Young Writers Society

18

it's not exhaustion watching the clock
move from midnight to three
counting the hours in chapters and
the number of times you read faster
than you could breathe -

it's the beating of your heart
as you run through a minefieldbullets
dodging and barely scraping by
until sharp wind knocks a branch against your window
in sharp relief and hazy words on pages not yet turned.


19

you lost yourself somewhere between thick rimmed glasses and the smell of coffee and old books

the salt ruins everything faster, warning down and grinding out the hallows left (un)sealed

waves crash softly, from this far above, but you can smell the despair on the wind in foghorns that barely cut through the mist

it can't hide the shadows

20 (I blame @PenguinAttack. Entirely)

Little Lion

he liked to playhunt and listen to the squeaking sounds his prey would make echo into trees and under bushes and into windows so his keepers could hear his exploits

he liked tails better than feathers; feathers like to fly justoutofreach and come in packs. the youngest fall to his brother waiting below. the tails he can chase until dawn.

21

it was sticky again, water and bugs sharing space in the air that pressed closer the longer the sun beat down

you miss the desert and the cool dry wind that whips heat across your face and arms and under feet and into ground that soaks up sweat where it lands

you miss the surity of mirage in the justbeyond your eyes never quite stop longing for.

22

i used to dance in time to meter changes
softly and fierce and stumbling only when I fell
into patterns that molded, rather than broke.

i used to sing harmony to melodies written
on oversized sheets of sixteenth notes
running faster than counted measures
dizzy until the ground spun beneath my feet.

i used to fall into the ground
deep breaths and measured silence
surrounding dissonance between light and time.

23

remember nights like this,
with windows flung open against wind
that carries the ocean closer with each gust

24

you are not a coherent whole:
all limbs and nails and starry eyes
grounded in dreams and might-have-beens
held together by i wills and i won'ts
wrapped up in can nots
knotted down your back to your toes

I think I've officially lost it...

25

the creases don’t entirely hide
last nights chili or thursday’s attempts
at homemade religion

wednesday’s sacrifices still bleed
into the bleach that ruined your favorite shirt
during the great search for meaning in kale
seventeen years ago (the emphasis is implied)

the starch reacted with the red die
found in every soda ever knocked over a party table
and turned everything pink with shades of bruising
from an iron suddenly too hot to not scorch
abused fabric so flammable it can’t be burned.

26

i am haunted by things i’ve never known
twisted between almosts and couldhavebeens
that never quite transcend the space between
experience and reality.



27?
you read between the pages
what lies are masked by truth.

28

no one thinks to check the shadows for light
on walls that tear themselves between
absorption and reflection.




[this is not finished. but I lost the thread of this entirely]

29

the world is spinning spirals
in drunk ramblings of a sober girl
threaded to the ground by high heels
and hands planted on pavment
hoping for rain to wash away
the remnants of last night's nightmare
[shadows in the dark, dancing softly
down, down, down]

So, Pez looked at my poem directly above, and started stealing. Below is our interplay, alternating by stanza Pez/Me/Pez, etc.

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.

CONGRATULATIONS *throws confetti* I hope you finish the unfinished poem I like it muchly.