Young Writers Society

#13

after years of it, i have just realized that
you are no longer hiding in my poems.

when you left me i thought that you
didn't mean it (although maybe you didn't because
you had scattered your mind thin as pixie dust along
counter surfaces and sheet tops over time, over time) you
tore your mind apart and tore my eyelids wide
wide
open to what society made you become, a
skinny girl who takes friends for granted, you
became a pixie-dust girl and that's what you lived on, you
left me and i
was reminded yet again how i am the
cast-away-who-keeps-caring-despite-it-all and
the-one-too-naive-to-quit.

when you left me
i wrote about you, for years,
i wrote about you
because it hurt.

but i'm here now and you're
somewhere, you are still living somewhere of course, but
you will forever be a pixie-dust girl who
spun on your heel with my laughter still on your cheeks, you
will forever be the thin-lipped smiles and never-returned-calls, you
will forever be a barely-teen poking at her ribs, then mine, telling me
"let's cut ourselves up, shall we?"

you are no longer hiding in my poems, because
pixie-dust runs thin,
eventually.

#14

i gave my pieces to you- after much coaxing-
you pried open the waxy brown scales that
shielded my most loathsome places, after you
wrought open the rusted tobacco tin where i kept the
ink-stained words bitten off too soon, childhood memories
gone sour, laced over with tar, my
eyelashes, torn out and blackened with mascara.

you peeled my aching fingers from the shield i'd held, the sword,
for so long,
for so long,
you tore me open and laid me out on a bedsheet, you
took up your glue and some bubble gum and long strands of hair, you
gathered my pieces, my bones, my trust long shattered...

i lay there shivering, my pieces and i- after so very much coaxing-
i wondered still how
you could be different, even if you
claimed to be "God" for
no god has ever cared for me before,
no god has poked my scales, or my rusted memories, or my self-loathing,
"i am why i am what i am"
the cracks that go too deep to possibly be mended, but
you took me even so, and
i shivered.

your warm hands around my pieces crushed thin, you
put me back together.

when i sat up, my pieces and i, one and together-
like we never had been- i knew that
with you by my side,
i could never be shattered again.

#15

his heart sounded like a washing machine
swirling and rumbling, straining and swimming,
whu-wush whu-wush
cleaning out his insides, painting them crimson,
his veins throb and descend, swell, deflate,
whu-wush whu-wush
his lips are chapped and his lungs trip,

don't run much, boy,
you're sick.

his head is flat and
his hair sticks up like a bristle brush, but
his heart stirs on, whu-wush whu-wush
for two years straight he lay on his back,
watching ceiling tiles and water taps,
but his heart cycled on with that old song
whu-wush whu wush
his cheeks flushed,
but he never cried.

hey kid, hey
there's something very wrong inside
that chest of yours.

his teeth rotted from his jaws and fell out quick
he couldn't walk to school without feeling sick but
his heart marches on with that
whu-wush whu-wush
here he is, the washing machine boy
with those cameleon lips, they like to shift
from pink to blue, pink to blue when
he fights for his breath, fights for his step, fights for
his life
whu-wush whu-wush
his knuckles are rough and his lungs trip

don't run much boy,
you're sick.

#16

don't throw yourself at the stars,
you told me, when you saw how
my knuckles had cracked from clawing at horizons, and how
my cheeks were dry from tear-salt.

i smiled bitterly-- what did you know--
but you poked me in the forehead and
blinked slowly, purposefully, dragging brown lashes down, back up--
listen to me, you said.

reach for the heavens instead, love.
when you get them-- and i know you will--
the stars will come to you.

i met your gaze, you
cracked a grin, nudged my chin and together
we watched the constellations with wonder.

you'll get there, kid.
one day, you'll get there.

#17

she is a wanderer of worlds.

comet-borne, she
dances through black holes and aortas, she
squints at the sun and fast-approaching train headlights, she
coaxes flowers from the earth and clouds from her cuticles;
this vagabond polishes planets and sink taps.

she is a gypsy of galaxies.

cosmos derived, this girl's eyes are
full of stars and the dust that made them, her pigment
scattered with specks of mud and violets, those
sharp white ribs of hers encompass one soul, one liter of dark matter, she is
a tramp, a hitchhiker, an infinite-clad nomad, she
dreams.

there are veins between pulsar stars and
unopened baby-eyes, between
oak roots, tarnished tea pots, and
eternity; she has seen them.

this young wayfarer of macrocosm, with her
star eyes and curled toes and flower-mud skin, she
plans to travel them
all.

#18

today,
she wears her scars like war medals.

that's what she survived;
a war,
one that the world told her was much more tame
much less terrifying
all because it was inside of her,
"all in your head," as if that meant
there were no bombs, the ones that blew her thoughts to bits,
as if that meant
there were no treaties sworn--
tomorrow will be different, i swear, i swear--
as if that meant
there were no refugees, when she
was the one to drive to chigaco at 3 am to prove it all,
they were after her, she could smell them.

she had been fighting for her life for years and by then, she had
carved a map into her thighs to prove it- there
the battlefront, there
the troops, the dying masses, there
the camps and the flies on bodies and the
blood, the blood, she could not stop it,
it would not stop.

they told her to calm down, to
"be grateful it isn't worse," even when
she bled as much as a thousand soldiers and
cried their mothers' tears, even when
she screamed for justice and clawed at the barricades,
they told her to
"quiet down, girl.
quiet down."

she was at war, but
no one listened.

#19

home is in the smoke rising the maasai woman's fire as she cooks chapatis and chai tea
home is in the laughter of the small boy i can now call brother, in his crinkled eyes and the gaps of his missing teeth
home is in the smell of blankets fresh from the dryer, in robins chirping on a cool spring day, in the tap tap tap of the oak tree on my window
home is in the ecstatic yelps from the balls of fur scrabbling for traction on the hardwood floors when i walk into the house
home is in late nights of tears and laughter as my mother perches on my bedside, your future is bright; have faith, sweetheart
home is in the sun beating on my neck as the ocean waves squirm between my toes, as the sand caresses my heels
home is in the wrinkles of an elephant's back, in the curves of the antique trunk in the attic, in the bare boards and mounted antlers of my grandparents' basement
home is in the sensation of a hug from someone who is smaller than me, when i rest my chin in their hair and smell their shampoo
home is in the sky that twists and changes, roils and weeps, but forever holds the stars.

(Sorry I haven't been commenting, I didn't notice the second page button that appeared—silly me—and so hadn't been reading them)

"wrought open the rusted tobacco tin"
I SEE YOU, BELOVED REFERENCE

Also, do I spy some Mary-Poppins-inspired poetry in #16?? I loved that one!

#18 was super powerful in a punch-in-the-gut kind of way ... Wow.

#17 and #19 made me squeee in the best possible way ^_^

#20

there's a storm brewing in her feet,
a fire in her blood that churns-
sinks-
burns-
and settles right beneath her ankles and lies there, twitching,
baby flames eat at those interspaces, the soft spots between her toes, itching
to be releasing, yearning
to run, screaming
for liberty, to travel, to sear across the earth, to
go somewhere
do something
be someone.

her arches crumple as the storm quakes through her bones,
her heels quiver with the force of the fire, she
must move, she
must run, she
must free the restlessness before it eats her from the ground up.

wanderlust:
all consuming, the blaze soon reaches her eyes,
her soul.

the storm is loud, the fire rages.
she is hungry.

#21

these are the earth's forgotten children.

with their rock-stick knees, quivering, and xylophone chests,
with red-dust in twist-black-hair, parasites on burnt skin,
eyes that potrude from no-food-today, crinkle tight- cracked lips part-
they sing.

asante sana, yesu
thank you, jesus
bwana yesu asifiwe
praise the Lord

raising cracked-nail fingers to an unforgiving sky, they
thank God with throats parched dry, these dear children, with
nothing, with nothing,
they thank him for what they have.

"how can you sing?" i ask them one day, beneath that
terrible kenyan sun, among the red-dust-dirt that chokes lungs,
i see their feet- barefoot, their clothes- torn,
their laughter- loud- bright- joyous-

"you have nothing, yet you smile, yet you laugh."

they grin white-teeth on skin-black and tilt up their chins,
roll back shoulders-of-bone, tell me-
"we are loved. we, forgotten,
we, starved,
we, once sick and tired and hopeless,
we are loved. you, girl-with-too-much, white girl,
you too, even you."

asante sana, yesu
thank you, jesus
bwana yesu asifiwe
praise the Lord

these are the earth's forgotten children, but
here, they dance-
beneath a huge beating african sun that
cares not for them, among a world of people who
think not of them, within their souls and somewhere
deep in their weak-sick-thirsty hearts, they find that love.

they feel it. i feel it.

we sing.

#22

she used to laugh, when she was young
when we were close, when she had time for herself,
before she won the first place prizes, over and over,
before she began starring in Carnegie Hall,
before people began calling her the
"child prodigy", the "genius", the "gifted"

"this child is bright, she'll go places"

her name became a standard set too high,
"we can't all be a _______"
she was the model student, she shone like a star,
brighter than we dared, scoring higher than we dreamed,
reaching farther than we hoped,
but her smiles were slowly dimming.

she used to laugh, when we were young
when we were close, when she had time of her own,
before her mother told her which path to choose,
before she was instructed on every solitary step to take to
make it as far up as possible, climb higher, be brighter,
she struggled not to slip-
and she did a few times-
but soon she was so bright that she burnt those she loved,
and she never meant to.

she used to laugh, when she was young,
back when we were close, when she had time to live,
before she began controlling her diet because
it was the only thing she could lay a hand on,
before she stared with glass eyes at a world that pushed her
too far,
before she stayed up until 4 am every day trying to
climb higher, get farther, burn brighter, but
in the end

she burnt herself out.

#23

at night,
the people in my mirror walk free.

when
my thoughts run together and
my lips part too easily,
when
i start questioning the world and
where my feet rest in it,
when
my jaw and shoulders relax, unknot, and
the back of my skull doesn't throb, for once--

that is when it swings open,
the mirror, and
the people inside it
walk free.

who am i,
i'll ask them, but
they'll mouth back with lips pale from
drinking moonlight;
they have no answer.

we're all mirrors here.

mirrors/srorrim
mirrors/srorrim
mirrors/srorrim

reflecting...
ɹǝɟlǝɔʇᴉuƃ˙˙˙

hello
masks i've cast off, i see you wish to
visit me again in the night,

when
i'm too tired to see clearly, to judge doubtlessly, to
pull on the identity that i picked out for
myself that
morning.

hello, old villains.

i thought i outgrew those fairy tales of

mirror mirrors (srorrim rorrim) on the wall
long ago,
but i hadn't.

honestly I'm really jealous of your poetry x.x
you're such a great poet, it's killing me!

#25

it's a sleep of sorts,
a submersion into crystal sea water,
a plunge into blessed silence,
a merciful pause in time-

in the
swish of paintbrushes-
soft
tapping of keyboard letters-
gentle
scratching of pen tip to paper-
soothing-
i can rest.

here, i can drop
the whalebone corset that chokes
my lungs, my guts-
i can -breathe- here,
through the paint-dipped bristles-
through the digital curves & stanzas-
through the black ink bleeding through white-
here,
i can drift.

it's a sleep of sorts-
nightmares and fantasies alike resurrect
from the graves in which i placed them-
when my hands are unbound-
so are they-

here,
there is silence, thoughts
spilling over-
the water of the sea laps the crown
of my head-

here,
i am free.