Young Writers Society

Day 13, Poem 1

Form: Domino Rhyme

she never says a word

she was a woman who had nothing to say;
when she wrote, she kept everything neat and small.
she packaged her thoughts like minuscule gifts
but she never gave them away.

she wasn't quite short but she wasn't quite tall.
her eyes were the colour of mud in the rain
(a man said that once) and her hair
was the kind that just sort of drifts
in your face, purposeless. she tried again
and again. she was getting things right:
she was building a mountain out of a stone.
her mother said she wasn't all there
(and maybe some of her was out of sight
lost in an underworld of never and can't
and wouldn't and shouldn't and don't)
because she seldom answered the phone.

she was a woman who knew the things you aren't
are things that don't matter anyway.
she kept her thoughts buttoned up and lived for the day
when ought to would turn into won't.

Notes: This one has a very weird rhythm that I can't decide if I like or not. Technically I'm not supposed to have lines 1 and 4 rhyming in the first stanza (or lines 2 and 3 in the last) but I didn't feel like sacrificing the point of the poem for the form, so it can just stay that way.

PS: Thanks for the comments, everyone

It's strange, but I'd think, at first read, that the character in this poem is not really that captivating - somehow, she is, she is. I'm curious about this woman - I almost think it's an opening for a book. It took me a few reads to figure out WHAT the rhyme scheme actually was (thanks for writing 'domino rhyme' at the top - else I might never have guessed it had one), and then I had the 'I-feel-good-about-myself-feeling' from having understood. Yes!

I think it's an interesting rhyme scheme, actually, since it's enough of a rhyme to give it an 'up-down-up-down' flow, but this flow is a GRADUAL one, so imperceptible that we pretty much miss it the first time round. It kind of helps shape it in terms of giving it rhythm, but not to the extent that it's really constricting. As a fan of free verse, I think I'd have to say I like this.

Keep up the experimentation! I'm loving being able to find out about all these different styles!

Day 14, Poem 1

Form: Uh. I made it up?
Inspired by: This picture and a link I can no longer find *facepalm.*

drawing water at dawn

the well is an altar to an old, cruel god
whose eyes are closed, whose
mouth is full of dust.

the withered sacrifices of faded plant and sod
cling to its walls. its stones bleed rust
into the earth.

these lands give birth
to people with the skins of pebbles
and lips like canyons. each morning,
they gather at his feet and revel
in the slow light breaking
that is his slumbrous greeting

and dip their hands into his tears,
their long throats aching.

Notes: I'm meant to be doing a Rubaiyat today, but for some reason this came out instead. It's not quite rhyming (there's no set scheme) but it's not quite free verse either, so I have no idea what to make of it.

Day 14, Poem 2

Form: Interlocking Rubaiyat

after dark

our neighbourhood in the Sunday gloaming
is a rustling koru of lights, combing
through shadows, circling into the dark;
we are three children in bare feet roaming

in the lamplit solitude of the park.
our feet are silent on the scraping bark
the way moths are silent- the breath of wings
at our backs like the catching of a spark.

we kindle unknown foes and fears and things
with gnashing teeth. the stationary swings
are monsters, and the slide is a great tongue
with which night tastes, and talks, and softly sings.

on evenings like this, time seems to have wrung
the most out of each moment. we are flung
into dizzying spirals, each homing
in on joy with the passion of the young.

Day 15, Poem 1

Form: Free verse

frog in my throat

these days, whenever I speak
there are things in me that want to climb
out on little frog feet, slither and flop
onto an unsuspecting table cloth.
I only open my mouth to eat (afraid
they might escape- you can hear
the screaming, even from my imagination)
and press dead flies onto my tongue
to shut them up.

a long time ago when I was someone else
they made me swallow tadpole-eggs
one by one like tiny eyeballs and
when I told my mother she said
that they were a delicacy (somewhere).
I remember they tasted of algae and moss
and the weeds that grow in the cracks
between old stones. they hatched
a few years later, when I'd forgotten about
that day at the river, forgotten until
I felt them swimming in my belly
with their long, thin tails like worms

I never said much so one day I just stopped
opening my mouth and no one noticed.
I spent hours with the frogs at the bottom
of the garden just sitting- watching their
soft green pulse slick bellies
rise and fall. in my throat

their webbed feet press against my vocal chords.
they sit behind my teeth and wait for freedom, poised
-- I try to let them out but all I do
is croak.

That was funny.

I love the weird new twist you put on it - 'frog in my throat' - that arose from the tadpoles (of all things) that the character's mother makes them eat! This is a really clever poem, and, quite frankly, I don't have much to offer by way of improvement - I liked it through and through.

Oh, and I thought I'd already mentioned - the above two poems are well-written as well; I always get a good sense of atmosphere from reading your poetry - it's just this latest frog one really jumped out at me. Pardon the pun.

Day 16, Poem 1

Form: Half Glosa

a generation of epigrams

This ignorance upon my tongue
Was once the 'wisdom' of the young.*

I sit on the porch, in the sun;
my belly full, the chores are done.
You at my feet, your spiel begun,
your cheeks full flushed as if it stung
this ignorance upon my tongue.

My legs stretch out. I let you go,
submerged in sunset's amber glow;
I am unmoved by what you know.
The dated noose by which I'm hung
was once the 'wisdom' of the young.

*John Williams

Notes: I don't particularly like this one, but I am lazy today and this form is too constricting to appeal. I shall endeavour to do better tomorrow.

Day 16, Poem 2

Form: Free Verse
Inspired By: O Jerusalem by Laurie R. King, Im eshkachech Yerushalaim.

exodus

I bleed nightly on-
to my pillow and dream
of Jerusalem with
holes in my palms

the seder wine tastes
like the dust on my feet

in my mouth open
to a blue bowl of sky
that goes on and on
into forever

stones beneath me
white cloth
unfurling
rooftops like great gulls
winging before me

in sleep, my bones reach back
to the umbilicus mundi
and I follow paths I can on-
ly tread with eyes closed.

Notes: Since I didn't like the first poem, and I hate feeling like I haven't even tried, I wrote another one. I so much prefer free verse to formal poems *sigh*

Day 17, Poem 1

Form: Rondeau

who was that masked man?

he hides behind his eyes, his layered face
full of shapes and strangers whose skins displace
his own in photographs. a new disguise
for every occasion- he lives in lies.
his home is an imaginary place

where the heroes on his fading walls chase
intergalactic thugs through time and space.
he steps outside reality and tries
to hide behind his eyes

all manner of heresies. there's no trace
of secret things he's struggled to erase;
of all those distant places where he flies
(his arms outstretched, beneath diluvian skies)
nor yet the old, still-fading touch of grace
beneath his layered face.

Notes: Technically the refrain on stanzas 2 and 3 is supposed to stay the same, but I like it better this way.

Day 18, Poems 1 & 2

Form: Minute poems

the uncertainty principle

some people live through earthquakes for
a minute – more,
a day, a year.
they live in fear

that is external, has a name.
it's not the same
for those of us
who make a fuss

about things still unlabelled or
unseen. the floor
is never still
upon our hill.


dream house

if I could choose where I should live
(if life would give
me everything)
I'd live in spring

in Italy, in a white flat,
with a black cat
and yellow walls.
All through the halls

I'd fill the place with sunflowers
while the hours
went ticking by
beneath the sky.

Day 19, Poem 1

Form: Quatern
Inspired By: Tip o' the hat to E. M. Forster.

a room with a view

I am in the attic, alone,
watching the weather out in the
grey backyard. I keep the windows
open. The curtains are blowing

behind me like a pair of wings;
I am in the attic alone
but the rain is like running feet
the wind is company. I write

frantic things in a blotted book
about the colour of the hills
I see from the attic, alone
with the weather. I think perhaps

this is what the inside of my
mind looks like, most days: swept clean,with
new air streaming through, and that's why
I am in the attic alone.

Notes: I changed the refrain in V3 because I hated it the other way, so. The Quatern will have to take its lumps. Also, I will eventually have to read through other peoples' poetry threads and comment. I just don't have the time at the moment >.<

Day 20, Poem 1

Form: Free verse
Words of the Day: plant, lithograph, monarch

life cycle

when I think of my childhood I think
of swan plants and the baby-
smooth backs of
caterpillars striped
yellow and white and black.
they used to

teach us, year after year
the life-cycle of
the monarch (eggs
larvae, caterpillar,
chrysallis, butterfly
death) I

remember
colouring in the flow chart
wondering how this
(seemingly timeless)
lithograph compared
with the bursting life
beneath that pulled-
tight skin
eating slowly through
a whole universe
of green.

Notes: I couldn't bring myself to bother with the Canzone today. Perhaps tomorrow. Some days I feel a bit too creative for form, if you know what I mean. I may try to do another poem though, to make up for it.

Day 20, Poem 2

Form: Internal rhyme
Words of the Day: door, paint can, lipstick

fresh paint

he is in the living
room painting a door
sheets spilling over onto the
floor like the milk she
dropped at breakfast
(don't worry, honey,
no use cryin') and she's

in the bedroom painting
her lips red trying to ignore
the rumpled bed thinking
about glass
hearing his boots
pass across the hall into
the kitchen. he's left
the paint lid off
trailing fumes behind him

her fingers deft on
the lipstick tube twist
there are bracelets like
bruises on her
wrists but not from him

and she wonders how long
they can sit in this paint-
filled house; she wonders
how long it has been
since she kissed him.

Notes: I think I've found a new hobby. Pick three random objects and write a poem involving them. So. Much. Fun.

Day 21, Poem 1

Form: Free Verse.
Words of the Day: caldera, paperclip, petticoat

here there be dragons

I am hatching stones in
the caldera, sitting on the round
smooth heat of words
I want to fling like missiles
I want to burn

the trees down fill
the sky with their smoke

they spread out like a
petticoat beneath me layers
of paper-clip leaves

rivers like dreams, winding

and I am burying myself
deeper into the earth
letting the warmth steam the rage
right out of me

digging for myself beneath
miles of close-packed dirt.

Notes: Might try the terzanelle later, if I get time. I am addicted to free verse at the moment, however.

Day 22, Poem 1

Form: Take a guess.

French Lessons

I watch the woman at the front
of the class, the way she rounds out each
sentence with expansive gestures
treating each enunciation like glass;
I want to take them from her lips and

string them together, these daisy-
chain words watch their
meaning unfold like sails and

it strikes me: I am learning another
language, hanging my thoughts on grammar
syntax, punctuation

caught by the curve of vowels
at the roof of my mouth

aware now that we stitch our conversations
out of disassembled building blocks
and butterfly nouns, unsatisfied
verbs like spiky handwriting
slanting downward downwind down

billowing outward beneath a bright spring rain.