Young Writers Society

April 15th, Day 15 of 30 (Written Around 8:46 PM on April 13th)

We Got Him From K-Mart

"Do they bite?" I asked the store clerk
as we peered over the multitudes of boxes.
"They're children," she huffed;
"Common sense is an optional feature,
and sometimes we forget to include it at all.
Every now and then, you'll get one
who believes he can bite his teeth off
for quarters from the tooth fairy, so
he attacks the nearest couch.
But that's a defect we'd rather not discuss."

"Does it come with a make-your-generation
question-the-capabilities-of-its-kids warranty?"
I asked the cashier as he scanned the package.
He nodded and reminded me that I
was making an investment I wouldn't regret,
though it would add up to the cost
of a small house and a car. Unfortunately,
he explained, I couldn't turn it in
for those items.

"We should've gone to Sears," complained
a wife strenuously worried that we had to have
the perfect child. I ignored her to contemplate
the fact that some assembly required,
according to the fully empty manual,
meant sleepless nights, broken hearts,
spilled food, dented cars, and the realization
that I would have countless memories
I would look back fondly upon
before gracing the eternal silence.

April 16th, Day 16 of 30 (Written Around 8:36 PM on April 14th)

Unsound Rationale

I am drowned out by the words I created.
They are mine, but have little respect for me,
as it is as much as I had given them.
This trap is a steamroller, crushing itself slowly
and pouring cement over nonexistent cracks
because if it isn't broken, nor ever was broken,
but only the product of a semblance of fear
of a slow degradation from beauty to hollowness,
break it, fix it, break it again.

I am carving myself out with a rusted scalpel,
tearing veins and arteries from dusty muscles
to watch them pop and shoot sparks
into glow-in-the-dark bones cascading
with worn-out regrets grown brittle
by the realization that they served no more use
than for the high pleasure of their victim.
Grabbing a syringe with bony fingers
too broken to remain attached to the skin
that falls like an orange peel away,
I worry that my only reason for pulling out
the flaming mixture is to transfer it
into somebody else I've never known.

But when there are as many faces
as people who gaze upon those faces,
and the only true chalice is invisible
in the sea of false ones,
where even the owner cannot find it
with blind eyes who long ago abandoned me
and rolled onto the floor in spite,
have I even known myself?

"It wasn't my intent, honestly,
but did I have another choice?"

April 17th, Day 17 of 30 (Written Around 9:41 PM on April 15th)

[a home isn't where the heart is]

If fear could be a weapon
my dear, our tears would be axes
smashing polished wood that had been
meticulously cleaned by hands
now broken in bloody,
covered in grease and sweat -
too young to die, but impressions,
however false, must be kept,
given the risk of social collapse.

We are tools lacking control
by even ourselves, spinning tops
of spikes held by a force
unknown, but binds the unwilling
together, assigns them a mission
in a language unheard of,
flicks a cigarette at their faces,
and flashes a wicked grin.

If we could choose a spot on the globe
to call our home, we would bicker
over food and travel and expenses.
Words are libel if they contrast
the idea we may not see our families
ever again, that a perfect paradise
cannot exist beyond the heart,
where reality does not ensue
and the mind is free to ignore responsibility,
spreading wings isn't a leap of faith
from one way to life
to another.

And darling, the globe
isn't a map of ourselves;
it doesn't hold the heart anywhere.

April 18th, Day 18 of 30 (Written Around 9:30 PM on April 16th)

Desiccated Phones and Withered Bones

A heart is a lonely mind
tapping to an existential beat;
I've always found barbecue sauce
too sweet for it.
But how can you complain
in a public gathering
where everyone loves the burgers
thrown like frisbees
into outstretched mouths
already OD'ed with diet pills?

The nature of history is
that everyone will inevitably die,
whether peacefully or by suffocation,
such as choking on a meat patty
doused in mustard in front
of the judgmental lady
wearing a fur scarf,
not to mention the eager
video-recording enthusiasts
looking for the latest spectacle
for their feed.

If someone were to fall
by the hands of an evildoer
in the real world, they
would lie on the ground ignored.
Nobody wants to get involved
with their own lives on the line
if the strings holding them
have a pair of scissors
and a reputation for cutting,
even if the victim
is the town mayor,
who had been holding shears
to slice open a ribbon
and dedicate a courthouse
in the name of peace.

Why else do you think
they invented superheroes?

A policeman tells me
I've had too much to eat;
ink is dribbling from my hands
onto the crusty floor,
filling the caps in callouses.
I note that the job isn't warm or fuzzy,
but neither is life; someone
has to enjoy excesses and
come to delayed realizations
under cold clocks laughing
at your lateness.

And, if not you, me.

April 19th, Day 19 of 30 (Written Around 9:30 PM on April 17th)

Extensive National Profiling

"I am a simplistically ridiculous person,"
the man in the mine suit said
at the masquerade party
before being stuffed into a cardboard box
and shipped across the country
to a lonely sea that would take him in.

And by the dangerous curving path
straddling the hills by the coast,
I stand at the side of the road,
tossing stones in the hopes
of starting an avalanche to bury
all of problems and worries.

But, rather than burying my own life,
the boulder buried another's sedan.
An office cited me for manslaughter
on the grounds of innate depression
from years of police brutality and newspapers
overflowing and bleeding violent ink.

Publicity, ironically, made a cause celebre
tarnished only by a soaked mime
who burst through the court doors
and shouted "America, Usinpiration
to us all, driving us down walls
towards an unstable, perfect security!"

The electric chair gleamed
and told me the end wasn't near;
a jury had declared me innocent,
but death, nor the press, are fair,
and I woke up to find my head
gone, claimed by the fourth estate.

Though I know where I am now,
and that's progress.


good God was I on drugs?

April 20th, Day 20 of 30 (Written Around 9:40 PM on April 18th)

Mobius Strip

20 cents found itself lost today,
stranded in piles of books
filled in with electric chords
and unbroken baseball gloves
sarcastically leering at it.

And, to find it, I call upon
an overdose of ibuprofen
or a man to crawl in my ear
and tell the marching band within
that they've no need
to beat their drums and crash their cymbals
when a flood peppered in swears
drowns the carpet around them -
whichever can come sooner.

Vision undimmed by clouds
greets the eyes of a kid
too ignorant to notice
that they are all around him,
and he's found that light
at the end of the tunnel
without ever looking for it.

Or so I complain
before he turns his light off
and dreams of a frantically-written poem
that begins with
"20 cents found itself today..."

April 21st, Day 21 of 30 (Written Around 9:45 PM on April 19th)

A Welcome Poison

A drug is a self-addicted poem
composed of wary beginnings
and notes inserted in textbooks
by people ready for a replacement of tofu,
even if it is a badly-prepared pufferfish.

Side effects may include
desperate sessions behind garbage bins,
alleyways, dark corners, to blues tunes,
and frantic pre-sleep routines
featuring loving morning calm,
hating morning headaches,
and writing about how stupid
those pesky mornings are.

Rewards are rare, usually
red eyes and tears running down
an overthinking mind;
an innate urge to absorb
all of the details of one's surroundings
in order to pry them apart
and gather ideas
following by ignoring the chatty people
around you for some time
like an ill-natured introvert;
complete with the realization
that most ideas have been said
countless times before,
and your dish is too bland
to remain in an overstuffed palette.

But it is an irresistible lure,
an escape clause from reality,
and so we fish keep biting.

April 22nd, Day 22 of 30 (Written Around 9:30 on April 20th)

Across the Nation by Mind (A Beginner's Guide)

Botched lyrics carry a tune
all their own, fearful and displeased
with the idea of being consumed by bleeding ears
and twisting the brain upon itself,
neurons forming infinite loops,
recording eternally your stammering.

But if the world is a stage,
and all the people players,
each act only has one spotlight
to shine on everyone,
or the show cannot go on.
Second chances are rare; nobody
has spent all this time to watch
a dismal performance.
Trust is a mold, and ice
can so easily break it
and shift the focus away
to another red apple in a sea of green.

So if you must use your brown pants,
do so; a voice can ponder
and jump and rise and lower
for so long before the audience
realizes you have nothing to say
at all.

Release your inhibitions, incompetence,
and with them your pride.
Where you can go,
the roads you can travel
and the diners you can stop by
to order their daily specials
that melt in your mouth,
you have no need
for any of them.

April 23rd, Day 23 of 30 (Written Around 5:20 PM on April 21st)

General Treads

Unhinged door-nails
are the thumbtacks that litter my seat
and anticipate the fervor
I will blame on door-to-door salesmen
and the way it doesn't storm as often
as it used to.

They're the reminder of a house
nobody ever wanted to own
(because it likes to shout, demand
to have its boilers fixed,
and constantly drying paint replaced,
or its many faces will scream racist
and foul-mouthed epithets through the walls
against everything in its owner's life),
but had been given the lease by ignorant parents
who'd tried to fix the problems themselves
with fervent speeches and demands,
well-wishing words and stagnating flags,
topped with the realization that 30-year-old's
are past their prime, out of time, their children
can solve the problems they'd tried to solve
for them.

The doorframe isn't a place
I'll stand under
when an earthquake comes along.
Had it been left to age itself,
these nails might be covered in rust,
but not in acid
poured on by prying hands
trying to rip apart a well-worn, reliable door
and replace it with its opposite.

But a house that had always been taught
to travel in one direction
cannot see where the other ones leads.
We are the ones who have respected that,
accepted its slow traveling
and the change slowly rising us upwards,
on to the next floor, to the next, the next.
And so how can we handle the whips
that they have threatened to crack over our heads
and the passion waved in our face
like a rotten cookie long ago eaten, but ejected
and thrown behind a furnace?

Foul words are not smooth persuasion,
and a house whose builders cannot stand united
will fall.

April 24th, Day 24 of 30 (Written Around 9:50 PM on April 22nd)

Just Out of Reach, Out of Mind

It's good the way the lacquer
polishes the wood
by the frozen welcome mat
whose key tried to flee,
but found itself attached
to the azure skies of carpet
over its head.

I like to arrange memories
of myself endlessly changing channels
with the dull click of the remote
reminding the suicidal TV
that it still has a purpose in life,
no matter how insignificant
it may seem.

And there I can observe myself
casually, an out-of-body experience
informing me that I'm still
a couch potato; a pointless one,
as the news hasn't dried
its fake tears quite yet.

I'd take my shoes
and don them, go outside
to an overstuffed mailbox
covered in the lyrics
of territorial birds of prey
applying war paint while
casually eating dinner by my house,
without a glance at the bemused viewer
peeing through binoculars
like a peeping tom.

But my feet are stuck to the ground,
and so are my shoes,
though they've been at least polished
spotless.

April 25th, Day 25 of 30 (Written Around 9:43 PM on April 23rd)

Antidepressant Storm

I'm as dead a man as any,
I say as I wash away
layers of graphite from my skin,
hoping to somehow crush them
into jeweled bones,
not to mention questioning why
the clocks never tell the time
I want them to.

They, of course, are cleaned periodically
by frustrated janitors who're tired
of sweeping through rows of sticky notes
struggling for even a minute of time
to claim their own.
Even adding new hours has done nothing
but drown my desk in yellow
and weight down the bags
under my eyes.

It's hard to remember the fact
that I am a man of strings
ready to be cut at any time
by laser-guided sewing machines
clacking away furiously to handle
the honking, groaning traffic
pouring through their doors
and asking water to soothe
throats grown parched
from hours and days and weeks
and months and years and a life
of singing, every single second,
for all seconds.

A distraction that, at most,
only buys me slightly more time;
enough to conclude
I have none at all.

April 26th, Day 26 of 30 (Written Around 9:55 PM on April 24th)

Impromptu Tearoom Breakdancing

Solace lacks shoes
by which to tread
over thumbtack-infested floors,
all of them placed by a kid wondering
how painful it would really be
to be pierced by one.

Unwelcome piercings
bring life to book clubs
on vampires and the night,
and the way that darkness
is so pale, anger
can be so frail.

But these protrusions
are murder to tanned hides
that used to belong
to magnificent horses
who happened to lose
one too many races.

Although there is nothing
quite like ladies sipping tea
and clapping to a single-man hoedown
over a weary glass table
whose bonds have been soaked through
with many a tale of forgotten lore.

But no one else, save the victim, realizes
that knowledge is suffering
and nobody can place a hand
on your back, slap you in the face,
and throw you into the Lethe -
you can only pretend to be stupid.

And you need wisdom for that.

April 27th, Day 27 of 30 (Written Around 9:45 PM on April 25th)

Upside-Down Staircases

One day, your magic will die,
and you will go crashing down with it.
There will be nobody to see
your reflection on foggy mirrors
singing tunes about your Greek tragedy,
where you are Narcissus,
and I am Echo.

And you, in all your majesty,
will hold onto every single word,
use them to propel you higher
towards the light at the top of the tunnel.
There you're held back by spikes
of many an anguished face
crooning, where were you,
I needed to see you, wipe away
the runny makeup from my face
and remind me I am alive.

Old black-and-white tapes play
fading gunshots repeating in your mind,
and you fall back upon your ink.
Calligraphy is beautiful, but,
without substance, it's graffiti
scrawled on bathroom toilets
to serve in place of a tabloid article
as you do your business.

I did not plan this,
nor am I looking for revenge.
But, as a spike myself,
I can only look to stab
and rant and rave
like restless April storms.
You know, the one tired of months of winter
and the way its breath freezes
whenever a chill tinges the air
from a honest voice
that delighted and loved in your summer,
grew dreary in its own fall, bitter
and cornered as its seasons changed,
but your ever-shifting heart
found endless summer in many other worlds.

So come and join me at the bottom
of this abyss, rest on the worn couch
we called our own. I have
Chai tea for you, a slideshow
of all the husks in your wake,
and the endless reminder
that all good things end
eventually.

April 28th, Day 28 of 30 (Written Around 9:50 PM on April 26th)

A Most Virtuous Death

Be my Juliet, and I'll be your Romeo;
barely knowing each other,
love at first and every sight,
see ourselves together
a few times through balcony mirrors
that project myself beside you.
Held apart by the fact that
I cannot climb up a wall,
much as I profess my love
for you is beyond the scope
of a universe
(which turned out to be bigger
than we though, though all we had
was 15 minutes, a telescope,
and a shaded sky).

And, like moths circling around fire,
stain our notebooks in dreams
whose meanings will become lost
by the progression of time
wearing the graphite thin
and turning the pages yellow.
But, more importantly,
they will have only become words,
as the voices behind them
are now a newspaper headline
to be buried by smoke traffic, ignored
for now and forever,
except parents warning of the risks
of shooting yourself in the foot
and then the head.

It's silly to believe in fantasies,
especially when you have no enemies
prepared to bury the hatchet
after burying you with it.
You have only families crying
as they pour libations over stones
across a field of grass.
When the spark is so bright,
and explodes into nothingness so quickly,
few people could even have known
it existed.

April 29th, Day 29 of 30 (Written Around 9:46 PM on April 27th)

Unconditionally Offensive

I dream of faraway places
to visit one of these days,
like an exotic Middle Easter
or the Soviety Union,
run by Mr. Gorby and his crew
of military hotheads tired
from running against Rae,
whose pillars of missiles
had too high of a price tag
for a broken-down piggy bank
unable to cough out anything more.

Until then, I'll settle
for simple dreams, like the tail
I saw on the grey-eyed kid
who strode by me,
listening to tunes I couldn't identify
(ears, as you are well aware,
can't pick up radio waves).
And I watched as he passed
while I mowed a rebellious lawn,
pondering why I haven't heard from friends
and the fact that they will all die,
their dreams will fade into oblivion,
eventually.

(Or whatever you call the fate of text
that stands as a tiny piece
of the great wide web;
A few dozen pictures,
hundreds of snippets of dialogue,
and tens of thousands of words
stitching a year-long story
that may never be finished,
as all of its creators realize.
They will all pass away,
but I hope for my own ream
to die first, so I never
see the empty world
myself.)