Young Writers Society

#26

It's ten years since I first used dye,
and sometimes people still ask why
I would choose to spend half a day
faffing around with goo that stains
my fingers pink, my shower blue
my old pyjamas purple, too;

but that's all stuff I couldn't miss,
and when they ask, I tell them this:
it's worth it all simply to see
the face in the mirror look more like me

#27

Here's a tip: find the room with the dog in,
curled up like a hairy throw cushion,
and sit with him while the rest of the house is frantic
dipping strawberries in chocolate, laying cutlery,
and rehearsing flowery speeches. Volunteer
to fetch the cake, even though it's raining,
make your own plans for lunch and turn the trip
into a two-hour detour of quiet solitude.

Let other people's fluster wash over you,
and do not attempt to mop it up for them unasked.

#28

Don't think too hard about it,
just try to let the feeling
exist; let it fill up the room
from the floor right to the ceiling.

#29

What better way to brighten a Monday
than a dinner'n'cinema date with myself?

#30 or, "I Think I'm Getting The Hang Of This"

One Lego is lonely
so I clicked two together,
but I wasn't really sure where to go from there;
if you just keep on clicking,
brick-to-brick sticking,
you get a too-skinny tower that just falls down.
I heard about sideways,
and gave it a go;
with the help of an offset I built up a wall,
but a wall's not a house,
it can't keep the rain out,
and if I'm honest, a wall on its own is just dull
(even if, I hasten to add,
you've patterned it up in a rainbow style -
in the 60s the bricks were just red and white
but you can get them in any colour now).

One wall is lonely,
and it took me a while
to realise the bricks don't have to align;
ninety degrees round,
you can still clip them down,
and plait your wall into a right-angled friend.
From here it gets trickier,
be-gentle-with-the-brick-ier,
because the thing about roofs is, they gotta hold themselves up;
I've had an idea,
and I'm trying it out,
so if I'm lucky, I'll soon have a cool Lego house
(and I hope I am but if I'm not,
I guess I'll sweep up the debris and try again -
the great thing about Lego is,
you can always make something new).




Alright, that's 30! It's been a great month, everybody - same time next year?

Hey Cadi! Congratulations on completing NaPo! I'm a Lego fan so of course I liked that last one. Also enjoyed 24, I love commentary on language in poetry - and I feel like just those four short lines can be interpreted so many ways, very lovely. All of your short poems I felt like were good at getting one concrete thought in there - which is tricky to do! You also did a good job with being direct in your poetry throughout! I didn't need to pick through the poems to try to figure out what they meant, and yet there's often layered meaning in there. 28 is another succinct one that I think turned out really well! Great job, I enjoyed reading through these!