Young Writers Society

These are fantastic - I can't believe I missed your thread before! I especially liked say we are our secrets; that ending was delicious.

Cheers,
~bubbles

Caligula's Launderette wrote:
she sighs: I don’t understand you. he hears it in the way
her breath trails off like the ends of a puff of smoke. He still
spits sunflower seeds at her anyway.


* { quote by Clinton Kelly; clearly I watch too much What Not to Wear

I love this one. And I Clinton Kelly is awesome.

~Angel a.k.a former What Not to Wear addict

Cal is brilliant at poetry? Who'd have thunk it?

By which I mean to say, I've only ever noticed your prose.

Your poetry, in my opinion, is far more accomplished.

Spectacular stuff, dear.

Angel,

There are times I wish I could take Clinton Kelly home with me.



And, that last poem was so spur of the moment, on the fly thing I haven't done in awhile.


Awww, Jigster, your comments make me feel all warm and fuzzy inside.

Ta,
Cal.

Hugs, Bubbles. I totally forgot to hug you.



So, I haven't been able to post poems because I've been at work/school, and the computers wont let me get on the site there.


o11 apr. ring-giver* or praise, bob.

I’m not going out like Hrothgar—
hemmed in, back broken. I may
have more old war veins than callow
ardor coursing through my blood, but I am
kinsman redeemer, ring-giver**, and
though age brings oscillation I
meet any foe with strong arm, sword
and shield.

Lo there, I see my people going back to the
beginning—my mother, my father,
my sisters, my brothers***—blood on their faces;
blood on my face. Blood, I thank; blood enough I ache
to slake the dragon’s burn.


* { the transliteration of the title KING in Norse/Old English, i.e. Beowulf

** { kinsman redeemer and ring-giver are both names for king, which in Anglo-Saxon/Medieval Europe translated to the guy who gives the most stuff/gold.

*** { bastardization of a Norse chant before battle: “Lo there, do I see my father, / Lo there, do I see my mother, my sisters and brothers, / Lo there, do I see the line of my people, back to the beginning, / Lo, they do call to me, they bid me take my place among them, / In the halls of Valhalla where the brave may live forever.” 13th Warrior, anyone? God, I love that movie.


o12 apr. anorexia nervosa.

The tang in the back of my throat
Echoes loss and begs
Some hand to mouth sustenance.
Yet I do not yield,
So in retaliation it
Recaptures my throat and
Holds it captive.

Even when my jaw springs
Open wide the aftertaste is
Still there in the back of my
Throat, on the back of my
Tongue. Like orange juice left
Out of a hot, summer day,
Bitter, the pulp like lingering
Cobwebs from some destructor’s
cottage eave.


o13 apr. all ripe together in the summer weather.*

two sisters wandering into a goblin market
with their fingers twined like thus
and their hearts twined like thus
and their minds untwined like thus.

she offers her shoulder a lock of hair upon
it –black is the color of my true love’s
[hair]**—and in ringlets too.

the other heeds as one meaty,
green fingertip fawns and twists
the dark curls around his bulbous
thumb. she regards as
peach, plump and wet, is passed
into her sister’s grasp.

sweet sugar slipping warm across
lips, throat, the ruff of the tongue.
she sips, she slurps at the saccharine taste
of pith and peach blood dribbling down
fingers and chin.

green goblin eyes and mouths sneer
and smirk knowingly as scissors split the
black lock of hair into pieces.

wanton sister, her fingers sticky and
mouth full of fleshy fruit,
grins at her twin, eye bright
and rosey cheeked. and, all good
sister can scheme is how to get
those ringlets back.

* { Two lines from Christina Rossetti’s The Goblin Market: “All ripe together / In summer weather”. This poem is a response/inspired by Goblin Market.

** { "Black Is the Colour" is a celtic trad song.


o14 apr. the passerines, or “perching birds”.

The bird dips in flight down from
The ship’s main mast where he has
Been holding court. Brown and
White speckled wings extend and
Parade their feathers. Talons
Proudly display and reach for
Their latest catch—a fish
Tossed from water to deck moments
Before.

The eagle pounces on the poor aquatic
Vertebrate with all the contained fervour
Of an anchoritic* monk. Silver scales yield
To gnashing claws and crooked beak until
All that is left is innards; fish guts. In a yawp
Of triumph, the bird pitches up into the air,
And circles down, and settles, claws curling
Over the top of the mast.

*{ anchorite monks.


o15 apr. write me a sonnet, John Donn or please understand my everlasting yea has restrictions.

if only you paid more attention
to meter and less about jabbing at the poor old
sun; or the mingling of blood
inside the belly of a flea.

if only you wrote me a sonnet like
a sonnet should be without all
your love disguised as religious conviction,
then maybe, yes, I say, yes. yes to that

saucy pedantic wretch who chides us
out of beds and living room couches. and perhaps,
if only you wrote me a sonnet like
a sonnet should be all with us shall
Indias lay.

1. { this poem has so many allusions. Also, it is a response to The Sun Rising by John Donne, a favorite poem of mine. “Saucy pedantic wretch” is basically ripped from it.
2. { Also, everlasting yea is an allusion to Victorian Thomas Carlyle and his Sartor Resartus (which we read in Brit Lit a few weeks ago). The Everlasting Yea is Carlyle's name for the spirit of faith in God in an express attitude of clear, resolute, steady, and uncompromising antagonism to the Everlasting Nay, and the principle that there is no such thing as faith in God except in such antagonism against the spirit opposed to God.

o16 apr. an evening prostrate or passing redness in the west*

gunbelts rest low on hips, full of intent;
leather worked and molded to
the pull of the quickdraw, metal pleasant
like the inside curve of a woman’s bosom. hands
scored pink and calloused white;
abraided [abraded] from weaving lead lines
and lassos. the brim of the hat is cast
stiff from constant crook and flex. boots
fit the feet like verséd friends; worn
and sticking to little-arch foot bones and
red right ankles. the left is a little stiff. like
the lye in the threads of buckskin.

remington conversions [or navy colts] slip back
into holsters. his horse, a spigot-pistol of a
red roan indian pony huffs,
and nuzzles the place where neck
and shoulder meet.
the cowboy raises his gaze across
the darkling plain; his eyes obscured by
the misty, crimson blowback of some gunfighter’s blood.


* { I blame Cormac McCarthy. Hmm, I might rename the poem that. i.e. His violent book Blood Meridian is also called Or the Evening Redness in the West.


Tada! Enjoy.

Um. So like I said.

I am going to theft your mad poem-ing skills.

It will be great.

Yes it will.

Finally, a chance to post stuff.

o17 apr. no second troy to burn*.

For her—hard and gem like
Brilliance appears so easily.
From the slant of her nose
To the arch of her eyes. Ignorant

Men find her ways to be trusted
Even against all I see: high, solitary
And most stern. And all her mathematics
Bring discordant scorn and pity for all
Her unfeeling muscles and sap.

* { W.B. Yeats poem “No Second Troy”—“Why, what could she have done being what she is? / Was there another Troy for her to burn?”


o18 apr. so say we all.*

the night is dark, like the
overbearing breasts of the mothership.
and morning ghosts, the arms of fog
giving way to rosy tinged flickers of
daybreak.

you say—she’ll never be forgotten
as the wind obscures the lines
of her beautiful, delivering face.
you turn away and when
you turn back, all that is
left is the impression of her
lips in a fare-the-well kiss.

you say—all you want in
the end of this life is to remain motionless—a
state of nothingness in the next—
loose-limbed; quietus. and yet,
with her loss and great green
openness over your shoulder, you
choose the road under your feet. your cheekbones
the sharp edges of a Norseman’s compass.

* { I watch too much BSG and I crush too much on Apollo and Starbuck.


o19. bathysphere.

nine times around we go
spinning in the goldfish bowl
to a dancer’s 7/8ths time.
every moment and each intrusion
rounded is like a balloon pressed
against the curve of the sky—
stretched and distorted;
bloated.

mouths move but without
their insignificant sounds—we make our
own transliterations. such disconnect
in glass far from the coddling
womb of water.


o20. groa.*

it's like some god punched a hole in the great big sky—
with all that big blue shining through,
like a gash in your favorite new old-weather jeans.
and it feels all just right
even with the rain coming down,
with the sun over your shoulder,
and a storm in your head.
night comes like the fuzzy underside of a flannel blanket;
leaving to wonder if the stars in the night sky
were just the ends of some god’s frostbit toes.

* { pretty useless Norse seeress.


o21. the girl with horses tangled in her hair.

Out the door
she went; her
hands full of horse
apples. Bent and
bloomed in a Norman’s
orchard; the flesh only
fit for crabs.

She steps, knees high,
up some blue barn
ladder and tosses
the round, soft things
near stacks and stacks of
hay bales.
They roll into
one another—colors
red and dappled yellow,
like small little terraform earth worlds
of their own.

The girl turns herself to face
out where Epona’s* children
are out to pasture.
she brings two fingers
wet with anticipation to her lips, and
her shrill whistle cracks like lightning.

Soft, comforted ears flicker
in response.

Her breath jerks in, while
theirs’ surges out,
plumes of smoke and fire, and
thundering of little earth-quaking hooves—
The roar of the oncoming
stampede.

* { Epona is a goddess from the Celtic pantheon; Horse Goddess of Mares, Gallops and Fertility.


More to come.

So I'm pleasantly surprised at the way o22. came out, as well as o24., but 026. is annoying me with its blah-ness.


o22 apr. and they all fall down.

she up and went leaving golden
strands of hair intertwined in slim,
spindle teeth of a tortoiseshell comb.
the mottled unweaver of threads
is shiny and the soft lamplight
glints off its surface.

you lean into the mirror on the vanity
expecting something other than your own
visage peering back. perhaps her
pretty eyes or knowing smile.

you retrieve the comb from its place
near your father’s old looking glass
and the lengths of gold float from
their hampering towards the floor; making
striking curlicues and corkscrews before
unlacing their ends.


o23 apr. Limerick would be nice.

The place, not the poem,
is lush and green. Full of
remembrances of shaggy sheep
and piebald thatch.

Take me back again to the lees,
and let me wander through
the sage of it.


o24 apr. Mosquito Island.*

in the lee of the overbearing mother,
the fat virgin, small and inconsequential
to a fathom of tectonic plates,
exists more than just a name
on a map. water mirrors sky—a
crystallized cerulean blue existence—filled
pink conch and flitting multicolored fish. mangrove
trees—varying shades of green shoot
up from the sand full of hermit crabs.

a little boat--half rigged, sails gathered
and lines tied off--has sunk it’s anchor
into the sandy bottom below—careful
for the coral.

we lean and learn against wicker
beach chairs and look out onto the
curious ocean.

* { an island in the British Virgin Islands; named ironically for the absence of mosquitoes.


o25 apr. my kingdom for a horse.

understand me. i would give
all that is in my own grasp
for the comforting shoulder of
a friend. for surely, this warm
beast is the clearest embodiment
of a [friend] as it nuzzles the
inside of my palm and nips at
the ends of my hair and the
corners of my elbows.


o26 apr. burgundy blooms.

the burgundy blooms that rest in
the ceramic atop the silver file
cabinet are round with petals like
teardrops or blood drops or dewdrops.
green leaves poke up from the center
and fan out echoing the little
sketch on the bowl that holds them.

there are no daisy centers just the
darkness of the burgundy red.

I really, really like this poem. Dedicated to my decision to resurrect Guttersnipe when summer starts, and everlasting love for my protagonist Regan Ware.

o27 apr. a response to a firm decision or the taking back (emancipation) of Regan Ware.

Summer is for lovers and
I’m coming home to you
my red headed girl,
ready to bask in you
lifeline sensibilities.
I’ve missed your
sharp intentions and intonations,
and the way you
make me smile over
the smallest of things; pants—
“But, she’s wearing trousers, Anne!” they say.

“You are so not a girl.”
And, yet you are the very
definition of it—full of blood
and fire; the strength in your
bones is so very appealing,
calling out the self-same scintillation
of my very own.

If open arms never beg
your returning grace, be
still my heart; you’ll
never cease to be
anything but an
interlocking part of my
heart.

o28 apr. as simple as hunger or beauty discovering.

“Beauty is an ecstasy; it is as simple as hunger. There is really nothing to be said about it. It is like the perfume of a rose: you can smell it and that is all.” – W. Somerset Maugham

I.

[prologue]
outlawer of mirrors and reflections; such
self hatred copsed in his Victorian Ides.
that is how winter began; even the trees
barring her shelter. her only company
candlestick and clock. he forbade
her leave though her bestowed her
with everything else, gold and garments,
as if in atonement of his giant's gross.

[winter]
the fountain froze over with a thick sheen of
ice, and Beauty stumbled upon the scene
as if capsuled in Grandfather-Clock precision
timing.

in the ice she found reflection.

knowing the beast would not stray from
his rapunzel-tower, Beauty knelt beside
it and pinched her cheeks and nose:
an affirmation of this sensation of sight.
curious to her own, she began to
digress back to skin and bone, until
she stood in naked fascination of
herself.

[phantasos]
whispered linger-licks and tongue ciphers, creeping
green and ivory over her skin; and before she could
shield: aegis and lion-skinned, words crawled
in her ear, like winter shakes on brittle
windowpane - mei divinus.

aversion conquered awe, and shivering she
fought her way bramble-back to the haven of
her heavy bedcovers. in the night, she dreamed
of hands, fiery hands, and disembodied
voices - mei divinus.

vigilant and roused she was wet in places undiscovered,
her belly full of twisting-contorting fire. vespers
of venus splintering off the needles of her compass
rose; her crepe-paper vase flowers wilting against
the power of suggestion. the divine.

[be our guest]
clock and candlestick talk in lisps and riddles, yet
beauty has grown accustomed to their voices, so
when on a snowy eve silence reigns, her skin prickles
and crackles with urgent confusion. she sips her tea, and
eagerly awaits for the wardrobe’s earnest suggestion in
dress. but there is nothing. beauty waits.

falcons stoop and swoop; dark dots in the graying sky.
she awakes as if plucked from slumber; the milk has curdled,
and the tea is cold.

1. This is the first part of a poem in parts.

o29 apr. flying over a lake of custard and seventeen giraffes blow raspberries at you.

not exactly nightmares but whimsical fancy—surreal and striking.
I’ve got an Airedale—Duke, bounding towards
the shoreline; and a ship-shape skiff elegantly
casting off a beam reach, curving in towards
a Grecian lighthouse.

In the next moment, I’m flying over a lake of custard,
—somewhere in Africa, and seventeen pink and
purple polka-dotted giraffes are blowing raspberries
as I fly on by.


o30 apr. "I met at eve the Prince of Sleep; his was a still and smiling face."

O! Dreamer of dreams,
constructor of worlds!
Build me a sanctuary in
the back of your smile,
in the creases and veins
of your hands. I am drawn
like a stranger’s lonely glance
into your web; the exciting
filament bends my brain.

Give me some of your storytelling ways—
so that I may sit in the pose of a meditating Buddha,
and through my penultimate eye
see a man with a still and smiling face
on the eve of sleep.

or

[see a man on the eve of sleep
with a still and smiling face.]



...


TA-FRAKKING-DA! I finished! 30 poems, 30 days.