Young Writers Society

I



my poetry
isn't as good as it once was

it's riddled with age
the edges wrinkling in corners
the bone frail and weak

I long for the days where
it was once tall and beamed of emotion
(the day's I was once proud of it)


II

if two butterflies flap their wings
does a tsunami happen on the other side of the world?
or does the butterfly's actions' remain unnoticed

this feeling
(this anxiety)
is common throughout history
and yet we never wonder
are we the butterflies
or the stomach they reside in?

III



a young
(well-off) boy
sits in his living room, waiting for his father to arrive home
he sits and he sits, but his mother
(once young and beautiful)
picks him up and reminds him
his father is out of town

"I hate this place and I hate you! I just want daddy!"

can you hear the mothers heartbreak?
can you see the tears
that swell up in her eyes-
that she wipes away in a seconds notice
to stop the boy from noticing?



IV

four candle sticks hang together
from a church's chandelier
drip
drop

the candles are lit
one by one
but seemingly burn down
at the same time

the four candles
live their life together
watching each other melt down

drip
drop

watching the wax
slowly drip to the floor
to mix with the ash
of the burning church


V
five men were given a path
to follow if they chose

one was the path of hardship and vigor
the life of a farmer
daylight to dusk he broke his back
to feed his three children
and his wife
(who in the end)
left him for another man
the bank broker down the street

the second was given the path of fame and fortune-
an esteemed movie actor

he lived his life in loneliness
a feeling the alcohol
and the women could never cover up

the third and fourth were given similar paths

the older of the two joined the military at a young age
and spent his first eight years of adulthood across the world

and came back to the States
to be despised and hated
shamed for his part in the war
no one saw the point of

the younger brother bore witness
and sympathized with his brother
and when the time came
and the elder couldn't take it anymore
the younger brother took his life
and held it in his hands
and crushed it upon request

the final brother was given the path of a Poet

his life was filled with sadness, emptiness, and despair
(but instead of taking it from himself)
he would write in his notebook
and describe each scene as if it were a movie
and when the time came
he gave his notebook to his own children
and greeted death as an old friend
whom he'd described many times
(almost accurately)

.....ooooooooEEEEUUUUUUOOOOOGAAAAAAAEEEEEEUUUUGGGHHHHH......

That is a metaphor for a whale,
presumably swimming or sinning,
but not beached.

Beached whales
omit odors in a sixty mile radius,
and while the sandcastle I've built
smells like blood and fried chicken,
nothing can be dead if
it still has a beating heart.

Dipping fries in the foam of a root beer float,
this is our way of reaching a fair trade agreement;
if I concede to eels being natural tyrants
in the hierarchy of the Sea Kingdom,
you get to dress my paper
with dastardly bastard loops
that exclaims your excitement
about the Seven Deadly Fins.

Beached whales, for example,
commit gluttony and sloth
for "eating too many beans",
but if it had eaten its own heart,
it would have committed suicide.

I'm feeling your wrath
with a loving affliction,
if my unenthused face says anything
other than confusion and panic.

The whale's heart is still beating
whether or not there's a gaping hole
in the side of its body.

xiii-b. patchouli

there are days i live for patchouli oil--
or the memory of it soaking your hands.
the sound of autumn wind brushing the curtains,
the assumed aura of candles--golden--flickering on wick's end.
patchouli, you are the warmest of beauties--
and the feel of your hands on my shoulders
calms me, grounds me, in memory at night.

the strings that tie my heart together
are slender and fragile and elastic:
sliding back and forth like the tides
that echo the sea’s secrecy;
hiding the opaque depths where
neither time nor light ever exists;
swallowing the burnished sands
whose transparency shines true.

... Ever After"

I swallow, choke, on candy drops
the praise of Pops
rejects my blood
and torments flood.

My brain consumes the flowers whole
a vomit bowl
the end, my thanks,
in empty tanks.

I am a negative by plus
resulting puss
my lepric plea
no "Happily ...

squall and away

in west suwon, rumbles of
strong wind . burnblack clouds . water in the air .
every bone, each ligament wakeful for the storm

but sinister, insidious
a different storm has come and gone
trees downed , eyes downed , hearts downed //
drowned . storm drains fail and flood,
throats caught full of fall leaves crushed

tamped down grass and trampled thirst.
gas mains break and char from toes
to stifled chest - calescent as each moment,
examined for tender spots, is discovered
to crumble to ash . in shaking palms.

sifting . . .

ashen air . burnblack clouds . lights gone out
of eyes and lives

april is the cruellest month
and here the dead are burned.

Had our pioneers reappeared on the horizon
and tromped their way across the endless plains
that had defined their arduous journeys in the past,
those few of us still living among acres of corn
would've complained about hooves trampling our crop
and foul-smelling men dragging broken wagons to our restaurants
to sample the wares hungrily and pay in outdated, useless cash;
fortunately, with every old house or shed or farm
that is bulldozed by two hundred thousand dollar equipment,
we shed the husks of our past and leave them scattered
across the remains of corn-covered farmers and animals
boring visitors traveling through the state of Kansas
as we hide ourselves further within amber embraces.

I decided I'd rather not join generations of bodies
in an iron-fenced cemetery by small town America,
so I left fifteen years ago, when the world was still alive
and the politics were uncomplicated (all I was supposed to know
was that the best color for the world was red, even if blue
nibbled at the far-off California and New York, thriving
in the weakness of city slickers) and I was still young,
inspired by our neighbors sending us a stream of postcards,
flooding images of Portugal and Mali and Russia
through our door and atop the cat, who, like my mother,
cowered in the corner as they arrived.
I had never used my brain as much as I did when I stared
and imagined myself on the White Cliffs of Dover,
standing with my arms open wide like the Redeemer
as I shouted my name in a dull echo across the landscape,
my heart composed of electrical strings and lightbulbs
that resisted the oil fire when those fortunate individuals
stepped into Kuwait for the first and the last time,
the creek running dry.

It was then that I thought of myself as an explorer
searching for a lake in the midst of an ancient forest
guarded by rocky hills, gentle slopes, and overbearing air
manifesting itself in specters that would hold me
by the arms and ankles so that I might eat my own dust
and, bleeding, spit it out in a chewed pulp, reddening the trail
with gums and pieces of teeth worn through with determination,
which I hoped would take me to the top of the green mountain,
as though the sheer contradiction might lead a lady
to pop out from the water and hand me a brilliant sword,
or an angel would descend from the sky to hand me tablets
to spread yet another message in a typhoon-laden sea,
the former as likely to be ripped to shreds and consumed
as it was to pierce the soul of any man, woman, or child;
I was willing to take the risk for the glory.

Except now I still struggle as I crawl up the side,
hoping that I will not freeze to death in the winter winds
(now I no longer look for the mystical lake, as it stretches
above my head, looming upside-down and infinitely far away
as it leers and taunts me while I weep in fright and search
for a good cave)
and leave my body forever preserved, like Everest victims,
to be pointed to by strapping young men in hiking boots
strolling up the hill as they internally list mistakes and errors
written across the wrinkled, frozen face and bloody hands,
as though to a crowd of enigmatic tourists with smartphones:
he waited too long, he left too early, and there was nobody
left to wave him goodbye.

deleted

smile for you

[i can't bring it upon myself
to taunt your cat with a
laser pointer again, now
that i know the feeling.]

i miss your quiet eyes,
how they put a finger to
my lips when i worried
if you were thinking about
what he did to you.

i miss you, and i know
this thought is unrequited,
but can we talk sometime?

i miss your dusky hair that curled
at the tips, how you rarely spoke,
and made every word that came out
from those pale lips important;
something i could never do.

i could come over, we could
watch Ouran together, curled up
on your threadbare couch.

i could hold your hand and
trace the lines in your palm
with a single finger, creating
tsunamis, just like you told me to.

without my reveries of
what we could be, you
are happy as you are.
his arm around your
shoulder, and i will
smile for you.

Leisure kills

This was a rude summer
where the flies nestled in your ear
practicing poker and leaving their pickings,
and you quoted by them a sonnet of
the world you came from-

a landscape
of women barefoot on balconies
and spinning umbrella dresses
for the storms in your mind.

Tell me,
were you that dead inside?
For the maggots are now gambling
for that heart of yours, that one
they carved out of your shame
to build new summer homes.