Young Writers Society

26/30

in third grade, they taught us how to make venn diagrams,
establish points of similarity--points of difference;
my best friend was good at it. i never was. but i think,
i never realised, i think the teacher let it pass--
all the points overlapped for me, jumbled up creases in turquoise
and pale, shell-ochre-grey malarkey. 'iron them out, iron them out,'
my friend said, but i always burnt my fingers, and singed the cloth,
and set my hair on fire.

a couple years back, we revisited venn diagrams again,
escaped from the world of 'both Jenny and Robert liked tea'
[i always wondered about the past-tense]
and into a world where 'given that B is subject to change, find A',
and discover their intersection--A is into B as B is into A.
a couple years back, they taught us to make straight lines,
take subjective thinking and hang it from a noose.
i trip back and forth between hyperrealities and wanting to run,
to feel the moon's liquid light trickle into my lungs, to feel
everything i have learnt and everything i wish to learn flood me,
break down my barriers, teach me to swim&drown.

a sense of wondering pervades nightless window scenery,
where it is hard to establish a purpose in A's and B's, and instead
brush purpose along tangential echoes in a chasm in a hallway in a field--
my hands wash the tide and the tide washes me;
we intersect and integrate and differentiate in C's.

27/30

i seek validation in pupil reflexes and games of instantaneous reactions,
validation in search engines and engines rattling along the side of a building,
scaling tracks they were never meant to drive on.
i seek validation in words chosen for the correct moment and words chosen carefully
and words stacked up against one another in rhythmic proportion so that the dust
settles on them in the right way.
uncertainty paints my ankles neon-green, takes the cat out of the bag
and strings it up by the tail on a lampshade. floundering,
we use synecdoche as an immune system to make it seem like
we know, we know, we know
what we're talking about.

i seek validation in browbeats and slivers of sweat, validation in smiles
and not knowing how to respond to them. browbeats, browbeats;
i seek validation.

28/30

cold hands on colder nights--clammy
and impersonal
.

rough winds and rougher tongues--abrasive
and impersonal
.

poetry and pretense--upfront
and
.

29/30




we lost ourselves in a tiny cave by the sea,
embittered by all the solace we had lost
to the tide.

handfuls of fibre-glass, disarray--we wove
dragonfire through our tunics,
filled the holes in our hearts
with sand.

[strip the stars from your spine.]

can you imagine it? do you ever seek
to imagine it? us, gladiatorial,
the sun spilling over our shoulders,
daggers, comet-hearts, full-body armour--
do you ever see us that way? do you think
history will remember us for being?

[the sun plunges down your neckline,
and oysters cram themselves
within the depths of your soul.]

--we are a marianas trench for the parts of ourselves
we thought fit to throw away.--

--i have always dreamed of being remembered,
of being a fireball, of writing memoirs and canvassing them--
silhouettes against the sun.

but age
and time
and loss
steal my dragons.
my armour
turns
to rust.
we are old, and tired,
and our footprints
are washed
away
by the
sand.

we lost ourselves in a cove--and some days, i dream
of finding myself, in the sea, instead.

30/30

'So quick bright things come to confusion.'

-Act One, Scene One, A Midsummer Night's Dream

--

i wake up to the sound of thrashing waterwalls
and metal-clusters of flies dancing in the wake
of cold calamity
and truncheons.

morning is pale, nebulous,
and my mind is abuzz
with rowdy thoughts whipping
the inside of my skull.
songbirds peck at my ears,
ossicles hammering into their soft,
rounded flesh.

i wake up, and my skin is raw;
the sun gleams pink, dim, over the horizon--
a broadband stretching out into the unknown.

drunk, on déjà vu? drunk,
on poetry?

never!

Congratulations! Not only did you finish NaPo, but you have some really great poems in there! Woohoo!