Young Writers Society

this is probably not going to be good.

the goal is four poems, this thread will be mostly mental scribbles. it is very very rare when i write anymore, and i don't know why. perhaps that's what was supposed to happen.

here are the most recent poems i've written

this one is about recognizing you were in a mutually shitty situation, but there was a lot on their end that was left unaddressed and whenever you try to bring it up to them, they tell you to get "over it", "i've moved on, why haven't you?" and so on that doesn't necessarily excuse being told you aren't allowed new friends in college, being told how they said "you remind me of Willard and i love you for that" to their new romantic interest, insisting you be controlling so they won't "act out of order" and cheat on you, and so on.

and although you've spent months in therapy prioritizing your own behavioral wrongs, everyone you've spoken to agree you are way too hard on yourself and that they did a lot of worse things. but it doesn't matter, as a lot of mornings you wake up and still feel terrible about it, and they'll never let anyone outside of their self know what they actually did, so you are left crossing your fingers for karma because that's what you feel is truly just.

and even though it's been six months since you blocked them (five months and three weeks since they last angrily texted you), it feels like they and everyone in their shitty midwestern circle jerk is dancing on your grave while you're still alive.



this one's about Adam Sandler killing my mom in a dream



this one is about body image



this one's about how i used to leave my room's window open for raccoons to climb in and my roommate would get mad at me for that, and how i'd get mad at him for leaving the door open while i was still sleeping

4/1 1:23 am
this is bad. but this is all about improvement, right?

4/2

10:34 am; art school crush

A church bought the land
where we first kissed.
I watch them build a ghost
with steel beams for arms.

4/3, 1:56 pm

​i.
​
If I was Eurydice
​
​ii.
​
​Orpheus knew we'd never go to space.
​It was in the way he wanted to fly.
​Bony arms sprawled to a six foot reach,
​he'd sprint circles around his father's grave
​to kick up a storm greater than Nevada
​has ever seen. A midwestern tornado
​would lift him out the atmosphere,
​​and somewhere out there,
​​his limbs will grow ​to terrifying lengths
​to lean back down and bring me with,
​
​but I've already planted myself here.
​
​iii.
​
I'd never look back.
​
​iv.
​
​The alternatives I proposed,
​whenever he'd land back down,
​made our promise rings all-purpose.
​
​The dandelions we tied to our knuckles
​(doing cartwheels in the courtyard)
​could be a lasso or a noose.
​
We'd be able to drag the moon down
​and use it as coffee table decoration.
To Orpheus, everything was paperweight;
​
​He pulled orbits with his own hands.
​it didn't mean anything to him, though,
​if he couldn't see the color in space.
​
​I knew I'd be amazed by the blacks and blues
​We'd swim in for the rest of our lives.
​I just wasn't meant to be an astronaut.
​
​and under his breath, I think he knew,
​how he'd talk about what was beyond
​and only that for the time we had left.
​
​v.
​
​Why did Eurydice
​
​vi.
​
​Once Orpheus met another helmet,
​I died my first death.
​
​vii.
​
decide to look back?
​
​viii.
​To him, it was unceremonious;
​strapped with bottle rockets
​my engines malfunctioned,
sending my limbs across the street.
​
​What nobody told me is this:
​the doors of the underworld
​look awfully like garden beds
​
​and that I can only hear
​our final conversation
​"Do you wish I was different?"
​"You are too rooted."

​and the drip
from watered plants
above.
​
​ix.
​
​If I am Eurydice,
​
​x.
​
​At one point, Orpheus turned back. Worms started falling from my sky.
​​He dug holes into my tomb in hopes they would find me.
​On the side of their bodies were detailed regrets,
​as if they were wearing a heart on their sleeves.
​
​Since I was gone, he didn't belong on earth.
​
​I pondered miniature rockets on the worms' backs,
​sending them up to my new beyond.
​I want him to know how tall I've grown (over seven feet)
​and sometimes, i like to think he'd be proud of me.
​
​But to look back, so I've learned, is to die a second death.
​
​What I hear now is similar to the sound of crows.
​we used to speak whenever Orpheus spoke to the stars.
​He shouted from his launching pad, warning a distant planet
​that he was coming soon, that he was Orpheus, and
​
​"Since I am, I don't belong on this earth!"
​
​The hesitance in the crows' voices matched mine
​whenever I was rooted. Whenever I was me.
​And in my first death, I learned my own flight patterns.
​And in my first death, I thought, I had done enough.
​
​To look back is to die a second death.
​What's dead is dead and always will be.
​
​xi.
​
​I will never look back.

4/4, 12:40pm

a/n: i woke up this morning with a weird pit in my stomach, so i immediately watched Les Diaboliques and wrote this

A pinewood trunk, there are spiders all over.
​​Moving through the basket weaves,
​if younger us never pushed our thumbs
​into the crack to sneak a peak
​at the skulls of dogs or porno mags,
​maybe there wouldn't have been a passage.
​
​Three feet by four by five, it's enough for a skeleton.
​Possibly two, even with flesh.
​We never thought of a better hiding spot
​for when the sun will break apart,
​or: when he swallowed a bottle of ambien
​and the funeral was tomorrow.
​
​I never saw the casket,
​but this was all we had,
​so I decided to draw it.

4/5. 6:18pm

a/n: so this was supposed to be a perks of being a wallflower "diss", or critique, however i genuinely spent five hours on these two stanzas and trying to figure out how to start from there. nothing really clicked and every possible line messed up the flow, so posting this for today.

there's already a pobaw, tiktok, and e.e. cummings reference in these lines alone. let's see if you can find them all.

i.

This is a tunnel song. That's what Georgia called it,
when the webs of her hands cradled my throat
and my pupils started to echo off the walls.

ii.

This is a tunnel song for a perfect first kiss
(a black hole in each drop of spit
to swallow chunks of our souls
and swim down the other's throat)
(to hold in our hearts ("i'll hold it in mine").

4/6. 10:27pm
a nonsense poem.

​pink. i've torn my cheeks
​into shreds of pastel,
​and your fingers echo
​wherever they walk.
​buzzing & shaking.
​in this mansion,
​in my mother's & yours,
​i let the sound find
​the room where i'll sleep.
​trace my cartography
​(mounds of pink)
​for a place to rest,
​for a place to dig
​yourself a home.

4/7. 6:52pm

trigger warning for mentions of mental illness & body image.

4/17. 5:33pm

I think this is p bad but whatever.

​I first heard the news
​choking on your spit
​in a cathedral of trees.
​
​Hormonal me didn't know how to french kiss
​(intimacy and i had been divorced),
​so my vision started to black.
​
​For a brief moment, I witnessed a forest fire;
​where we were swallowed by heat, and
​our bones left to flame out in time.
​
​You told me what it meant.
​That i feared God.
​​Dogs can't eat all my lexapro.
​
We decorated twin-size coffins
​in different cities and futures
​far from where we carved ourselves into,
​
​And inevitably, those moments will wilt
​with the hometown around it.
​I still hear the news;

A church bought the land
where we first kissed.
They're building a ghost.

It has steel beams for arms,
but no weight on my lungs.