Young Writers Society

I've not written a poem since this time last year or nothing serious at least, but it's time to clamber down the crumbling castle steps and see if there's any water left in the reservoir.

2014 - Lost in Translation
2013 - Rydia's Repository
2012 - Sirens in Suburbia
2011 - April Showers
2010 - No idea what happened here
2009 - Here
2008 - First year?

1. Closed Books

The closest to owning a library I ever came,
locked inside the second cubicle,
my heart turning like pages
as the books lay closed.

I hate rondeaus sometimes...I'll attempt to finish this later. I'll attempt to edit this later.

2. The Dead Don't Die

As I was warned, the dead don't die,
the medical bills can testify,
they hold his name but I must pay
a second time for his delay
in leaving on a long goodbye.

When we make vows, we make a lie;
the dead can't leave us though they try,
their hearts give out, their minds give way,
the dead don't die.

Though winter roots and costs are high,
his chair remains and his reply
comes soft to me and stops halfway
between encroaching night and day,
to say he'll always be nearby,
the dead don't die.

3. Who came this way?

Who came this way when I was dead
His place is at the school instead;
He will not see me stopping here
To watch his room fill up with red.

My little friend must think it rare
To find a body in his lair
Between the doll and lego bricks
The darkest evening of the year.

He gives his downy head a shake
To ask if there is some mistake.
The only answer I can peep
in inky words for him to take.

His angry eyes begin to weep,
But I have promises to keep
And even sisters need their sleep,
And even sisters need their sleep.

With inspiration from 'Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening' by Robert Frost.

4. Two birds

I thought I'd killed the second bird
but the stone rolled away and it
breathed.

[One to come back to.]

5. Untitled

He was the sort of man who missed things:
hard-coded deadlines, his kid sister's rugby match,
the splatter of ink on his white, polo shirt.
He missed the wet paint as he stopped in front of the cafe
that served its last side of pumpkin pie
two months ago.

It was a Tuesday and he missed his train.
He stuttered around the platform,
his shoes leaving question marks
on the dark asphalt.
He put down the briefcase,
finally saw the ink butterfly
and dropped a tissue on the
station tracks.

He was boarding the next train
when she called him.
Later he'd claim it was for her he stopped
(and not the briefcase in her hand)
and later he'd miss her,
more than anything he'd ever missed.


[I need a title and I don't know if it ends too abruptly. Help?]



I'm not sure how the poetry games will go this afternoon. I feel like I'm very much in a prose poetry kind of mood.

Written with the aid of @ScarlettFire and @Tuesday. Some lines are not my own! (But which ones? :p)

6. Mountains

Where I come from, apples are sweeter than songs
with skin like rain kissed roses. The nymphs dance
against mountaintops and battle-worn valleys.

Then the painted ones came,
arrows hounded our plight
and all mountains are battles waiting to be fought
so we fought,
our laughter crashing like broken waves
as the hound killed the archer;
music to the ears of the mystical.

7. Because I never learned the names of gemstones

I crush the glass between my palms
like ice breaking
under a microscope.
The sapphires spilling
out of my sighs
as I prize the cabinet a-
part.

This is the day I will swallow their tongue,
the feel of the opal as it rolls in my mouth.
The diaspores dispersing through my fingertips
as pyrites pirouette across the floor.

Obsidian, jasper, iolite.
Peridot, carnelian, alexandrite.

I will adorn myself in their alphabet,
traverse the rough and cloudy agate,
liaise with the lapis lazuli
and gaze upon the clear zirconia
as I navigate her shores.

WIP

She demanded to be in the room,
though not to expose my art
but to worship it.