Young Writers Society

I'm not really writing a poem a day. I'm writing one poem over a month. The title is tentative. I really do fancy writing long poems. Anyway, it's my first NaPoWriMo and I'm late by four days. I think I've been losing touch but here's my first two-

April 1

If it's a season you want, here's a day of it.
If it's a flower you want, here's a petal.
If it's a tower you want, here's a brick.
If it's a reason you want, here's a poem for it.

From behind the sinking sun
came the hissing sound of fire
thrust into rising, falling water.
The face convulsed in shimmers
as the hand from the sky,
half-night black, thrust it deep
into the deep. And as it was
going to go into the sea,
the yellow face turned red
and disappeared. The eye
in the sky closed shut and tight
and pulsed colourfully in REM.

That night, we took a long walk.
I couldn't sleep because
the next day
a season
would
begin.
Or so I thought.

People's faces shone with sweat
and reflected lights to that silent place
where man still knows he must thank
someone or something for the new season,
for the change and the fold, knows he must
celebrate it loudly and longingly
but doesn't because
he is the abandoned
and the abandoner.

I can't remember, how far back do we go?
Was it yesterday or was it the day before?

April 2

Blue moon in a blue sky, today.
I'm frightened how she stays on
regardless of the time, how
she comes earlier than
the appointed moment.

Why are the streetlamps lighted?
It's only six o' fix o' nix o' click clock.
What time do you sleep?
I sleep in the life time, the strife time.
Do you stay awake while sleeping?
I lie down and roll like a crashing
jumbo jet.
Where are your sun glasses?
Where are your glasses?
Don't you know the dreams get blurred?
Clarity, my friend. Clarity.
God never learnt it, miscommunicated
everything from creation to doomsday.

Tick tock tick tock. Don't talk
much, do you? It's only
day two and you're silent as a...

Cavalry charge through a trafficky street.
Ever been to the ghost town street?
Infantry backing, shoot your own horses,
whoever needed horses?
Neigh, neigh, I'll make a fine horse.
Stop, get off. Don't go and ride me,
don't go deride me.
I'm a pelican- tweet tweet.
Give me the fish from the flood,
it'll fit in my mouth and I can
swallow it whole.

What's wrong? Something I said?
Hahaha...but we're all dead,
so why the long face,
why the long chase?
Why are you chasing me?
I can't go on,
losing breath,
stumbling steep,
rumbling deep.
And I roll like a crashing jumbo jet.

I really love the opening lines of the first one and you've got some wonderful imagery going there. I like the feel of it.

Also: Kudos for writing long poems! I only manage three stanzas maximum, haha.

All the best, keep at it,
~Kalliope

Thanks, Kal. I think I can make it yet. Become active again. This isn't the place for this, but over the last three months I gave two important exams and now I have a super-vacation. An upgrade from your regular vacations. Honestly, I do miss this environment. I miss...

April 3

For two days I wandered because I was free.
But I realised that since there was a journey
to go about and the road was so long ahead,
I had better get started. I'll begin at the beginning.

Directionlessness is good, but I like a road,
whether it's been made or whether I'm making it.
Regardless, it starts without direction. It starts
without anything. Without a hope, without a dream,
without an eye, without a gasp, without a pain,
without a sound, without a reason or a rhyme.

But something comes after that, doesn't it?

Years and years, I stayed home. It's when you leave it
that things fall out of your head that weren't supposed
to be there. I know, I know, I am hesitating. But that's
the way of things. The way. The goddamn pointless way.
If you don't doubt, you stray. Don't spit on the sceptic,
don't bite the devil's advocate. He's got far worse people
out of a fix.


April 4

I used to wonder why blood
tasted like steel. Then sud-
-denly, I knew why.
Stainless sky,
stainless steel.
Under the heel,
we writhe with illusions burning
while the Earth is turning
without us. Humankind has a broken nose
what with the heel stamping so close.
The stainless are stained.
In the beginning it rained.
And that's how it all started--
the soil moist and parted,
the sprout of golden wisdom
and the creation of a hum.
After the hesitation
is a soft vibration.
And where shall wisdom be found?
Can you still hear the first sound?

Iron striking iron.
Blood on steel.
They both have iron.
But we have only heel.

I am walking now.

April 5

I am walking now.

There's a star and a half in the sky
and judging by the parallax
as I walk a mile, it's really close to here.
I can smell it, taste its light.

Five days down, I am trying
to adjust the rhythm, screwing around
with a clock dial at midnight
and sitting upright in bed, walking.

I am walking again.

Remember taking walks before?
I remember the walk down to the down road
which went downward, downhill.
Down is such a nice place. It has memories.

This is a different walk I'm afraid,
one with no coming back.
One with only a star and a half
in the sky to guide me.

I am walking forward.

From a high place, falling
down, walking in the wake of the fall,
I use potential, I gain
momentum for the moment. I like it.

The journey is afoot and my shadow
becomes less shady
because the stars are numerous
that we do not see.

I am running now.

April 6

The road is the river
and I feel a shiver
because I'm in water
that I wish was hotter.

Don't blame me for want of warmth
the road side erodes with the flow
and ahead the dip, the downhill,
I can't see my future, it forebodes to know

and also not to know.

It's good to be in on secrets
but it's better to be in suspense
because the river is not calm
and fog is fun when it is dense.

Laugh at the road, the river, the life.
Such simple comparisons can't bring strife
unless you're given to that uneasiness
that comes in remembrance, you must confess

and think over before you go.

This is the overload you've been waiting for-

April 7

In April, I am walking
past my house again.
I am looking up one floor
to the first floor where I live.

There's the sea.
I feel like
I want to float
and the breeze helps.

There's a new family
in my house.
One I hardly know.
Or maybe,

it's only me that's new.

In April, I see my house.
It is a sleepy place.
I do not go inside
because I want to take a walk

far away. Escaping.

Living with people
day after day,
is like being in a difficult
graveyard.

No doubt, the corpses talked
to their neighbours eagerly
when they were first buried
but now they are just so

bored.

I am bored.

And that's why I'm walking.

April 8

Wait, wait. I have to stop. I have to sit down.
There can't be anything left to see surely
in that far place I'm going to this spring,
what with what I've already seen?

You told me when we started that I would
not be disappointed by the twitches in
my feet and my eyes closing over. I am
not. I am tired, little boy. I am old already.

Ah, but who am I kidding? You must see it
better than I do. You are a real star, little
child. And I am half of you. Maybe less.
But we are going together. You won't leave me?

Don't lie! I see it in your painted, oil-preserved
olives, black olives, in your sockets. They shine.
Why do you lie to an old man like this? And at this time?
I know, deep inside you, you know I am a burden.

Go ahead. I am old. I will sleep here.

April 9

I am running now like a horse in the
wind
and the sea is thrashing on my
back because that
is what I wanted all along
this is the wonderful fruity
feeling
scent stealing
I am spinning like an alligator
in death throes
like a top up to heaven
I am running now to get away
from past so old
to be away from love so new
where poem?
where death?
where are you going now?
what do I do?
who do I know?
I am swimming because I am under the black
falls
under everything falling
comets and moons
and tears and coins
and bridges and towers
and rain and hail
and stars and suns
here's the parallax.

I am under a falling world.
No higher do we go
but I have the measure
I see it now.

April 10

At first, they say, we measured
the universe all wrong.
We measured it so that it was younger
than the earth. Then they saw that they were wrong.

And I so young, went back to where I had left
the poor old universe, sleeping to my eyes.
We measured it wrong because
we could not differentiate between stars.
Red and blue, so far apart.
It takes light years to go places.
But I reached. I had left him
on the roadside, some way back
sleeping in the dirt.
I picked him up
and travelled with him on my back.

We are Atlas' heirs.