Young Writers Society

I am taking over someone's stuff at work who just left while also doing my own work while also being in a musical, so.

Stretch goal: 30 poems and Sundays are for sonnets
Real goal: 10 poems and Sundays are for sonnets
Working on: alliteration, assonance, and consonance. And maybe I will try to make one or two poems into songs.

1: First Rainstorm

The storms out east stampede over wheat
over corn, over soybeans-
the sweet sweat of the heavens that feeds what we eat.

Back home, the sky hardly deigns to spit,
so the river pries blood from under our toes.
It carves a gash that flows and flows and flows.
And the banks grow like scabs
too spindly, too fragile, too little
to stop the spate.

From my desk, I creep,
called by the drumbeat, the tip-tapping feet,
the mermaid, forlorn,
who sings and entreats me.
The rain streams like tears,
like swift, soaking solace.
I’m doused. Engrossed.
I’m replete and replenished by this new, drenching weather.

I stand outside, torn.
My heart cries for my past
and yearns for the storms.

2: First Saturday Shift

What an odd place,
the office on Saturday.
What a funny mood it has:
No one to wave hello to,
but I must wave to the lights when they think I'm gone.
No bustling conversation,
but the HVAC bellows for a crowd.
Snow falls past the window,
but the salt for me only keeps my solitary tracks from sticking.
What an odd place,
the office on Saturday.
What a funny mood I'm in,
alone and not with many.

3: First time hockey goalie

Behold, my body prone upon the ground,
my knees rest, nestled in a bed of pads.
A coach leans over, pulls the straps around,
to lock me into armor ironclad.

To stand up is a herculean feat;
mere walking pulls more muscles than I have
and tugging on the chest piece to complete
my get up somehow pulls on both my calves.

But even when I step out on the ice,
the very territory I call home,
I slip and slide, my moves so imprecise
I am as silly as a garden gnome.

But if the knights of old such shame endured,
then I shall of embarrassment be cured.

Hi Ventomology! I'm loving these poems so far.

the sweet sweat of the heavens that feeds what we eat.

I love how multi-layered the figurative language in this line is. Comparing rain to sweat, and then sweat to something "sweet" (when we usually think of it as salty!) and linking that to how it "feeds what we eat" -- it's very clever and says a lot in a small amount of space.

The mood of 'First Saturday Shift' is an interesting one that I liked a lot. That feeling of being alone but not quite alone. It makes me think of how it's hard to notice the background noise of a place unless there are no 'people noises' talking over it.

And your third poem!! I really enjoyed the descriptions of things like the hockey player's equipment and the feeling of sliding around on ice. Is this based on reality/ are you a hockey player yourself, if you don't mind me asking?
Cheers, and all the best for NaPo!

4: First Person I Disliked at Work

Sir,

I love Seattle.
I know you love Seattle.
I am very jealous because you are in Seattle and I am in a cornfield halfway across the country.

But Sir,

Have you never heard of a weighted average?

Sir.

- Rookie

(edited) 4: First person I disliked at work

Sir,

I would like to like you.

I love Seattle.
I know you love Seattle, too.
You and I both root for the Kraken, even though they are new and objectively terrible.
You are genial every time we speak.

But sir,

When you ask things of me because I am a Young Person and I “know computers,”
do you ever stop to think think back on your long and storied career?
In all your years have you never heard of a weighted average?
You are an executive working from your home in Seattle, and I am out here in this cornfield.

Sir.

-Rookie

5: First Midwest Spring

You tempted me to dance three weeks ago
with sunlight bright and warm upon my skin.
You bowed, a hand extended, said hello,
and with your gentle breeze, you spun me in.

I reveled in your playful Lindy-Hop.
I swooned into the close hold of your waltz.
I Charlestonned through your sunny, sweet bebop.
I trusted in your lifts, but you turned false.

The next day, when I called, you let me ring,
and as the tone played on, my blood ran cold.
My pebbled gooseflesh prickled at the sting
of feeling all my foolishness unfold.

I thought that we were lovers, Spring, until
your cold rejection left me in the chill.

C R Y I N G that last one is so accurate, Midwestern Spring is a fickle mistress

6: My First Real Apartment

The building is old and the corners have mold
and I'm half in the ground
so the light isn't great but the winter's less cold

and the month I moved in someone flushed all their trash
down the pipes that we share
and it flooded my bath and my floors with the mash

of the sewage and ick and I almost was sick
and I called in the night
for a plumber to fix up the source of the slick

and they did for a while but only a while
for a week after that
the return of the bile
defiled
my tile
and got me all riled
and left a mere isle
and left me exiled.

Um I very much second @BluesClues comment on the "midwest spring" @_@ let's just do the snow on Tuesday and then 80 degrees by Thurdsay okay? xD

The theme of "firsts" is a really good one to use; especially in reading through can relate or evoke memories of my "firsts" of these different stages / events. Thanks for sharing your poetry, hope to read more!

7: First Musical as a Working Adult

I-

I am very
tired.

Work at six.
Nap at four.
Rehearsal at six.
Come home at nine extremely wired, joints aching, heart pounding, throat buzzing, mind clear, skin clear, wide awake, brain full, tapping tapping tapping tapping-

Slowly sleep at midnight.

Repeat.