Young Writers Society

day fourteen
aten

they say in the heat
only archer's eyes can find
his way homeward bound.

i'm not a poet and i don't pretend to be things i'm not
so forgive me if this comes off simple, if my tongue twists, shouts
like birds cawing in the evening sandstorms. i'm not a poet,
nor am i a strong friend but my brain moves fast - too fast
at times for my own good - but i'm confident if you just take
a second you can find something worth salvaging among the scrap meat.

i spent these years searching for you
only i didn't know how to say your name;
so forgive me if i spend the nights watching your lips
imagining your name in every language across the seas.
and no, you're no lover of mine and never will be
but i've fixated like a bird in migration, how
my magnet is drawn to you. call it love
call it friendship - i ultimately don't mind
as long as you never stop speaking;
in the day when your smile is the horizon line
or in the night when gravity falls on your eyelids.
you are so central in my world,
i hope you learn that some day.

day fifteen
stephan

lo! what light through yonder canopy breaks,
it is the sun, the majestic flambeau of life-trickling,
heart-pounding heat incarnate - flesh and blood in fire itself -
yes! i followed the sun for two years to the shores of this quiet land
and what to my wandering eyes do appear - a band of rogues!
beautiful and splendorous and throbbing with life's baritone hum!

if by no other name be a rose called,
allow me to be your guiding light;
together we will reign in the cosmic injustice,
we will soar above bated breath and harkened stares
and become immortal, notorious!

if blood doth await on yonder side of the gate,
by my side will you ride, ahiri prince?

day sixteen
in which lumi goes back to writing serious poetry

i.
rain falls equally on jonquils and daffodils
and it makes you wonder about equality and justice

ii.
in your apartment by the lake we watch the boats motor by
they bob and sear through broken water and it makes me think of you
because here are your broken parts bobbing in the bath
here is your leaking fuel tank and box of matches
the waves break against rocks and i think that's beautiful darling
how they recoil and become something equal - not greater, not less -
and reconsider their place in the universe
i wonder to myself as the AC hums baritone under the TV
do you want to break or assimilate?

day seventeen

It is decided that God was unfair in his measurements;
that he held a scale against your mind and placed his fist into one cup,
said this man will carry the weight of my suspense

the karma of my wars and the blood of my hostages.

He plotted out the steps you'd take and saw the sleepless nights,
the days upon end spent wide-eyed and self-furious, he saw

everything ahead of you and gave no warning.
This is why he deserves no forgiveness, though he may beg
late at night in his deserted temples, his barren cathedrals
dilapidated and rotten, representing the plague of the holy ghost.
He saw lives sealed under mountains of insomnia, dunes of drug-sleep,
fever dreams, night terrors strung from kernel to kernel
tied red around the pinkie finger. If you ask me where it leads,

the string vanishes into fog northbound and silhouetted
cold against the hollow suns. You will walk these thousands of miles
under turmoil and tumult and find a whisper in the twilight -
she's a panacea in a pale blue dress who will place her fist
tight in the second cup, say

day eighteen

The words we ache out of red bottles, they are leaden and sluggish -
bent over and between themselves because
.
Truths and illusions are often in the same breath and I can see,
though it may be clouded and low-strung beneath fog, trip-wire,
land-mines, shrapnel in a blasting shell, the end of all things we create; see

there are poems and there are lies, there are brilliant words
woven from frothing drug-dreams. Taste and see, love,
cannibal virtues and chaste sins. We are here,

we are together on this tile floor and we are alive,
poetry in heavy gulps, we are awake, we are so,
so hopeful.

day nineteen

i've watched you swing from hollow breaths to smoke rings
broken apart vaporized bled through your scalp as a net
one for safety one for the nights when guns glow with temptation
i know they come and i know they'll come again
but when you can walk with a mirror ahead
when you can pretend your path taken is your path ahead
that your footsteps in tidal sand are taking you forward
kid you're going places yet

day twenty

this is how we filter water:
mouths open, lips tilted against the mouth of a hose,
summer fresh and cold on our teeth. they say the clay in the water
makes your beard grow faster, maybe makes your eyes darker.
we run while the sun sets and our feet are hot,
blistered on the road like rugged tires, tied high over the lake.
we swing shirtless into the copper deep and everyone -
i mean everyone - takes a sharp breath because


it is the summer and we are teaching children to squeeze lemons.
they think the world of the juicy flesh twisted around the spoon,
think the seeds are bullies, rebels, men
who don't belong in their neighborhood.
i kiss you behind the fridge door and you say "wow"
- nothing deep because not every moment is a poem -
just "wow" because there are always sweet words
and there are always bits of clay in our water. there are always
sun rays on your plants and i wonder sometimes if it's the world saying
"you tried hard today, you deserve to grow."

day twenty-one

true story.
you and i have come a long way;
and i mean that we followed the wooded path
from the window of your bedroom to the smooth-rocked speckled walk
through the center of your creek. a creek because it is smaller than a river,
yours because you said you carved your name into a small stone

into the water where it rests to this day.
you say take off your boots,

i want you to experience nature firsthand.

we must have wandered down that winding creek for hours because -
notably - the sun began to set and i turned to you,
i said i don't know where i am which is always true for everyone.
i remember this because you said you are with me and for a moment
the cracked magnet in my brain, the confused migratory bird of me
felt for the first time that there was no need to escape.

we stayed in the woods all night, meandering like children to the highway.
we walked barefoot down the center of the road
and pretended we were cops and drunks and just for a minute,
when we came back to your bedroom window, i hesitated, thinking

day twenty-two

the greatest misconception about badbrains
(n. depression, mind malady) is that it is always cold.
friend, i find most days that all my energy is spent treading through sands,
falling down dunes and losing my bearings in my blurry eyes.
the broken mind is an endless desert -
endless because the desert itself meanders and shifts,
flies on the breeze to a new mirage never in the same place twice -
and i can't express how heavy those sands are, but to try:

if you tied together every pound of guilt in american prisons,
combined it with every ton of pressure on every country preacher,
glued on the corpses of schoolgirls who refuse to eat,
you may have the power to take a step through the heat.

but to demand of someone walk this path until you find a road
with no water, with no shade -

god i just think you'd change your tune so quickly.

day twenty-three

it is summer.
two boys dive into a copper lake -
tumble together like pennies
falling infinitely into black fountains -
and they resurface, fingers together.
girlfriend photographs from the pier, says

day twenty-four
in which a lover tells a lover of lovers to go fuck himself

love of mine,
aimless like garland &
addicted like clark gable,
i did not swim these shark-infested waters
to watch you play the whore of babylon.

day twenty-five

twenty-five days deep
into the maw of the beast,
emotion-tax paid

in overworked hours and breaks
in a facade almost two decades in the making.
you may be strong in an airport, but what matters
is whether or not you can be strong in the living room -
trial by fire under a comet shower of abuse. storms of

hails and sleets firing


the power of a fist doesn't matter much,
be it clenched on a steering wheel,

but to throw up your hands and say

day twenty-six

we are picking blueberries from a supermarket shelf.
it is winter and you say that since they're not fresh to us,
they may at least be fresh in the experience.

i pull a carton from the shelf and they scatter underfoot.


one has mashed, stepped-on, eviscerated in panic
the way the weary heart beats in arrhythmia in the morning.
there is no one in bed. there is never anyone in bed.

you pick up the berry and i'll never forget your words;
you take the purple mash and you say


not even yourself.

twenty-six bonus

i have a migraine. the arrow of pain is diagonal, a beam of light that breaks in my head, cracks towards the sky above the ear. it reminds me of the days we'd spend alone on your bed - and that doesn't mean we had sex because it frustrates me that sex is always implied. you would explore my hair, cover my eyes with curls and kiss above the ears because it calmed the strands into staying in place. god, i remember that feeling as if it were a spiritual awakening.

we left the bedroom once and laid in the back lawn among daisies and jonquils. you didn't say anything because we both believed that nature is so awake in the daytime that pretentious words ruin things. it felt alive. it felt like God was with us. you took the stem of a young flower and tied it through my ear. and you kissed. you kissed above my ears.

without you here, the lawn doesn't feel alive; the air is stale and the vision of reality skews through pain cut sideways through my skull. i can see the flowers, i can tuck away my hair, but there's no way to tie nature into new things, to create and create and create because that was you, that was your love and i curse more -

i whisper swears under my breath because you took creation with you when you said that i don't trust anyone enough to be healthy. no, i will quote you. you said you don't trust outside the moment. you weren't wrong -

or at least you weren't the only one to say it. all of my trust is collected in raindrops on roses, split among thorns and collected in a basin too shallow for a washcloth or to gather sunlight. the water is always lukewarm and i can never taste you or your words or the way you touched my hands so lightly because you knew how the cracks formed on my skin.

i have a migraine. the pain is nothing compared to these memoirs dedicated to you. the pain is nothing compared with loss. i just -

i'm out of words.

day twenty-seven

blood sugar 27
bleary-eyed and streaking
blood across white sheets
"i need you to wake up"
shouted with empty voice
to the no one in your bed