Young Writers Society

*pretends to be Meshy*

My name's Meshy, I'm a little bit fleshy. I'm kinda short and I like a good port but somehow I keep people guessing.

And Bex wrote the best poem posted on this thread in days.

14.
it's hearing that's hardest
just after dawn
in the still
of not-yet-morning

it breaks softly.

guh.

15.
you can hear the trees whistling
through wind that almost blew
the car off the highway three hours ago
but you weren't used to any of it -
the wind and the highway and the car
and all the smallthings you never think you need
until you lose them in habit and "used to be"
out of sight and memory
and uneasy shifting of gears
too long used to force.

gah. maybe half of this is salvageable? Maybe?

16.
it was smooth to touch, and
thought you could see beyond the glass
you could not touch
for fear of breaking
into someone else’s dream

17.
summer is an endless day
of toobrightsun and
melted surfaces –
you live for every other season
and cool breezes and overcast skies
that don’t blind in simple contrast
rather than beat down into submission

18(?).
it’s the few drops of a sprinkle
that precedes a thunderstorm
and the edgy calm before the maelstrom

19(?).
you miss the things you never had,
and romanticize the rest.

20.
it’s an hour until sunset
and mid-spring has decided summer
came early.

you can see the (pollen) on the wind
that only stirs enough to tease
of cooler wind and clear air
into just out of reach, not just hopeless.

dusk falls quietly to the hum
of AC units too old to repair
and the splash of pools not your own.

it mocks you, the wind,
to futility.

Here's two so far from when Heather took over my wfp.

21.
august doesn't hold you, anymore
until you remember
that fall doesn't fall
until the red fires of the pacific rim fall under
matching music in wide open spaces that
never seemed so small


22. [it's in the poetic, not the realistic]
and you can sometimes hold it
underneath the weight of green leaves
trees long hope to shed
until the bird no long sings sweet
melodies (the equivalent of "Get off my lawn!") that induce delusion and
no one ever believes the stillness can be disturbed for such human reasons.

23.
It smells too much like summer
with wet grass and water on pavement
that evaporated faster than
you could pour it out the hose
and it's finally cool enough to think,
but the air is too still to breathe life
back into space.
it smells like summer
and tomorrow promises to be hotter
than today.

Uh, this is what happens when me, Pez, Audy and Scar decide to write a poem together. I may or may not edit this later.

like despair, she sits
sprawled upon the window seat
watching the moon chase the sun
into shadow, behind clouds too dark to not be omnious
to sea, field, mountain
where her smile does wane
and again. This silence where she speaks
holds still, the sun and moon leaning inward to hear
a softness; a swift indrawn breath
her love plucked by the mountain's peak
and arching into those wayward arms.
She turned so slightly, and looked straight ahead, and softly said,
"come back for me, my love, and shatter this despair"
but dismayed she was when he tore out through the door
as the savage scoundrel he always had to be.
[because this is a romance novel. For ever and ever, until the world ends, AMEN]

24.
i’ve been counting my chickens before they hatch
on a leap and a prayer
and a hope for better and
the only leap i’ve ever taken is down -
where i hope i can catch myself before i
fall and scrape my knees
on gravel i knocked loose while looking for purchase
vertical walls only promised to appear.

25.
grand central was big and bright and dirty,
what I knew then was a common thread
in new york city transportation,
between questionable subway stops
and filthy benches dusted with years of exhaust
-ed passenger and buses that wheezed with effort
too long normal to question.
plastic chairs stain unmarked graves
for lives lost in the underground
broken only by the man that blends
(in ratty coat and pants more patch than jean)
with his chosen pillow –
the snores chase away the rats.

it was almost worth it, though, to see the confusion
on the faces of the natives
when an Other came to call
with clean white skirts
and an escort of three
to find their way outside a city
that never sleeps
and refuses to let go.


[I think I have something in my notebook to copy here, I just have to find my rotten notebook, first]

26.
your eyes have been telling you
for too many hours to miss –
but you never did trust them
and their subtle symptoms
with too subtle cause(s)
of grief –
the only relief
is the broadspectrum balm
that causes more harm than
the original problem.

your eyes tried to warn you.

27 (?).
it’s summer, now,
and regrets simmer softly
in a heat that you dream every morning
[and can smell before sunset]

28.
it gets into your soul, the smoke,
and doesn't wash out for weeks
when ash keeps falling from the sky
tangling hair into mats
that slowly break
and release dust from the heatstorm
three weeks passed.

29.
you used to sit outside at night, even though you weren't allowed
and breathe in the leftover smoke that rose from ashes
doused three hours before
by eager first-year staff and even greener campers
that didn't know the meaning of fear.

you could hear the bears, a light rustle of trees miles down the canyon
that blocked the only way out -

you never wanted to leave, those nights, sleeping under stars
rather than shielded from them but you never did sleep
except to the sounds of the only dances you were never dragged to
and the bestworstloudest music and you knew all the words
you'd never heard before under lights that almost made it warm
in august at eight-thousand feet
that fogged breath that home would have been hidden under an AC
and a light that burned faster than the luke-warm sun under too-thin air
that always smelled of ash.

you always wondered how so many stars could exist
when tinged with teenage angst and smoke and spit and
a camp that never slept with bloodash shot eyes
from campfire and exhaustion that even the third cup of coffee couldn't cure

but the stars were closer, there. and they would run across the sky
to chase the sun.

30 (?).
I used to remember you in dreams that never fully formed
and the re-created lies we used to live in each others nightmares.