Young Writers Society

Day IX

Chameleons feed on light and air:
Poets' food is love and fame:
If in this wide world of care
Poets could but find the same
With as little toil as they,
Would they ever change their hue
As the light chameleons do,
Suiting it to every ray
Twenty times a day?
- An Exhortation, Percy Bysshe Shelley

Form: Alphabet poem

The Poet

A poet hides their sacks of words
Bulging with blood and flesh.
Chameleons are less shy, and
Dearer to the ecosystem.
Embarrassing words, those
For the dearest of hearts:
Grandmothers and
Hardworking men
Infuse the poet, from eyes to pen.
Jailed are the words inside:
Kind, creamy words
Like a pastel oil painting
Multicoloured in hue
Nestled between scales and
Orifices.
Poets print them in patterns,
Quelling the colour with structure,
Rigid as the rising sun
Sets below the hills each evening.
They do because they must;
Unless the world is ending or
Victory fresh on inebriated tongues,
Who wants to know how much you love them?
Xylophones are less shy in volume.
Your poet is folding words in their sweater, in
Zebra print, in polka dots.

I'm still enjoying all your creative poems @Liminality, and the different ways you're continuing to weave that language theme through them all.

Abecedarians are one of my all-time favorite forms of poetry <3 You also somehow managed to even have great flow and a little rhyme in it, which I'm pretty impressed by.

These were probably my favorite lines from the poem;
"Victory fresh on inebriated tongues,
Who wants to know how much you love them?"

I also found your Bee poem to be really vivid. I can't decipher roman numerals, but I think you're still on track! Well done, keep it up!

Thanks so much, @alliyah! I'm on my ninth poem now; surprised that I'm keeping up, haha

Day X

Form: concrete poem



Tracking Down Speech Production

Day XI

Form: Spenserian Sonnet



You Pick Up Where You Left Off

In chatrooms, you pick up where you left off,
Where I was left to wonder where you went.
No blue goodbye is here spoken too soft;
No speech at all – silent farewells are sent.
In futures vague we will have to repent
With copying lines of love as done in class
With supervision, why give the hours spent?
The present on our skin feels rough and crass.
Inside my mind, I pick you up like glass
But turn you over, seeking like a beast.
The figure of your absence soon does pass
Into my honeyed memories – a feast.
In chatrooms, we pick up where last we left,
Between the times we leave ourselves bereft.

Day XII



Form: Dodoitsu

I. Long-swords

When he rambled reports on
The long-swords hung in his room,
The homeroom teacher passed him;
The police did not.



II. Stereotypes

The teacher had us talk dreams;
His was to break stereotypes
Of men rushing to speak first
And talking too much.

Day XIII

Form: Abstract/ Sound poetry



Talk is Buttery

Pitter-patter, goes the rain and the matter
that spatters the rat-tat-tat window;
whispers of willows billow inward to where
sipping of sultry concoctions occurs.
A buttery talk flutters through shutters
flaxen-haired – right there! – from the insect air.

Day XIV

Form: Somonka


If not in the library

The waves of evening
Were washing my words away
From the grimy window
Asking where I could find you
If not in the library?

I thought I could find
A black pearl, hiding behind
Sand banks of pages
Burrowing inside with hands
Cold from your absence.

Day XV

Form: Tanka




Canine Interaction

Trying to weave a
Subordinate clause, mid-air;
My dog’s response is
Turning away, scratching himself
Disappointed gems – his eyes.

Day XVI

Form: Petrarchan Sonnet



‘Meanings are towers of turtles’

A famous analogy for this goes:
Meanings are towers of turtles found
To stack on themselves, going all the way down
And where the line ends, nobody can know.
Diaphanous epiphany! That throes
Of unmoulded uncertainty abound,
Even in floors and ceilings, seeming sound;
Our seeking of endings just goes and goes –
But maybe we all could be deep sea fish,
Slipping between the structures, learning
To weave away our own lines out of light;
We stitch the uncharted paths with a swish
Of tails, encyclopaedic in yearning,
Upon the reef above towers, alight.

Gosh that is such an artful combination of the themes from the two poems that brings out something new and beautiful. Really love that last sonnet @Liminality, and especially the continued use of really such precise word choice too! I think the last three lines are my favorite.

I liked the Spenserian Sonnet from earlier as well - I think the juxtaposition from the formal sonnet form to the chat-room theme actually created a neat contrast - and the idea of like picking up an old (or continued) conversation like glass was really intriguing for a metaphor connection.

Thank you for the lovely comments, @alliyah! I'm glad you liked the buddy tribute.

Day XVII

Form: Cascade poem


‘I learn Chinese like walking up a hill’

I learn Chinese like walking up a hill
Since I never learnt to use cable cars
I scrape my knees on these forward lunges.

Cursing and throwing my arms in the air,
Folding an ink-stained map accordion-shaped,
I learn Chinese like walking up a hill.

The path seems sheer, flying up like a cliff;
The sky seems stuck in glass, hard and blue
Since I never learnt to use cable cars.

My tongue trips tonally, tied out of tune
To the Western colony of my brain;
I scrape my knees on these forward lunges.

Day XVIII

Form: Tautogram



Change


Carrying circular courage,
Change careens centre-wards,
Crossing celestial causeways.

Celestial creatures – cobalt-coloured,
Cream crescent catapulting,
Centuries cradling courage.

Centuries cartwheel clockwise,
Commas change. Colons change.
Currently creasing canvas canopies.

Constellations crow, caring
Crows celebrate coarse cobalt
Conversations curl, caressing.

Change – coming, coming,
Crossing causal causeways,
Cultures change. Cries change.

Day XIX

Form: Magic 9



Acquisition

Maybe life begins with an idle game,
with collecting indigo impressions,
with the sounds you tame
with sticker labels shelved in memory.
Watching numbers go up, until you claim
your next upgrade: shine –
But the counter comes back to where you came;
back to Square One, staticky impressions
revised. Relearn the world with slanted aim.