Young Writers Society

people should read more poetry

the old man tapped the toe of his shoe with his cane,
mumbling about people who know too much,
and i bit my tongue because, ultimately, people know too little.
he whispered to me about the latest smart-phone
and asked if i was letting them poison me too--
--"the big men at goog-a-whats-it, they just don't know.
just don't know what the world is"--
but i said no, because he made me nervous.

i decided to tell him that i wrote poetry,
because i don't like to think about what people know
and what they don't know (how to empathize, for starters).
he looked at me then and scrunched up his face,
and i swear, i saw the marks of guns and wars
in the shelves that his wrinkles made.
he whispered, "that's good, that's good," over and over again,
and i slouched back on the bench and was quiet.

"fancy this," he whispered, directed, not at me,
but at the air he must have heard making love to the leaves
(it sounds promiscuous, but it's my favourite sound)
"fancy-- fancy if we understood--" but he tapered off,
and made a humming sound in this throat instead,
and i never knew what to fancy.
i got up and left after that, because my bus arrived.

and on that bus, i sat down next to a little girl
whose father kept his eyes on my forehead
while the little girl chatted away,
telling me about all of the things that she did understand.
i smiled at her, all the while praying
that she would never forget those things.
i told her that she was brilliant,
and that she probably wouldn't remember me after today,
but she should never forget her radiance.

her little pink raincoat glowed with it,
and i could watch the stories in her head,
because they played out in her eyes and her hands
as they gestured and pointed and shaped the words
pouring out of her mouth, and her father was still watching me.
she asked me what my name was,
but i only told her what i wished it could be,
and she asked if i'd had a nice day,
so i told her about the man on the bench,
and made sure that she remembered to never become
one of the people who knew too little.

i saw that girl in the newspaper yesterday,
ten years after i saw her on the bus
(i'd read the old man's obituary eight years before,
and it told me that his name was dusty nailson).
i knew, because her eyes were still telling the same stories,
and her cardigan (not a raincoat) was pink.
she was being awarded for poem she'd wrote
about the boy who sat on the bus
and warned her about becoming the fears of old men,
and she was thanking him for becoming a memory,
instead of a passing impression made on the palms of her hands.

horizons

on days like today,
you can't see three feet
in front of yourself.
they say it's gloomy,
but i feel like it's
somewhat marvellous.
it reflects my life,
which i have never
been able to see
into quite that far.
far-off horizons
play tricks on the mind.

*note to self; this is poem 23

i found her again; let's hope i can keep her this time

her smile was weighed down by a dozen tonnes of controversy
the light-bulbs in her eyes cracked, and the shards sliced into her irises,
casting shadows on the whites and all the veins.

her feet were rooted to the earth by a dozen tonnes of self-confidence
even though her light-bulbs were cracked; she knew that everyone's were,
and that the blood in everyone's veins was a little bit shady.

she is self-reassurance and introversion, and she is knowledge and wisdom
and all the precious things that span in between and dwell on the outskirts.
never easy to woo, but if i could, i'd hold her in the palm of my hand
and shower her in the sweetest kisses, and cry out my relief
because i know that it hurts to lose all of those things.

don't be afraid to write me poems

i'm still learning the art of heart-balancing
and trying not to forget whose it is that i'm holding,
i suppose that there are too many things that i haven't done yet,
and too long a line of people that i haven't met;
you've been woven into me, but i don't know where your pattern is going,
and i refuse to poke holes in you because i mistook
your pattern for a different one, and someone from that line of people
came in and made it known who that pattern belonged to.
because for now, my trail of feeling isn't twisted up in a way
that feels like romance, and sweet kisses, and all of the things
that i regularly dream about, even though, sometimes,
i experiment with you in the place of the grey figure.

the thickness of the line we've drawn (i've drawn?)
wavers by the hour, and sometimes it's so obvious
that i can nod at it with confidence
and know that i'm not going to break your heart quite that badly.
but sometimes, it disintegrates, and i get scared again
because i still don't know how to untangle my trail of feelings,
and how to discern bread crumbs from pebbles
and pebbles from roadsigns, which i know only come through prayer,
but prayer has only ever brought me a series of "be still"s and
"this story is not only yours, and i cannot give it in full."

one day i'm assuming that i'll know for sure,
and i hope that the road signs and the bread crumbs and the pebbles
lead me into your arms once the trail's been unravelled,
but if they don't, then i pray that you'll be able to smile
because she knows how to make me move in most of the ways that you do,
and that you'll tell her all of my favourite things
and warn her about what happens on my bad days.
our pattern hasn't been completed yet,
and for every grain of fear that i have that says that i'll hurt you,
i have two grains of hope that, one day, i'll be able to give to you
the wish that you keep hoping i'll be able to grant.

scraps of paper

sometimes i like to imagine that God keeps envelopes full of names
and he hands them to people and whispers, "these ones are yours."
the names are not on a list, but on scraps of paper, so that each one
is independent of the others (because people are not the same).
and when he handed me my envelope, he squeezed my shoulder
and warned me about six of those names in particular.

those six are like a circle, connected by their hands and bent heads,
and as far as they're concerned, i'm a flame among coals,
and as far as they're concerned, not necessarily in a good way.
they see a layer of sass; tight smiles and passion (that scares them, i think,
because they don't understand that passion can never exist on within a frame
that's void of God, because God is the only one with the power to instill it),
and they're so far from used to sitting in the same room as that.

the boy with the uneven sweater strings calls me dark,
and mocks my 'lack of morals' when i exaggerate my irritation
(usually in the same way he does, but i suppose that's irrelevant).
the one with the fake fedora will only talk to me about movies
and about books and video games, but that's alright, i suppose;
i prefer talking pixels with him to talking about anything else,
because talking about anything else makes both of us nervous.

and then there's the boy who reminds me of a can of soup
and boasts that he's homemade-- fresh and delicious and all that jazz
(he has no idea what jazz is, or how to hold it inside of yourself).
i call him creamy tomato, because "soup" felt far too unoriginal
(sometimes though, i'm rubbing my forehead and murmuring 'cheesy broccoli').
with him, it's a constant string of diluted chivalry and martyrdom-
a steady downpour of "i think you're wrong, but i'll always be a friend"

the forth boy is the sociopath- the big smiles, the quick words,
and a degree of flamboyancy, raw, tangible, and unfiltered because he doesn't care;
it's the most i've ever seen in a heterosexual man (and i like it).
it makes me wary to say that he's my favourite (sociopaths will do that to you),
but he is, and i love every fibre of his stupid, glittery being.
and then there's his girlfriend (my sister), and she's the photograph;
the one that my six scraps of paper nod into the group because she's one of them.

the second girl- the one with the golden head- kills me;
i was standing on a rug that she'd given me, and she ripped it out herself-
tore it right from under my feet, and left me flat on my ass.
it's fine, though. if they tell me i'm a feisty one, i might as well play into the role--
can't let the fans down, can't let myself down. i can't let her down.
(besides, i'm more confident in the what of who i am to let it get to me,
and she's beautiful, and none of those other six scraps understand how to prove it to her).

and those are six of my scraps of paper, the ones i can't shake off
because i love them, regardless of what they think of me and my 'whims'.
i'm the dark one. the immoral. the temperamental one. the foul-lipped
(but i'm only foul-lipped, because i've got both a pussy and something to say).
i'm the rainbow sheep of my circle of pretty little white sheeps,
and it makes them nervous, but they make me nervous, so it's even, and i stay.
they're six of my scraps of paper, and i suppose that i'll keep them,
rolled up in my fist and close to my heart, even if they hold me at arm's length.
yes. i think i'll keep them. at least until the end of spring.

i can't care

there was a point in my life where i had to hide my pink
underneath grey strips and straps of cotton and polyester,
and i'll still do that, and don a cloak of blue on top of it,
but it won't be for the sake of hiding the pink;
it'll be because it'll make me happy, and i'll feel comfortable
in what i've decided to array and arrange myself in.

there was a point in my life where i had to hide my pink skin,
and that point is gone, painted by a few dozen layers of 'i don't even care.'
if a woman's body makes me a woman in the eyes of my peers,
i'll dump a bucket of ice water of their head (mixed with a little glitter),
lean in, and- ever so gently- whisper, "feels pretty fluid to me."

ugh, the mermaids

if nesa is at the whim of anything,
it's the sway of her hips (her scaly hips) and the way
she flourishes her hand when she speaks;
i think that the wind is fond of theatrics,
and her body is such a body that rolls with them.
i'm doubtful that he could find himself
saying anything less than "i've been seduced."
it's unfortunate for him that he can't
tell her so while she's guarded by
cor's sheen and the spray of her waves.

disclaimer: worldbuilding poem, technically; cOr is the stewardess of the ocean under Ula, master of water. nEsa is the steward of wind under tOrI, mistress of air)

his bottle broke

his bottle broke on the sand,
shards back to what they were
before they were glass
(and he broke with it)

his shade

he hunted for you between the shelves;
his footsteps made a noise that sounded taut as they hit the floor,
like he'd stretched the sound waves like skin over the base of a drum.
the way his heel touched the wood made a sound far too heavy for his lean frame.

exactly like his drum.

when he could not find you there, he hunted for you between the leaves.
he flipped through them aimlessly, struck by the smell he found in them
(the smell was places and people and ambition and fear,
and the sweat and the blood poured into all of those thin, black veins)
he decided he was closer; that smell, he thought- in a peculiar way-
was the way your eyes looked when you were wandering (but not lost);

exactly like your heroes.

you weren't to be found in the leaves, so he moved onto the trunk
and pressed his palm against the bark; rough and inconsistent, but sturdy.
you exchanged your whereabouts for the warmth in his palm,
and your roots drank in the water that formed in his eyes and fell about your base.
he swore, he felt your heartbeat, and it sounded pulled taut-
like skin over the base of a drum, because there was one thing he wanted it so sound like-

exactly like your footfalls.

he looked for you in the shelves that you held, and in what those shelves held,
and he could not find you because you were busy being their sustenance;
he found you in the corner- the trunk and the base and the roots that held everything up.
in that moment, you think, he realized how sturdy you'd become,
and finally understood everything you held in your arms, and that you could shade him.
he leaned in, pressed his lips to the roughest patches of your bark, and whispered that you remind him

exactly of a tree, and he thinks that's noble.

maybe the world will turn orange tomorrow

the right, the wrong, the middle ground.
black, white, grey;
twirl, give thanks, applaud the man who displaced the ants,
and inhale that appeal to our underlying assumption;
our ideal of who's the right,
who's the wrong,
and who's the middle ground.
we paint the world in shades; the brighter the area,
the more comfort i find in it
and the more i detest it (and myself).
i'm growing weary of up-turned noses,
and chins so tilted
that you can't see the faces above them
or the fear in their eyes.

so i declare that tomorrow
we'll paint the whole earth one shade
of the most obnoxious orange,
and that we all take a step back
and look things over
and grow the hell up.

oh hey i just beat napo. oops.

Congrats! :3