Young Writers Society

Stealing 26 and claiming it as my own.

27.The Woman and the Lion

The first was a rustle,
a movement of reedy grass
and golden shoulder blades,
the stretch & prep of a predator sighting prey.

Heat licked trails down her spine,
silk shirt sticking in all the ways you don't like,
hat askew as she brushed and brushed that one last hair back.

The second was an echo of a growl that had already moved on.

This body in motion arching across a blue sky empty of clouds.
Her hands caught between flight and fancy,
hat lost as her body jerked and slid and stumbled
into the puff of dust that was her feet.

You can taste the Sahara they say,
the swelling behind your bottom lip,
the crack and lick.

28. The Poseidon Equation

I sometimes wonder if Sea Captains
ever look out their windows into the dark
and question their life choices.

Not the angry swell of a sea in storm,
or the calm rock of baby waves,
but the solid night laid over the water
and the ship and then them.

Do their eyes become accustomed
to see the white whorl of stars across stars,
or do whales shake their resolve,
great broad backs against their great hulls.

I wonder if there is nothing I can do
where I am, stranded in a pod
waiting for the dawn.

29. A Partial Poem

The air smells of ash.
Of fires burning long after dusk.
In the cold this scent lingers
as though part of the mist
that coats my car.

29.2

Wave walker, city stalker,
man of iron and stone,

the crackle clack
of static on a distant shore
cannot hide (does not hide)

what you said before
about motion and the ocean
and how it hides deep inside

a cavity of earth,
an underground canyon
that can only be a fault

lying between the stone
and the floor.

The joy of theft is alive! Using one of @Meshugenah's poems, I started a game. Me/Mesh/me etc

30.

Shadows in the dark, dancing softly
down, down, down,
there are only so many swan necks
and angel wings to fill this company.

shadows dancing softly
left footprints on angel wings.
the soot weighs them down.

Fool's errand, dancing softly
upon angel's wings,
the shadow of ash flying free.

fool's errand, gathering angel wings;
the only ones to fall are tarnished
black with shadow's soot.
fool's gold only fools the fools.

Angel's errands, tarnishing the fall;
fool's gold only fools the bold.

the bold and the beautiful and the brave
that can never see the forest for the trees
[or the bees that hunt them after
with no tree to hide]

If I could see the forest for the trees,
there'd be no gold, no gold for me.
Honey and light through and through,
nothing to see without the forest of trees.

there's be no gold, no gold for me,
nothing to see without the trees
honey and light and all things bright
silence the night with its own blight

This night is the blight
upon my tarnished gold.
Honey and light can fight
but there are no winnings for the bold.

history favors the brave and the bold;
i like living too much to care
for lies told by the victors .
to the spoils go the survivors.

history favours - what a story they told!
Living too much, without a care,
to the victors go the spoils;
who left survivors standing there.

to the survivors left standing there
have a care, stop and stare
this is what you're fighting for:
stories of lies of people of life
left living in the cracks in the wall.

Is this worth fighting for?
Stories of survivors standing there,
have a care of the cracks lies
leave in the wall.

sing me a song of wars left unfinished
that hide in the cracks and implode
on generations
[that had no closure, only patches]

inside these cracks (sniper fights)
slithers a war still unwon,
generations shudder and implode
at the close (stitches undone).

the stitches came undone,
left with no time to heal, to see, to feel
to march on in red and pain
sewn up but never mended.

Just in time to feel the red raw pain
of the newly healed, mended and sewn
by the mother's hand - just another -
just another rag hanging in the closet.

the third time the mother had to sew
the bear's ear back on, she made you learn:
over, under, in, out, tighten knot and pray.
the stitching doesn't last, but the thread does.

The first time my mother taught you to pray
she said down and together, tighten the knot
on the stitch in your cover. And I thought -
what happened to the bear who used to live here?

you taught yourself to pray
to paper idols and words that danced
underneath eyes that blurred with the hours
past sleep, tinged red and dry -
trading false idols for ideals
that could never quite keep pace
[with the accepted reality]

you used to dance with paper idols,
words written underneath eyes
that could never see the false from the real.
And that quiet peace rallied reality
into the red, dry deserts between sleep
and a yawn.

you used to dance with paper idols,
'round and 'round, falling down
to purple sunsets and red mornings
digging through the sand to find the chill
[winter's gift to burning summer suns
that creeps into early dawn, chased down
in thunder strikes and fervent prayers
of not yet, and more more more]

round and round and falling down,
digging through the chili for burning
summer suns creeping into purple sunsets.
Red mornings slippery through early dawn,
fever prayers like lightning strikes
fewer and fewer and more and more and more.
just another dance, just another idol, dance.

digging through and digging in
hoping for a prayer to light the midday sun
that burned through better sinners
struck down dead in rapture
that paper idols foretold
and those carved in stone watched
a thousand times before.

A thousand stone walls
carved better sinners than those paper
idols burned, lit in the midday sun
and struck watching the prayer
digging through and digging in,
lips pressed against the hottest limbs
their skin could foretell.

the thing about paper? It burns.