Young Writers Society

Order, order.

I slam my gavel, which is actually a mug, and ink pours out. Such is my court of law. The verdict from the stains shall be left to the people's opinions.

The trial of the month:

Commitments, that is duty, tradition, marriage.

To be brought up against

Dalliances, that is romance, whims and affairs.

Here, be their respected witnesses brought to stand:

1. In a Pod, Peas & Teas

Settling
dense in the lungs
are dogland days of swollen pollen.

Intoxicated
by dreams of the future
and the flirt of allergic breezes, their teases

heaving
the phlegm of my sick soul,
and the crowlines of my uncovered lover.

Confront
the changing of the seasons
inside my heart, a disparaged marriage-

Hoping
the seeds will bloom in the storm,
and grow into who we'd escaped from; become.

Paradigm Shifts

Before I met you, I did not believe in New age
concepts of soulmates' star chart astrology
reincarnated lives, third eye intuitive futures
or ghosts; and then I met you and found you were
as if manifested from daily dreams I realized
were prayers, and coincidences I could not explain-
how when spirit bleeds into energy and you can perceive
my thoughts before I have them, and all of my pasts and flaws
and setbacks seem as if sculpted for those devoted eyes.
How when we talk about multi-cellular, multi-universes,
and we become one as if by the flap of a butterfly's wings
trembling into the only choice
I will ever wish to have scripted before my tombstone.

Howl

Mid-Pandemic, dawn creeps upon surburbia, somewhere
a raw wail rises like smoke from a chimney
after the new count of bodies' announced
and the cat slinks himself through the pet door.
Just another Thursday, someone's unhappy,
and the cat kneading upon my leg for want of a full belly,
and I feel in both cries, the rattling cage of my bones.

All night, we were singing together long conversations
as the stars get blown out by the wind, and the eyes of
my cat stared, as if through me, at the love that devoured
body, mind and soul. Neighboring dogs yip to the wide sky,
as crowds ululates at the funeral on the creek, where we crept away
drenched in our melded bodies,
caught by the hoot of an owl spying through the future,
fleeing from the deserted.

choose your struggle

the ancients knew what they were doing
upon the blood sacrifices that was their custom,
was a story that we are yet too entitled to bear:
that individually, we are scum
and nothing we ever shall do will ever come to pass
until we learn the truth of where we're from,

where we find all that is good, and dreams and paths
must be laid by our own hands, stone by stone, my friend
and not without sacrifice.

Borne from our sufferings, all that is dark and negative,
we're harvesting for greener pastures,
that is what they did back then, that is why we're here time and again-
the great irony- to look at the sputtering, oil-slick- scab of the demonic,
that hornsnest in hair; scrape of manipulative bone-
animal, who we must accept in ourselves,

love that which is the most despised,

for their inherent purpose, for in solving them, we thrive

as energy yields mass yields energy,
carve away the pieces of yourselves
shed away the weight, come into your energy
that is to craft a stone to build that future that is home.