Young Writers Society

The separation of church and state in Utah
is how Moroni, crowded by modern skyscrapers,
towers above the flimsy state capital building
in his square, blowing his horn over imposing spires
and marble office structures graced by a name
that I will always mistakenly call LSD,
particularly if I am tired, my eyes are leaden,
and my younger brother brandishes his new phone
in the eagerness of a modern selfie-taker
constantly seeking my attention,
as he has no one else to talk to or call or text.

I find that my only place in the world
is that of the dead, black-eyed animal that I saw
draped ungracefully on a road squeezed
by olive green mountains on one side, and the other
the asphalt leading up to the state capitol building,
listless head inches away from worn tires driven
by men and women with frayed nerves in place of coffee
and speed, as always, in place of grace;
Utah hospitality is sometimes hazardous to deer.

Nobody can find the truth emanating
from billboards smirking at drivers
and extolling their virtues to young passengers,
as though a war has been established
between them and their ghastly enemies.
They must look most affable and composed
as phone books fall upon the faithless
and tired phrases gasp in their weak lives,
crawling over the earth, unable to grasp a heaven
that is already inundated by their presence.

I flip off the sign and carry on with my faithless life,
deciding again that I am tired
of obnoxious proselytizing in the state of Wyoming,
and would rather not have to deal
with futile and desperate calls
that paint me as solely the object of conversion
in the works of thousands of the devout
that must demonstrate their undying devotion
in the modern version of human sacrifice.

I am not, nor ever was, the only person
to be walking down this empty highway,
peer above to lightbulbs dangling precariously
over my head, flickering between half-thoughts
and bad memories written in fudge icing
far above the sugary torrent of laziness
that raps my ears from below with a sharp stick
and rambles on about the nature of emptiness
as thought it is a philosophy professor,
or has read too much Nietzsche.

Yet I am cursed with near-sighted eyes
and a nose that twitches to bland smells
that bring mice contention when searching
for cheese in a maze for countless years.
There are no doors for me, no fellow soul
clasping my hand and leading the old lady
across a precarious and crushed road,
as I search for long-ago-made-moldy contention
that spews particles in my face
and drags me face-first along a lava-charred path.

Perhaps, if I am wrong, and I usually am,
that my current route is but a farce, shambles
dancing like torn spiderwebs in the wind;
If dreams of true peace did ever exist,
the route has been blocked by teachers
whipping my back with firm rulers
dotted by the impression of my face,
scaring me and forcing upon me
Pavlovian visions, as I stumble
into a chasm of my own conception,
whether or not I have ever looked down
and seen myself rising above my own bar,
choosing instead to stare up at grim faces
and think of myself as sunk to Hell,
perhaps where I belong.

We made your heart from clay:
my cousin was a professor of anatomy,
and we (a family, bonded by string and tension)
hoped that she could mold you
to ignore the blue ribbons of your imagination
and overlook the dragon breathing blue fire
to light your head ablaze with otherworlds
untouched by human hands or their tools,
singing your eyebrows and filling your lungs
with the water of mountain springs.
Though we warned you that you could drown on land,
time and time again you bounced back,
shedding ventricles and growing rosy curves
as you left us at the door with your hat
whirling like a UFO in the breeze behind,
laughing at the Sun beating down
and baking you into an adobe shell.

We feared when the priest came
and dipped you into the holy water -
don't let his soul become mud,
my mother pleaded in the operation room
as I wrung my hands on a sweaty towel
bleeding copiously in worry onto marble floors.
We had hoped you would stop coming
to that dreadful garden, complete with snakes
and tainted, blackened apples;
that we could drown your aspirations
beneath an increasingly-inky world
without letting you dissolve in the process.

Two years later, and I have seen your postcards
and they have always been lovely,
especially when you said, each time,
how you wanted to kiss me again,
burn my ebony cheek with your vivacity,
evoke in my that binding sword of faith
to pull me upwards to you.
Stop fearing, you cried to me,
I am not Christ, and never dream to be,
but I have lived and breathed worlds,
spewed the phoenix's ashes from my tongue,
and walked upon the water's surface,
so that you, Peter, might hold on
and let me carry you over the sea
to think in miracles again.

I shouted for you, clasped onto my rock
and could not pry my fingers away
from the seagulls squawking on either hand,
as much as I could let them go to follow you,
to float with them, never worry
that I might be struck down by a bolt
from a pagan deity, and drown.

These wings as my witnesses,
I am truly a poor flier, scorned
by trips to abandoned temples
from a mindscape once far younger,
but now littered with growing creases
and gray thoughts pouring in streams
challenged through ocher gullies
made like the way I parted my black hair
before I leaped from the cliffs
into what I'd hoped was a paradise
all those verdant years ago.

I am charred now, feathers blown away
by the air conditioner shooting tennis balls
in a dull rhythmic smack!
onto my back, hammering debts
and past failures like the mortars fired
onto soldiers at the beaches of Iwo Jima,
none lucky to see the first flag raising,
much less the second one,
but faced with the prospect of dying
from machine gun fire by mysterious spots
in the wilderness, incomprehensible
until too late.

And they have bound me
(I know not who or how, as my own self
threw it into an abyss long ago,
right after he'd pushed himself off)
by ropes to the walls,
so that I might smell my scorched wings
and know that it is no longer the time
to act out my melodramatic plays,
especially as this room has been locked
and the key stuffed down a bulldog's gullet;
nobody has come to see me,
apply ointment to my aching, scarred body,
and kiss me as I fall into sleep
beneath a clock that has turned into a grandfather
and, slowing down, threatens to stop altogether,
the hands holding a rope
that would kick the chair beneath my feet
and let the noose do its work.

Maybe I grow weary of this, he retorted
as the banisters were painted red and, one by one,
torn down from their hinges, scattering onto the floor
so that they could cover bodies splayed in circles
beneath the moon-sized clock timing the masquerade
with the precision of a reporter preparing
to put themselves to rest on live television.

And they never could remove the blood on his hands,
no matter how much they poured bleach on black scabs,
nor the way that his murderous whispers pierced their ears
and shattered the facade of gracefulness
that had held his scythes miles from reach;
so they resorted to trying him, pleading to the judge:
lead our kings
to the valley of gods forgotten
and let the sounds of shovels
pouring dirt over their graves
silence their howling at last.

That he might be entombed in the mountain
with the grace of a marble emperor disgusted her,
and so, under the vision of a starless night
that had given compliance to her schemes through tranquility,
she came to wrench the skull of the jackal from his body
and toss it into the wintertime,
shouting for none who could hear, or would ever,
save for the bloodstained man whose eyes
pierced the future, mouth echoing these words:
sic semper tyrannus, long live my mother,
and maybe I grow weary of this.

If I am ever to believe
you will dispel the darkness
that hovers about me patiently,
(slowly pouring into my arms
its inky, charismatic lies,
to warp my bones
into conducting grotesque animations
waiting for the moment when I have a snow globe
it can topple and leave shattered on the ceiling
as my piecemeal dreams of far-off cities float away,)
I must assume you are competent,
that you know how to wield the sword
strapped across your chest like the brace
against heavy oaken doors - perfectly ineffective
if one has a strong enough battering ram.

You have give me riveting stories
about the time you went to Notre Dame,
and imagined yourself as the homing pigeon
framed against stained-glass windows
as you perched atop a gargoyle spewing water
onto the earth below, delivering your message
on the virtues of life by stuffing the pipe.
I had no heart to tell you
that the message would be melted and torn through
by sulfuric gallons of sludge, and you were really
the hapless tourist, now an Internet sensation,
caught drenched in murky waves.

Sometimes, I wish for stone wings
to sprout from my back, deliver me
upwards into a sky where you, ironically,
are too rooted by your own weight to reach,
might stop choosing to strike me with your arrows,
or calling the growing scars across my chest
how Cupid felt upon his latest conquests;
and I want to grow a tail and impale you,
ask if he ever had a lover in pain,
lift you into the sky and fling you down,
so that your thud into a quarry
worn through by water, dynamite, and good intentions
might be in tune to the drips of acid rain
scarring my eagle-eyed face
to leave the impression of a snake lashing out
as I pursue my NYCs and LAs
to the pagan deities above, whom I hope
might bless my venture, carry me upwards,
and cast my fleeting figure into the heavens forever.

you can never forget the way the ground shakes
and crows scream and flap death into the air,
as pools of water bubble beneath your feet
while your neighbor tosses the black cat out his window
before sinking into the earth and crossing himself
in the hopes that the devil will find him unappetizing
and spew him out in the sphere of flame growing
like Parícutin around the lake that you stepped upon
as a child, when the world revolved around
and cleared rose petals in your path,
declaring that your heart is truly made of clay,
molded and baked into adobe perfection, and reality
must bend around your slender frame,
contemplating divinity and its magnificent presence
in you.

and then here you remember the girl who lived by the lakeshore
and placed her canaries on the shore, they hopping,
singing sweet melodies of saltwater taffy eaten
in a park guarded by fire-eaters not far from Salt Lake City,
where she had invited you to sit, caressed your cheek
with slender fingers that accidentally scratched your face,
and asked you ever so dreamfully, beside the blue-green watertower,
"I will cross the greatest ocean for you, and I will drown
if you command it; or, if you have sunk yourself
by the anchor of your desperation, I
will share your burden, or rise to the shore
to gather what my bony hands might not in vain grasp,
so you say no longer that we lack any sand dollars."

and your feet are stuck in the earth, you are struggling
vainly to see her face, though you know she is already dead;
piercing blue eyes maddeningly hopeless against the tsunami
that picked up her house, blew apart her canary's cages
and dragged her dead body into a tree, flimsy arms
clasping onto a tree branch attached by only splinters
to a tree attached by only pieces of roots
to a rock attached by only granules of stone and mud
to the earth that has lost all sense of direction or gravity.

and you scream silently as you hear her ghostly music
joined with the sobs of yellow canaries soaring just above her
emanating from the distance, blending into the shining sun
that embraces your feet and shatters their tombs.
the flowers are weeping now, the children are sobbing now,
the milkman spills his wares, sets his bike down, and prays;
and on and on they shout as you hover above the earth,
we must sing, we must create our finest noises
with a fervor twice, thrice, far more than we have ever before,
because today is the very last day we will sing forever.

A few days ago you were pedantic enough to remind me
that there is no such thing as the smell of metal;
only those interactions and confrontations that took place
on a surface scarred by the air, torched by the water,
as though trapped on a battlefield too hardy to die,
could ever count towards the notes emanating
in the abandoned apartment building in Sarajevo,
where you had come for the patronage of the Bosnians
and had left among the bombs of the Serbs.

Sometimes I wonder if you are a ball of yarn,
woven together by an aging man who refused to believe
that his reality would always be discordant, disconnected,
and had been poisoned by randomness and loose ends.
Your feelings are ties to history, touching childhoods
spent gracefully swimming in the icy water in Crimea,
back when your mother still held you in her arms,
your father warned out about the ships looming overhead,
and your brothers wanted to grow up to be doctors
in the hopes they might heal something other than a Russian winter
none of you could escape from until the red flags fell.

And the number of times you forcefully grabbed me,
pulled your large forehead and tiny eyes,
the latter guarded by gigantic horse’s blinders,
have convinced me that you consider me your Paul.
Should I now go to Anatolia, peruse Greek temples,
and contemplating how I might stand in the Ganges
to order it to follow your saintly path? What will you do
when my feet inevitably are knocked aside,
and my body crumples like used tissue paper
by the frenetic arms of playful spirits in the water
who leave me to drown in their energetic games,
forgetting that I had ever had a heart, a soul,
or something to call my own – I had given everything else
to you.

I was laughing on the shores,
pelting seagulls with rocks as I taunted
their weak-wiled escapes and cries,
long before I stepped into the Boston pub,
and looked both ways before I crossed the floor
to sit down in faded wood by the bar,
nodding in a lolling, rhythmic motion
(to the tune of Le Marseillaise in my head)
to the bartender as I unsteadily walked,
leg bruised by the one time a bird
fought back.

On the TV above me, as I saw, they were speaking
in hushed and foreign tones about a disaster
that had plagued a beautiful lake
eons in time and thousands of kilometers from my face,
and almost as distant in my foggy mind;
and here, as the reports coming in tell us,
there was a young man found running, crying
and evading authorities as he zoomed far away -
apparently hovering above the lacerations of the earth -
heading towards a once-charming home on the lakeshore
while carrying a shovel and claiming to be looking
for the body of not his beloved, but dear to his heart.

The bartender stared his thick, world-weary face
into my eyes, and told me, over the sounds
of the reporter recounting the entire stories
made by thousands of lives bulldozed by concrete;
"don't come to me with your sob stories, young man,
not while you come to me on the Sabbath
and order a Bloody Mary - you strike me
as the kind of person who would dig up the dead,
and use their bodies in your Dias de Los Muertos masquerade,
exaggerating the violence and cruelty of your life,
rather than give them respect to anybody
that may have handed you a lit candle in the past."

I stood up, finished my drink, and raised my hand
to my black eyepatch, a blooming flower drawn upon it,
and said to the man, as tears began to drip
from my sole eye - "I cannot see half of the world,
and I always wished I could."
And then I do not remember what happened next,
except that they told me I was carried away
by the alcohol, my life, and the police officer alike,
and had taken to alternating between laughing hysterically and shouting
"If you put something in my drink, I swear to God,
I will kill you again."

These understated moments
drip between us, like the IV
hanging over your shoulder -
sodium, potassium, water,
and all those elements needed
to keep an unwilling soul alive,
and nothing more -
as you sit in the hospital bed
with your hands on a notebook
and your mind that of the piano player
rapidly shifting between scales downstairs;
ever-searching for a pearl clamped
in the mouth of a stubborn clam
along the shores of Acapulco, or
enjoying the sights while searching
for the prize.

"It's a drawing of the two of us,"
you say while turning on a lamp
for the second-to-last time in your life
and opening up the notebook to a page
waterlogged by many sleepless nights
marked in the dates you wrote on the side
(April Fools': he is here again, and
he's brought cream pie
with my landlord's eviction notice,
trying to convince me it's the latter
that's fake).

And I see nothing on the paper,
save for a black-and-white sketch of a boy
holding a balloon with a string suspended upwards,
with tiny pair of upside-down arms clapsing them,
or, in other words, a boy holding a balloon upside down
as his feet take him off the ceiling
and send him spiraling downwards,
the right-side-up one waving and jumping in the air
as they prepare to unite, docking their ships
in the annals of a sky I wish is azure
and bright around them, rather than two children
huddling together in the mutual crisis
of family flames.

"May you have more balloons in your life,"
he says, voice growing dimmer,
as though he's on a train now leaving its station
and leaving the packed, frowning boy behind,
he having failed to scream enough at the conductor
to let him on, or the keep the other one off.
He turns off the light and bids me adieu,
but, indecisively, flicks it on again
and hands me his book.

I must question why I am now here,
feeding bruised and bloody seagulls
while my toupee has flown away
to revel in its synthetic black glory
along beaches littered with needles and combs,
leaving my long auburn hair to flow
as a target for the child sitting behind me,
the one eating cotton candy, flicking me
in the back of the head.

Wanted posters litter the streets
in the faces of dirty young bums
asking where their childhood dog went,
or where the apple pies (with ice cream
left to cool on the windowsill in those days
spent traipsing among tall, old trees
and corn fields), where those had all gone,
and if somebody could dig into their minds
to pull out something other than ennui.
The kid walked sloppily aside me,
stuffing a banana in his face eagerly
before devouring a sundae, as a man
with a huge metal cross strapped to his back
walked across the street, avoiding drivers
shipping rotten meat back to Chicago,
poisoned water back to Flint,
and large magnets back to Berkeley.

"I know he died long ago," I said,
as I looked at his weathered clay face
squinting at me from beneath piles of hair
and deep crevices surrounding his eyes,
"and had been reborn only recently,
but his life after death was uneventful,
and somebody had to start breathing
for me." The man nodded,
hovering just inches above the ground,
and comment on how we are all affixed
to something, as we simply cannot live
by ourselves, lest we go mad
and envision the sun encasing us
in a 4-by-4 70% watery prison to swelter in
until we perish, bury us in an open grave
slowly becoming earthen with the ages,
and let the worms be our morticians.

Beaches are not my favorite places to visit,
especially as I standing watching the Navy sailing away
from my newfound home in the deserts of Syria;
I had returned to them on what I thought was April 11th
smelling of gunpowder, helmet bashed into camo pulp,
suit torn and scratched (but otherwise mostly undamaged)
and a few teeth knocked out of my mouth,
but otherwise grinning madly with my bruised carbine
as I walked up to the sergeant and saluted,
only for him to turn around, frown, sigh,
and place a hand on my shoulder.
"I see dead people."