Young Writers Society

Blame Bekah and Pengi for my presence here; apparently I'm meant to try doing this poeting thing again...

2018 - Rydia's Retaliation
2017 - Rydia's Requiem
2016 - Rydia's Radiations
2015 - Rydia's Reservoir (has run dry)
2014 - Lost in Translation
2013 - Rydia's Repository
2012 - Sirens in Suburbia
2011 - April Showers
2010 - No idea what happened here
2009 - Here
2008 - First year?

I may work on this a little more later but here's some drafty drafts:

Collection Title - Other People's Problems (Because I'm not ready to talk about my own)

1. Missing Carriages

Sometimes missed carriages are fast,
left alone with so much past you're unbalanced,
last-in-line, side-lined ready to be redefined
as the woman who was left behind.

Other times they make you wait,
make you skate on thin ice, clinging to the ledge
baited, fated to keep feeling on edge,
wedged between the party goers and no-showers.

I imagine the other ladies at the places,
glowing faces, heaping bosoms as they twirl -
skirts unfurling, they un-girling into that wide yonder
while I ponder the distance between my house and theirs.

They don't tell you how many you might miss-
carriages slipping out of my hands, branded as hope-
less, such a mess, can't even address the issue
like that makes it less to not admit it happened to you too.


____

I'm not feeling the last stanza, it's too blunt and doesn't really get the emotions across in the way I wanted but I feel that way about the poem in general? Still, it's words on paper and all that.

2. Andrex

When things got bad
I'd count the puppies on the roll,
tear pleat and fold
until I could hold them all.

Some days were sad
but I'd trace their shapes in the air,
count their paws, every hair
until I felt safer out there.

When dad broke a plate
I had counted to six
while mum tried to fix
the relationship.

I think I got up to eight
when she said enough was enough
and took her stuff
and that was rough.


blah blah blah

The puppies were scarce
and bad got worse

___________________

I know I can't expect to write something I love immediately but I really hate that I'm so out of practice xD

3. Five Pounds

Five pounds is a coffee,
Maybe two at a cheapside hotel,
Rich and warming but nothing to call home about.

Five pounds is a birthday cake,
Maybe candles if you don’t need a second pack
But it won’t cover streamers or the pink balloons.

Five pounds is a loaf of bread and a pack of ciggies,
Maybe enough to get you through another cold week
Or not.



[This is more ideas than a poem at the moment. I gave a homeless guy five pounds and a few things from Waitrose and it just got me thinking about how little that changed my afternoon and how much more difference it makes to him than sitting in my bank. Yet I have a whole load more five pounds there just in case of a rainy day and I don’t know, it’s a weird feeling.]

4. The Non-Essential

These are our extra-ordinary times,
the war years of our generation,
armed with only our bare, raw-scrubbed hands
and a bottle of ninety-nine percent anti bacterial.

This is where we get to prove that we're enough,
show them we could have conquered their crusades
and onslaughted their barricades.
We could have bled and died for our country
if only we'd been given those self same opportunities.

They were the Greatest Generation, self made
(self named), self believing that they got the worst hand
and yet they survived. They survived
before surviving wasn't enough any more.

And now, when I'm waiting in our two metre line
I'm more reminded of a bible story
about two by two except we're counting in the millions
and the ark could stand to leave a few behind,
lost amid the waves of noise from all who came before.

After writing my previous poem I realised I'd stumbled accidentally on a double dactyl and of course therefore had to pen one -

5. Antibacterial

Lickety Splickety
Britain's prime ministry
up and down country to
cure a disease

To stop this going viral
antibacterial
soaps are on hands of masked
people in streets

What once was imperial
Now seems immaterial
when other countries can
manage with ease


Okay so the third stanza is a. against the rules of a double dactyl and b. probably not needed but I wrote it so there.

6. Untitled

My plants sit un-watered but not unwanted,
it's just that I'm daunted
by the prospect of leaving my seat.
I seem to have defaulted into a vaulted stance
where, by not leaving, my reserves stay halted
but I cannot have use of my feet.

7. Seamless

I am an origami girl,
folded and moulded
once too many times
so now there's a tear in my centre,
sort of where my heart used to
be.

8. Afternoon Yearnings

I miss our jam jar conversations - river bound,
shoes off, blanket out, basket downed,
sweets melting in mellow mouths as we skip stones,
cocooned to the phases of our filled hearts and the foxglove trombones;
those late afternoon currents taking us to new lives,
swiftly drowning under the gaze of your heated eyes.


Lately our lives melt into jam filled shoes,
of the heated conversations of current news
Our eyes jar, mouths missing, I skip your blankets - cocooned
and rivered to swift stones taking us down the afternoon
as we mellow off, basket bound under the foxglove gazes,
trombones drowning out those sweetheart phases.



I forgot how difficult word manipulation is. Both stanzas using the same words, even to the point that when I changed melting to melt I added the ing on to miss. There was going to be a third stanza but right now that's too much of a headache.

9. Baking Dependencies

I baked myself into a dependency
where inviting cookies means inviting me,
and now to turn up empty handed
means being prepared for the ever candid -
Did you forget the cake at home?
They're only joking but I feel unknown,
it's like my only identifying feature
is how well I bake a biscuit creature.

Thanks @ShadowVyper! The last one was mostly tongue in cheek as my close friends definitely don't view me that way but there are a few friends of friends to whom I'm the 'brownie girl' so I used that as my inspiration. There's one boy in particular who seems unable to learn my actual name (nice enough guy other than that though!)

Hopefully I'll have time to fix up the other scraps I've written soon! I'm not sure I'll make the full 30 but it's been fun to poet again. I'm also looking forward to reading more of other people's poems, maybe this weekend I'll get a chance

Okay it looks like I'm aiming for half a NaPo instead. Thanks @Meshugenah for making me sit and write a bit!

10. Searching for Impressions

I like to pretend I know things: words, places, people,
waiting for the beat in a conversation where I can recite
the phonetic alphabet
or tell you that the opposite sides of every dice
add up to seven.

Sometimes I stay awake all night searching for new memorabilia -
a cubic inch of human bone
can bear the weight of five standard pickup trucks
but what size is standard anyway?

Some days I pull a number from my head
to see if people really care or even listen,
sometimes I'm a wildfire of misinformation
or maybe that's all there is.

And today there are three hundred and twenty one dimples on a golf ball
and the sun turns two hundred and thirty seven degrees
around the Earth.


11. Valheim is my Life

I want to be a viking and vanish
into the emersion of a game,
to build castles or fight the Clannish,
and put a title to my name.

What's the use of learning numbers
when the secrets in a tomb
where the bluest of trolls slumbers
are engraved with magic runes.

And the only things I want to learn
are how to steer a boat -
is it left to make a right turn
or is it right into my moat.


12. Imprinting

There's nothing in me but volumes of second-hand thoughts,
mostly out-dated and certainly out-weighted
in a world that demands new. Demands you
come up with something else. Something self-
evidenced and self-supporting but not self-indulgent
and the only things I know how to divulge are the imprints,
of another being, the leavings of feet that were leaving paths
before I even realised how pathetic I am.

13. Roll with it

I rolled a die to decide what dye to use for my dehydrated hair
It came up four but before I was sure there was for sure an awareness
that the ink that I think was ink might just sink straight into my veins
(a color not blue or purple or a hue that I knew running under skin
and the rose that arose from within might have been a single
shade too much so I rolled a two, yes I knew it was a two
that settled deep in the depth and see it seep dyed over-saturated strains
tarnished skin, take a breath, unnatural hues over due with a dew like fluid or a stain
or maybe just again it was the light, much too bright to show what might have been alright.


A @Meshugenah and Heather co-write!

14. It's getting colder

There's a man living in our garden shed,
sometimes I see him from the bedroom window.
He doesn't always look like he's been fed.

I'd make a sandwich but we're out of bread,
maybe dad will buy some more tomorrow.
There's a man living in our garden shed

In the day he's at the park instead
Mum says it's rude to wave at people you don't know;
sometimes I see him from the bedroom window.

It's colder and the news says that it might snow.
Yesterday I left my gloves in the shed.
He doesn't always look like he's been fed


I need to revisit this one later, maybe the cascade isn't the right form...

Things to play with later.