Young Writers Society

I’ve been listening to symphonies,
ever since I left (you).

I’ll soak in the
grandeur, for an hour.
so many instruments,
movements, you can’t help but
be moved yourself.

Sometimes there are just a few seconds,
a bare two measures,
a series of beats, breaths.
a certain tonal quality,
a certain change in key—
standing like
sharp silhouettes against
the symphony,
I love them more
than the whole.

And in my mind,
I will those few measures
to expand,
to fill eternity.
But they’re embedded in something
far greater, and must
fade away, diminish
under the power of the whole.
They wouldn’t be beautiful
if they didn’t
disappear.

Life’s like that, too.
I can never have more
than just those
scarce few seconds.

Before you left (me).

Afterlife Crisis

Heaven sounds boring.
The only reason people seek it
is that hell is supposed to be worse.
The trickery is stunning.
They say in his image we are built
I wonder if God too had wallowed, in the piers
of Kawthar, until one day he struck upon a rhyme
to wade past his leisure time.

A cursed ordeal
Creation of life
A justification for sharing your pain.
Passing down a terror so real
Spread the honey with a bloody knife
Don’t look, don’t gag, don’t forget to say amen.
It can’t taste that bad—they’ll chant
The absurdity of an arbitrary dichotomy goes unobserved.

They don’t reckon eternity would drive them mad
No—they don’t even consider it.
Hell melts your skin
The worst pain you’ve ever had
An instrumental that lasts for too many beats.
Yet an illusive horizon despite a sunset scene
is undesirable. Madness—how can I live
like there’s no tomorrow when there’s an eternity of it?

There is mockery in a whisper

There the crows fly
Where blooded men sigh
On the peak of autumn
Where the dry roses lie.

On mountains high
A good seasoned cry
The steady call of winter
Heaven and Hell anigh.

The rotten fruit of a lie
Depicted with floral dye
Evil cheers in spring
The fall of the right.

Beautiful Glowing Minds

Beautiful glowing minds
Painted red with liquid fire
Rising up on drafts of inspiration
To drip their magic flame from heaven
Floating, flying, they move
through the clouds like angels
Upwards, ever upwards,
To meet the starlight face to face
For what are the stars
But beautiful, glowing minds?

Anew

Lingers in my heart,
What we had was beautiful,
Worth to try again.

This sea has been rough
But we have repaired our boat,
let's both float to shore.

The sun is now bright,
Our love is now fresh and anew,
I hold your hand tight.

your small form teeters on short legs,
but your bright, wide-eyes and tooth-
gaped smile, of light piercing through
a sky of squished clouds speak of a
life, of a tale, that experienced more
than having lady bugs tickle your nose
or coloring doodles on birthday cards.

rather, your brain betrays your true
feelings, by the ways you think will
antagonize him the least, to please him,
to agree with what he says, or demands,
despite your petaled thoughts, blossoming
as you age, as you mature into your
own version of a sapling, desperate for
your own kind of sunlight, of pure love.

and you learned to tie your thoughts
to big balloons, all the same shade of
gray that belonged to storms not a
growing child's mind, but the strings
are frayed and they float, as precarious
as the shards of innocence, a moment
away from careening down, all from
a harsh breath, or sharpened words.

but you hope this will be worth being
able to take that first step outside of
this overbearing household and be able
to breathe fresh air without thinking
about the consequences or the yells
or the breathing down your neck when
even as they say they love you they
want something else in return.

She smells my blood.

The sharp shard of a shell slices my sole,
and red seeps into the sand,
spills into the sea.

The salt stings
in my cut, in my eyes,
and an ache anchors me.
Every old laceration bleeds again.

The sea sings
sweetly in the swish of waves—
a siren song, a spring breeze.
I freeze.

Her shark fin circles slowly
in the soft, red sea.

Sydney the dead dog

We bury the family dog in the backyard,
Pushing daisies six weeks later;
An agricultural opportunist from six feet under.
I put it in my will to bury me beside him.

It’s hard enough being alive,
Let alone an absolute dirtbag. The truth is,
I’m madly in love with the earth
And the way she swallows bodies
So we don’t have to deal with the decay.
It’s the kind of hurt that’s only there
If you push down on it. I guess that’s the only way
That any of it makes sense to me.

I can never decide what’s worse:
Having to wear a seatbelt, or listening
To the perpetual monotonous ding
Reminding me to buckle up.
It doesn’t matter either way
If I’m half alive to begin with. Maybe
It makes sense to just get it over with.

Sydney was a shitty dog, and I was a shitty kid.
Full circle, four-legged
And biting the hand that beats us.

april 16th, 2020 - part i: about time

the days have become
an endless vortex.
i can’t tell where they began
or where they will end.

when i sit, think, and
try to remember
the significance of
a wednesday
or being halfway through
another month,
i can’t find it.

days are now just
meaningless units
of time and space.

a neverending search

at night, the earth plucks at
its strings, letting each note drop
like a whispered thought. I swore
I could have seen the trees
swaying in a slow adagio, but
the wind always shouts and shoves.

we cannot buy magic. it hides everywhere:
in the brightest meadows. the darkest alleys.
the cliched calm before the storm.
and the thrill of uncertainty.

my heart strains with yearning
to be pulled along on this wild life,
but how is it possible when
the roar of the storm and the melody
of the land is the same to me?

I don't dream.
At night my head is overrun with whispers
The singing and gentle laughter of shadows
Softly humming through the strings of my being
In the early light of morning, they sigh and fade into sleep
And I look into the eyes of my love

All the colors of the world flow between us
The sleepy sound of your breath catches in my heart and spins the world round
Your arm around me is the sweetest of flavors
I drink in the smell of you and I have never been more whole
Never more home, hidden in the safety of your love

And then they are awake and you are slipping back into a tunnel of darkness
Shadows tighten across my lungs and bleed the breath from me
Pain drips from my skull and trickles down my back
Demons unnamed are stretching and shivering across my vision
Plucking at the back of my eyelids
I hear you calling from a distance- I can picture the love in your eyes
I want to find myself in your arms again, our hearts painting harmonies in the air
But there is tension pooling in my muscles and my bones are dust
There are teeth in my chest as I struggle for breath- "I love you"
And they tear deeper into flesh as I reach for your hand
I pray you can't smell the blood on my breath as you lean in

I want to be led by your voice back to this moment
But the sound is overlaid with echoes of quiet singing
My body trembles to a rhythm out of your hearing