he always will).

If you caught me when I was a kid,
when I adamant that Pluto was a planet
despite what they (everyone) said, and told me
that the man supposed to be tending the trees
was chopping them down and leaving them to rot
so he could stuff dollar bills into his wallet
and make the world his personal gas chamber,
full of carbon dioxide and sulfur hexaflouride,
I would've never believed that kind of evil existed
outside of the TV screen (though I was a shy kid,
and I probably would've just stammered
or looked down at my shoes in response).

Now that I've figured out it takes man
to make bitter chocolate sweet,
and I've cut myself from the process,
I know where evil lurks, and I want to shout
loud enough for its red-eyed face to poke out
from its soundproof room and hear my battle cry -

Science is my God;
burn the heretics.

I can't understand you.
We live in the same household,
play the same video games,
follow our parents' many rules
(and hide when we're breaking them),
but there's a gap between us
that I know we'll never bridge.

I'm only stroking my ego if I say that I'm smarter,
but our minds aren't the same -
I will always see equations on the walls of my room,
hear the Moonlight Sonata in my sleep,
and the corners of my mind will fold together
searching for ever greater knowledge.
To you, e = mc^2 is always going to fog your brain,
you remember the lyrics of pop songs for irony's sake,
and heaven forbid you have to remember Punnet squares.

And it kills me that I can't put together the pieces
of the puzzle that is your brain,
all because the mind that wants to know you
is the reason that it can't.
I can only try, but at least I feel the same way
about everything else.

And here is my life's work
stretched out on the operating table,
pleading for me through a single eye
to stitch the skin back in place,
yank out the appendix and toss it away
(it wasn't good for anything anyways),
and stick on a second arm and eye.

And I'm covered in blood,
my scalpel inches away from flesh.
The voice at the back of my head
asks if I will make a Frankenstein
out of misshapen, discolored parts;
something to follow around and tell people
that isn't what I meant, at all.

And if I have to tell the people
who whisper into my ear
the faint praises and damnations that make and break my mornings,
that isn't what I meant, at all.

I turn the scalpel on myself
like Ajax and his sword.