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Young Writers Society


set the river & myself on fire



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417 Reviews



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Points: 500
Reviews: 417
Mon Apr 01, 2019 5:08 pm
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Willard says...



I haven't been on in a long time but this will be good exercise if it goes long enough.

"Words say little to the mind compared to space thundering with images and crammed with sounds."

stranger, strangelove, drstrangelove, strange, willard
  





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417 Reviews



Gender: Male
Points: 500
Reviews: 417
Wed Apr 03, 2019 7:30 pm
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Willard says...



I've been writing, not on here, am aiming for thirty poems this month, here's one. It's clearly a mess, a lot of it was inspired by walking through the suburbs around campus under the beautiful PNW sky listening to For Ash by Marnie Stern. Making a zine during this month and I want the correctly formatted version of this to end it. I promise not all of my poetry lately has been like this, messy and all over the place.

#1

Spoiler! :

what about the rest of our lives?
this is the same hillside
skyways, skyways, skyways
i hid in my scarf
& wonder how we'd fade
my bones already dust
my lamictal in extract
the stomach is going to burst
blood is only butterflies
kissing in foreign cities
it was all there was
nothing else so i drew it
the three prongs of my existence
Minneapolis Portland Seattle
they shit the same
identical beings
ive always left the gas running
Anne it never killed mosquitoes
or stupid fucking clouds
i press my back against
the gum wall, rose garden,
skyways skyways skyways
my hesitant breaths
followed 3/4 throughout
voodoo doll murdering
a new creature born
out of violence who
doesn't masturbate to
modern baseball
what am i to them or
what am i to them or
what am i to a stranger
or what am i to myself
i don't know my will but
i know i will know i will
i will set with the sun
i will set with the sun
i will set with the sun
i will set with the sun
i will set with the sun
i will set with the sun
i will set with the sun
i will set with the sun
i will set with the sun
i will set with the sun
i will set with the sun
i will set with the sun
believe or infer it i
do for once.

"Words say little to the mind compared to space thundering with images and crammed with sounds."

stranger, strangelove, drstrangelove, strange, willard
  





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417 Reviews



Gender: Male
Points: 500
Reviews: 417
Wed Apr 03, 2019 11:51 pm
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Willard says...



#2

Spoiler! :
as the wheel of the bus crushes my head,
it saddens me my breasts will never grow in.

i extrapolate as a hypothetical,
literal star killed in the past.

i could have murdered,
i could have lived.

as the wheel of the bus crushes my head,
it saddens me my breasts will never grow in

and the world can’t see my love
finger drawn on bus windows.

"Words say little to the mind compared to space thundering with images and crammed with sounds."

stranger, strangelove, drstrangelove, strange, willard
  





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417 Reviews



Gender: Male
Points: 500
Reviews: 417
Fri Apr 05, 2019 11:24 pm
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Willard says...



#3

Spoiler! :
the sun sets before i call in the child;
before the child shoves a fist
down a coyote’s mouth.
their whimpers, his and its,
flood a parking lot.
he watches how coarse cement
fills, like water running, like
paint drying, dim bathroom park
light shines his grease.
three blocks away his mother,
i, light cigarettes on the porch,
ash graces the wood.
it could be another house burnt down,
other bathroom lights &
another parking lot the child
can turn into a boy and fold
into a man. as fist muscles grow,
the area of the coyote’s throat does too.
the boychildman continues to be swallowed,
the boychildman continues to kill
to the sound of nothing & the moans
of two animals.

"Words say little to the mind compared to space thundering with images and crammed with sounds."

stranger, strangelove, drstrangelove, strange, willard
  





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417 Reviews



Gender: Male
Points: 500
Reviews: 417
Tue Apr 09, 2019 7:28 pm
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Willard says...



#4
warning for language

Spoiler! :

love is what love is; i've always spoken it into monuments. their eyes would be pearls among cheeks captured in marble, and i spent a lot of time time tracing bone to bone over the bridge of my nose thinking if my touch is the same as others'. love is what love is and i've acted as Midas. under all the suns kisses are dandelions, we run through the blossom. in the scratched blackheads there's pollen and i lie fetal as a raisin and whisper "suck it out". break my shoulders, whiten your hands, suck it out.

love is what love is; I've started to wonder if raindrops fuck. intimately, so the pollen pours out at paint's pace. love is what love is what's real is what's slow. i can count blackheads among vacuum suction marks. water trickles down the post, jogs after each other 'til one catches the other in matrimony. i wonder if they fuck, if they love, and if the rising action is longer than what i have to live. but love is what is, slowly but surely. moments in time can't be lost if rain fucks forever.

"Words say little to the mind compared to space thundering with images and crammed with sounds."

stranger, strangelove, drstrangelove, strange, willard
  





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417 Reviews



Gender: Male
Points: 500
Reviews: 417
Thu Apr 11, 2019 6:34 am
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Willard says...



#5
couplet I'm kind of proud of.

Spoiler! :

i see the same hillside.
with you, completely

there, growing into
something taller

than skylines
with broken ribs.

your breaths fall
out your body

over me. the way
your pupils expand

in shock works
like flood lights

into the dusk.
our lips split

as a still
landscape,

with your breaths
still warm. my ribs

crack to the beat
of my heart.

i see the same hillside,
skyways and all,

with you, completely,
in the black of your eyes.

"Words say little to the mind compared to space thundering with images and crammed with sounds."

stranger, strangelove, drstrangelove, strange, willard
  





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417 Reviews



Gender: Male
Points: 500
Reviews: 417
Thu Apr 11, 2019 8:54 pm
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Willard says...



#6

a/n: I have been wanting to write a poem with this metaphor for a few months. Finally got to it, and it's better than I expected, but still, eh.

Spoiler! :

There’s a house Anne built
with a crumbling frame,
she’d eat the paint chips
off the wood and dream
of a sun set she’d parallel
as an identical being.
A life cycle of dissolving
lithium batteries in vodka,
chasing doctor death
by staying still. Carbon
monoxide filled the cavities
in her brain and her corpse,
a beautiful foundation
destroyed in broad daylight,
do loved ones say goodbye
over the remains.

And in blood visions I see
the home I’ll put together
and tear apart. Is what’s
inevitable a tragedy?
If I stay in the garage
and let the car run,
the wood in the floorboards
would still be fresh. Anne,
my future is in all the
architecture I’ve admired.
If they’re all delusions,
then reality’s a great
impressionist and I’ve
been picking off all
of the yellow paint.



I will set with the sun,
I will set with the sun,

when day time comes
to an end. and over
what’s left standing,

say goodnight rather
than goodbye.

"Words say little to the mind compared to space thundering with images and crammed with sounds."

stranger, strangelove, drstrangelove, strange, willard
  





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417 Reviews



Gender: Male
Points: 500
Reviews: 417
Tue Apr 30, 2019 11:33 pm
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Willard says...



#7

So, I stopped posting because I was hospitalized for a sinus infection, however I have been writing on and off since the last poem. Here's one I wrote today, I'm somewhat proud of it.

Spoiler! :

City cops, either
all pigs or all fathers,
break cement curbs with rubber
as the shin of a warm body
brushes a front bumper;
warning sign clearer than headlights.

I stand arrested across the highway.
An idle ghost, mouth agape, eyeballing
the Record Courier parking lot,
officers breaking cement
breaking kneecaps of a civilian.

Where he kisses the ground
I once analyzed the black of the sun,
diseasing slowly from time and the light.
I soaked the now with a present mind
and active heart, living for life

defined by want.
I recall Impressionist interpretations
of Carson Valley sitting on
the windowsill of the Courier,
a hand wrapped around my wrist

using its nails to pick off my skin
naively, so I’ll bleed out
through my scabs and my corpse
will be captured in that moment.
Handcuffed, legs pressed

between my shoulder blades,
but seconds still pass.
Divorced from a faded past,
I wait until three uniforms
shove a man into the backseat

and drive to the station.
Separated from when his
heartbeat was the loudest,
we’re now shadows of
our former selves in
the lights of a cop car.

"Words say little to the mind compared to space thundering with images and crammed with sounds."

stranger, strangelove, drstrangelove, strange, willard
  








When she transformed into a butterfly, the caterpillars spoke not of her beauty, but of her weirdness. They wanted her to change back into what she always had been. But she had wings.
— Dean Jackson