Young Writers Society

i wonder, sometimes, if my department
should be in the science buildings that scare
and fascinate at the same time, an odd
comfort in having showers in hallways
and caution tape on the floors
the walls plastered with safety procedures
and mandatory clothing, all
warnings that the world is volatile
and when you play with matter
you could get burned, or worse

there is beauty in studying
the very building blocks of what
makes us human; atoms and chemicals
trying to understand themselves
or heal themselves, or help
themselves, all with the same
basic chemicals we are all made of

but

i realize that i am not the kind
for endless introspection and study
of what we already have;
i am interested in what we make, the
plastic structures that feel like concrete
in our day to day lives, until somebody
takes a blowtorch to society and reshapes it
into something different, hopefully better

i would rather study metaphorical flames
that reach up to the very top levels of society
bringing comfort to the disturbed
while disturbing the comfortable
and watch the world change

— April 21, 2014

*whispers* so I really like that one

(not so) silly love songs

i never understood silly love songs,
how they could describe a feeling
so big that it filled up a dozen metaphors
similes, and turns of phrases
and the radio's only been on fifteen minutes

they all ended up sounding the same and
their best uses was other people, seeing
how they saw their relationship;
i could analyze the words but not relate
seeing as none of the words fit me

but titles are foreshadowing techniques and
there is no clever way of saying i mostly changed
my mind when i met you, notebook filling
with poetry i had never understood before
and wondered if i ever would, words in
love songs taking on new meaning
although they still sound the same
with their sugarpop rhymes and they still
play too much on the radio; i dig through
artists only my friends know to find
the best ones for you. they have to be
a little bit different because you are

i still don't understand sugarpop sweetness
and why every song on the radio is either
you are my everything or i hate you
but sometimes a song is magic and describes
you in a way my words cannot, and i pride myself
on how well i can craft my words

those loves songs aren't so silly

<3333

bus stop conversations are
surprisingly philosophical, especially
when they take place under an extra
large umbrella in the rain (not big enough
for personal space to exist), the bus late
even though yesterday was a holiday
and most people would take
such a dreary morning off

he has to work and i have what i thought
was my last exam (but i misread the schedule
and i'll see him in two days); his son
is in university, education (and paying
for it) the only thing we can talk about

i talk about co-op and how i don't
want to take any more time in my education
than i absolutely need to; i already have
four years of spending my evenings
wrangling projects and my days
stressed beyond functioning. i already have
two and a half years ahead of me
and thirty comes too fast

he laughs and agrees with me because
i should enjoy life while i'm still
young enough to enjoy it, young enough
to be reckless, and my mind goes to travel
and freelance and a general
lack of strings attached to the physical
locations that make up life

my tethers are to human hearts and
memories i want to make, which sometimes
coincide with a place, but usually they
don't, with the background an ever changing
green screen as people move away
from where we had wanted to make memories

the bus comes and i step out
from the umbrella
my mind more on the future
than what i stayed up to study
last night (while staying tethered
to the present by human hearts
spilled on text)

(i love you)

— April 22, 2014

...i think you just leveled up.

(don't you even come close to thinking
i don't notice the prosaic style creeping in)

I blame reading @Lumi's and @Isha's NaPos.

gates

gates guard heaven, hell, and you,
the latter wrapped up in a daydream
where you're on the arrivals side of the airport
and i have to pass through two before
fire meets water and hopes
the fire is strong enough to make an ocean
boil over with passion, and not
water drowning out a feeble spark
that i was the only one tending

oxygen makes fire burn brighter and
between two airports is a controlled
environment, the chemical pumped in
to make sure we can all breathe, sticking
in my lungs and feeding my heart
as i wonder which gate it will be at the
other side, even though most people
don't die on an airplane, i feel that
my past might've, the minute i stepped on;
angels, demons, and planes have wings
and i'm not sure which one carries me now

i only hope the plane doesn't make me
too bright for your skin and instead
allows heat to pass between us
i would like to land i heaven
instead of turning it to hell

my buses go east and west, with
east being "home" and west being
"other", an almost frighteningly
consistent pattern across travel
for every trip i've ever made
(even though it's not many
the travel i want to do
counts in this case)

draw circles on a map and they
overwhelmingly point towards endings,
following the sun and seasons
towards ends of days and ends of spring,
with dc being just west enough to count
and i had gone in may, when they
have summer already but
they don't call it that, because it's
warmer there (the people were, too
although i'm sad i missed one piece
of warmth that was only a day off)

west is family (my father's) and the
family i want to make (you), even though history
pulls me east and south and overwhelmingly
here, with burial grounds and sacred places
lost to history i can still feel in my blood
but that is a beginning and there is always
a flow towards endings that lead to moonrise
the night dawning behind me as i travel west

i had always been more myself at night

— April 23, 2014

it is near impossible to give advice
especially when trying to comfort;
this goes double if someone has just
lost anybody within their circle to
a figure dressed in black that is often called angel
and leaves a hole because somebody they know
isn't there anymore, and there is no way
to fill that (there never is)

there are only three things i ever say, because
they are what helped me scar over the holes
of missing spirits until it's nothing but a tug
on my eyes when i poke at it too much.

one: it will hurt and overflow until it spills out;
let it, because grief will bleed into all
cracks, crevices and depths of you otherwise.
you do not want to find the roots of death
ten years later with a bad back and sore ribs,
because emotions bleed into your body
if you don't release it into the air somehow

two: do not forget that you are still living
and once you feel empty take what
you can and fill yourself up, not as a
distraction but to prevent a residue of salt water
from building up in joints meant to move
across a block of time still yours to play out

three: write them whatever words come and
burn the letter even if you don't believe in god;
closure is the cold compress that stops tides
and lets you feel like nothing is left unsaid.
they love you and hold nothing against you
do not carry your grief in guilt

your emotions may be too hot for
any of this to work, the sting of a scythe
heated until an iceberg melts when it
comes too close; let fire burn but continue
dousing the flames for fire consumes
as much as salt water, and two still applies

you will survive; the hole
will (likely) never fill and tug
when you play with it too long, and everybody's
definition of 'too long' will be different
because we all heal at different rates
you may never be alright
but you will survive

— April 24, 2014

you wake up to messages
asking you more questions;
he asked you ten yesterday and
now it's another three,
he claims education but
why can he not do his own
research, his own thinking.
your mind is not any deeper
than his is; you have told him
your sources and yet he still asks
for the cliff notes version.

you wonder why you mistook
an oil drill for friendship
(again)

— April 25, 2014

the zodiac tells us we should not be compatible,
but your sign is unusually friendly,
counteracting mine being easily hurt

somehow fate twisted and stars aligned,
getting our lives to cross at exactly
the right moment to stay parallel,
a spotter beside each other as we walk
on sometimes precarious balance beams
across magical destinations and
the occasional slide into demon
infested territory. a light
in smoke (or vice versa) depending
on what the situation calls for;
cards dealt out in random patterns
and laid out around our feet,
an unusual bridge made
with temperance between hermits
those who walk narrow paths alone
to find their one truth

the only constant between
those who seek the path of solitude
is they follow the aligned stars

— April 26, 2014

you have always set me on edge with how
our (often one sided) conversations go from
you are too much like your father, get
out of my life to i love you please
do not leave in the span of hours, a
constant cycle of blaming me but insisting
i'm not the problem, because i can't help
the environment i was raised in and you
didn't control all of it; it always was my
father who was the problem, and why
you never divorced him in the first place
because the thought of him getting custody
was the most horrifying thing, and you
stayed with somebody who made you unhappy
for my own good; you blamed your weight
on my birth because you never did lose the extra.
it's aways either me or my father
yet i'm never the problem

ironic isn't it? you taught me
i was the common denominator in
all my relationships and that everything
boiled down to my own behaviour,
but you are surprised
that i always take the blame

— April 27, 2014

i want to put my hands on your hips
in the hope that the heat of my skin
will warm the secrets you keep under your clothes,
even though i know it's impossible to heal
mental illness with romance, i hope
that love is a small comfort
when your only thought is i hate myself

i will slide my hand down to your thigh
where you keep a secret it took you
two years to tell me (so it will remain
out of these words) and bring
your head to my shoulder, trying to
show instead of tell that you will be alright
the way i've always told you but
was never able to show because
my only help is voice and black on white,
a small comfort at midnight when
the voices come again

i know these are your battles and
for how every stanza starts with i,
my only questions focus around you,
with what do you want from me at
the beginning and you are so beautiful
and stronger than you could ever know
at the end, because all i know to do is say
just how i see you, in the hopes it helps
keep your demons at bay

— April 28, 2014

i left home for the first time on friday
and came back four hours later
after spilling personal history to
two people who know when to get out
of an unsafe situation, and they
judged for me, not trusting
a single person currently in the house
and i was gone

growing up means doing all the things
your mother warned you about, like
meeting strange men in coffee shops
for job interviews, and contemplating
booking a plane ticket to three provinces over
to get away (for no apparent reason)
because maybe i want to be on my own
for a change, after so long tied to apron strings
and my wings clipped by a second
financial obligation i thought was finished
but my mother always taught me
to dream big and this is one time
i listened, even though a plane ticket
means changing schools and leaving home
means going to part time and maybe giving up
publishing my own thesis for awhile
but i've already left home once and
i'm sure there's going to be one more time

eventually you learn that not everything
your mother told you is right

— April 29, 2014