Young Writers Society

xxvii. the flautist

state lines away, where you can argue
that kansas city does not belong in a place that sounds miserable
or on a miserable river there simply
lives a flautist
who is you
though if i'm honest beyond apprehension
and describe you as being deserving of wings
customized to your liking of course
there's no telling where in the world you could have flown
there are days i write letters to myself
and i think of those i penned to you
you penned to me
the ones i forgot between move
and move
and move
and how you always surprised me with neon in the mail pile
i still don't think all the smiles were covers
all the laughs tarot lies to an unread beginner

i always expected to remember you
looooong after our clock unwound

i never expected you to be so good
at cards against humanity

xxviii. pound of flesh

(you're 80, it's time to forget a few things)
from the mind that taught me to write
and sing and cook drips a shimmering red mercury.
we agree to agree so there is no harm.
says the beautiful woman:
he is my husband born again
and so i am married to the man
i married, and not the man who
left thirty-five hundred times
in thirty five years.

(you're 80, it's time to forgive a few things)
immense stress causes damage to synapses and though
you may not acknowledge it,
the man you visited in rehab, who received calls
from a mistress in georgia, was the man you married;
but you love him, and it is inspiring and devastating,
and with back turned i cannot find the balance between the two
to properly describe your life - our lives -
because no one pays their pound of flesh for what's given but us,
if no one shows equivalent exchange,
the prospect of the blood price
ever looms nearer.

xxix. choir boy

from your bedroom window we
for hours because
creek was dry
said to you

i don't know
don't know
where i am

and neither does anybody.

you take me by the hand and you spin me through frozen stars.
here are quadrillions of hydrogen atoms
that have, for eternity, burst apart in your name;
just to lead us onto a dusty summer road.
turn your ear from me and you'll hear the dissonant orchestra:
for you i've arranged them all in the key of C-minor.

and i listen, eyes closed, to the cicadas singing elton john
in cicadian rhythm: i hope you don't mind -
i hope you don't mind - that i put down in words
how wonderful life is while you're in the world.

i didn't mean to sing along, choir boy, because i know i can't;
but not to see you at the end of the song--
i don't know where i am.

@Lumi, that last poem is so lovely and haunting. These lines are so beautiful:
"you take me by the hand and you spin me through frozen stars.
here are quadrillions of hydrogen atoms
that have, for eternity, burst apart in your name;"

The repetition of the statements "i hope you don't mind" and "i don't know where i am" are really effective too, and just leave this tone of being kind of lost in this world but at the same time the speaker and reader are grounded by what's in the world (ie. the stars, the music, the cicada, the choir boy). Lovely piece!

xxx. walk away; recover

you--
the heart refusing to be all but broken;
where the hell did your spirit go?
you are broken in the mourning,
you are broken in the sheets,
and you would be broken at the altar if you were so merciful.

islands form naturally when the magma (within the earth
but beneath the sea) extricates itself from its superheated catatonia.
and you may yell back from this part of the ocean
no man is an island! i am not your metaphor!
and i say

you begin to recover the moment you say
'i don't think this is working.'

so you, the man who writes letters to himself by the night, know
that someone
someday
will read them.

Congrats on finishing NaPo!

I don't think I've ever reviewed anything of yours, mainly because I have nothing constructive to say. You're just too good. Looking at these last few, I think "pound of flesh" was my favorite, though I liked parts of "choir boy" too.