Young Writers Society

Capturing change in 4 stages. (All poems will fit into one of these stages, though they won't necessarily be in order.)

Introduction:
Dedicated to a Friend

Stage One: The Younger Years
1. In the Beginning
2. daddy's girl
3. I Don't Remember Second Grade
4. Eighteen Months
5. Friendship: First Encounters
6. Yellow Rivers
7. What Was

Stage Two: Growing Up
1. Horizons
2. Ink-stained Dreams
3. One Year
4. The Scenic Route
5. Erased
6. Summer Ides
7. The Hard Way

Stage Three: Coming of Age
1. An Open Letter to Activists
2. Complex Figures
3. We Danced
4. Lessons
5. Twirling
6. Christmas Lights
7. Teacher

Stage Four: Living in the Here and Now
1. Sakura
2. Barriers
3. Eden
4. Metropolitan
5. Ink-Free
6. Tangled Together
7. International


Coda:
Fairytale

(All poems are written and posted on the correct date in my timezone, which is currently GMT+9)

2015: snapshots of the life i leave behind

Introduction:

Dedicated to a Friend
We stole moments, my friend,
but fleeting moments are not enough to tell a story
except brief tales of pain, seeking comfort.
I always figured I’d tell you one day.
I knew you would listen for as long as it took –
you were the best listener I knew.

I was sure that when I finished, you’d look at me with that loving smile
and tell me yours.
I knew you had one – I caught glimpses of it
shuttered behind your gentle eyes.
It takes fire to forge something so wonderful.

But I never did take the time
and I don’t know why.
Maybe I was still afraid,
still thought it wasn’t a tale worth telling.
or maybe I knew the story wasn’t finished yet.

It is finished now, and although you’ll never read this,
I’ll tell you anyway. It’s the least I can do
to thank you.
Your face may fade in memory,
but your title will always be the highest I can give:
Friend.

In the Beginning

I only have scraps of the start of story, but I’ll stitch them together and call them a childhood.
I was happy then - that much I can remember.
My mother taught me to read two years before I entered kindergarten
and found everyone still learning the alphabet.
That gift is worth libraries of poems of praise -
it started everything.

Standardized tests are supposed to measure the students
but all they did was show how crappy the school was
and when my parents came to my assembly and watched me sing the abc’s
they walked away laughing.
Four months of school for that?
I don’t remember it, but I’m sure I was bored.

Already then I loved the twilight hours
the times after dark when the playing was done
and I read by the light of a lamp on my full-sized bed.
(I still can’t believe two of those ever fit in our tiny room.)
I read about a young pig and and his kind spider friend
clutching close a doll named Charlotte.

And I read over and over again because I loved knowing how it was going to end
and I wanted to savor the moments before Death –
a strange word, but already I began to glimpse its meaning –
Death took its first victim.
(I learned later that sort of ending was called “bittersweet.”
Strange how the word follows me now.)

Stage three, #1

An Open Letter to Activists

I am not ignorant of you or what you stand for.
I’ve read your words, heard your voices,
I’ve studied you like you’ve never studied me.
I gave you my time, and I learned two things
One: I reject your rhetoric.

now let me get one thing straight: I know.
I know there are people being hurt – I know people who are being hurt
by those who have forgotten (or were never taught) the golden rule.
there are people lost and wandering, their only defense
to curl up into a ball and ignore the pain. I know this,
and if I could I would tell them all that they are loved
and to hold on – help is coming.

but you are teaching a doctrine that I reject with every particle in my lungs
your subtle lies
(so subtle you think they are truths; I do not blame you for this)
curl around my heart and twist my reason.
and I scream that this is not the way.
if there is one thing I’ve learned in my short life
it’s that fighting fire with fire burns the world down.

I reject that I'm only allowed an opinion because I’m a woman
I reject that I am guilty because of my middle-class birth.
can’t you see it’s not about sides here?
I hear your cries against stereotypes and I cannot fathom
why if it hurts you so much you would do it to me.
I’ve swear I’ve never done anything to you I would not wish upon myself.

again I scream I don’t hate you; disagree does not equal hate,
and Christ commanded me to love.
I’ve never hated anyone in my life, so stop
calling me close-minded, stop
calling me a bigot, stop
attacking my very foundations.
in the end I only want the same thing as you – acceptance
and world peace.

and yet you beat me away.
Congratulations: I could have been an ally.

instead, I learned the second lesson.
maybe it’s simplistic,
but cynicism poisoned me and so I purged it.
Two:

It’s not about making laws, it’s not about fighting the patriarchy,
it’s about why can’t everyone just be nice to each other no matter what,
and maybe that could start with me.

Stage 4, #1

Sakura

the pavement is wet today.
it’s as if the sky rained paint overnight
and the trees and bushes drank deeply –
the pigment bled through every part of them and now
the still-lingering dew drops are magnifying glasses
and vibrant does not begin to describe the green.

humidity clings –
it wraps around the trees
and stirs when blown by gentle breeze
bringing wafts of rich soil and new growth
as if the colors couldn't tell the story on their own.

if down is the direction of the verdant colors
then up is where gentle pastels make their home.
the treetops are crowned with garlands of candyfloss
and blue sky peeps between the pink-tinged flowers.

blossoms cling too –
but when the breeze comes they fall
and their snow-white flakes echo the snowfalls
of a winter already impossible to imagine.
they dapple the pavement, sprinkles
on a cake that welcomes spring.

daddy's girl

mommy, some days when daddy comes home from work
he’s like when teacher tells me to stop throwing
the little rocks on the playground
and sends me to timeout
when i was just tossing them in the air, i promise!

mommy, i know daddy loves me
but i think sometimes he forgets how to show it.
some days i can sit on his lap and he’ll read me stories
and some days he thunders so loud i think the power would go out
if he were a storm.

mommy, can you fix him?
No, sweetheart, daddy has to fix himself.

I Don’t Remember Second Grade

second grade is only desks and
playmates and easy busy-work.

the boy wizard waits for me
in the thick paperback by my chair
and it isn’t like the teacher –
what was her name again? –
will notice me reading.

I ease it off the floor.
it creaks as it opens and I don’t know why
it’s this one’s call that’s so hard to resist
maybe because it tells me
the people we love never truly leave us.
laugh and keep fighting because
good always wins in the end.
and I feel all tingly inside when I read that.

it is 2007, and I don’t know
that millions of people mourn
as the children’s tale that changed the world
ends.
for now it is just me,
the curve of the pages,
and my story, forever.

Eighteen Months

[REDACTED FOR POSSIBLE PUBLICATION]

Friendship: First Encounters

friends from then are half-remembered faces
and half-remembered fun,
and in the end a half-remembered fading.

grown apart is too obvious a phrase
to describe the way she slipped away
i barely caught glimmers of our struggling spark,
and besides, how does a seven-year-old learn
to lure someone back?

i think it’s telling now
that i will always be grateful to
the one boy who followed me around at recess –
he just wanted to play
with me?

(Stage Four, #2)

Barriers

your words are misguided radio signals.
my SOS spills across the frequencies and reaches you
but i think my transmission is garbled
because you never reply with a ‘copy that.’
it’s questions and more questions until i claw
my throat out
and let the soundwaves bounce around inside,
deafening and dizzying and circular,
alone
because i can’t find the right frequency.

it’s my fault, not yours, daddy.
your hurricanes flattened my tongue,
and though you are a gentle breeze now –
and i hate to tell you this because you already think your thunder
has ruined our paradise –
my secrets still build barricades.
those frequencies are barred to me
and i think you need them to understand the melody.

daddy, i don’t want you to be a surgeon.
maybe i need an operation but though your hands are steady
i don’t think you know where to make the cut.
and when my head spins round with the pain of living
i’d rather just be held
and i when feel so small and cold i just want
to feel your arms encase me
the way they did when i fit on your lap.

i wish i could remember
what falling asleep on your shoulder felt like.
do you remember when you put me down,
and never picked me up again?

Eden

i can find my eden.
i think if i ever stop believing then the smog
will rip out my vocal chords and smother me.
because each day is a mad dash to reach its green pastures
and some days it’s more of a sprint the length of a marathon.

sometimes I find the balance and everything is all right again
it’s there; I’ve made it; I can rest on a lawn chair
under the gentle sun
until tomorrow.

but most days chocolate indulgences and sugar-coated mistakes
leave me gasping, obese, on the pavement
staring at the ever-distant goalposts
as the sun sets.

i finally know where i’m going,
but I didn’t get there today,
or yesterday, or the day before, so
i’ll try again tomorrow.

(Stage Four, #3)

Complex Figures

I have begun a study
in the way minds merge and form in-jokes and lingo
in the whats and the whys and the hows of
each small choice.
of quirks and tics and weaknesses
the way you tilt your head when you smile;
the snack you always have at ten a.m.
the words that inflame you.
a study of each person and all of them together at once
and each possible community.

you’re people, and you’re more complex than worlds
and I want to read your words
and hear your voices
and be you

so never stop talking
because I know you have something to say
and I want to listen.

Horizons

the horizons here are lopsided –
the west looms and every night the sun
hides behind its peaks.
the rugged points stab life
into the empty sky and each gnarled tree
is a fighter.

to the east you can hold a paper up to the window
and use the horizon as a ruler.
the grass isn’t green, of course –
that would be too close to the
manicured lawns in the east.
here, people have pebbled yards
and evergreens.

the town we call a city is nestled
between the peaks and the plains but the wild isn’t fooled.
we live on the hills where two worlds merge,
and the pale grass and bare peaks are only beautiful
to those who wish to breathe clean dry air
and understand scale.

the mountains call.
the plains answer.

(Stage 2, #1)

Ink-stained Dreams

i think my favorite thing is getting lost in the woods
an indoor woods, structured with shelves and rows
and the Dewy decimal system that means every book
has a place
and i can find it

i love how the spines are mountains and the tops are ridges
and even in order they form an iridescent collage –
ideas, worlds, words, the same
twenty-six letters over and over again form
my teachers.

the silence doesn’t call my name here and
strangers’ eyes don’t judge
each book offers a warm hot-chocolate feeling
for me to sip through a straw
my throat is sore, and all i can manage
is a strangled thank you in return.

sometimes the paper-and-ink smell
bleeds into my dreams and sends me
wandering down endless rows
i stroke a spine and whisper
can i stay here forever?

(Stage 2, #2)

One Year

that year i was the tag-along of three
the latecomer, the one who walks behind
when there isn’t quite enough room on the sidewalk
(and there never is)

those two were lightbulbs – chandeliers
and my thoughts dimmed in comparison
they were the duo – they had all the in-jokes and memories
to prove it
and when group projects came around
of course they chose each other and I can’t blame them
even though i found having friends
doesn’t mean fitting in,
it wasn’t like i believed in magic anymore
and a surface-level two is still
infinitely more than zero.

i could have dug deeper but
there was no time
and i didn’t have a shovel anyways.

(Stage 2, #3)