Young Writers Society

#16: cyrano

there are no curtains to part
but the lights dim to black
and there he is.
I am enamoured immediately,
art in performance, in line and gesture,
until the love of him is painful,
I weep.
but it is silent sadness full of knowledge
and understanding that carries with me.
the play must end - cyrano must end -
and with him the realisation of lyric value.
when he ends so does a part of me
and so we lie together in our spaces
of unrequited performance.

#17: pallindrome

this was not the deal.
the shuddering mistake lying
perpendicular to our hallway,
it formed on its own
and we found it by accident -
almost entirely purely happenstance -
crawling piteously from the attic.
what does one do with this formless
formation, when it gurgles to life
on the evening we are going to dinner?
so we left it there
gathering footprints and dna
from between the smooth floorboards
until we returned to find it once more
grown large and imposing;
our iniquity come home.

#18: pagliacci

i became someone else last night.
i don't know her name
but i heard her calling out at midnight,
echoing in the corridor between my room
and the front door. i see it there,
the yellow heavy door with its cut glass window,
that's where the new me stood.
she stood in heeled boots and fine dress,
looking like someone else even again,
and i wanted to reach out to her and say
- what do you say to someone who used to be you?
how do you look at her and see yourself
(the echo of cut glass in your cheekbones, your smile)
and it isn't the mirror looking back at you,
and i suppose that's what we take away,
she isn't looking back at you
because you're not there.

#19: freedom everywhere

they lie on steel clad boots,
the rest is lies
and the light from heaven's moon
makes all well again.

#20: out loud

in some moments the music sings,
and i'm shouting to the rooftop
with my favourite characters
(not always the kindest)
and aching to have something else,
more ursula than ariel in the summer months,
thieving the things you cannot earn,
and wondering when the karma turns.

#21: momentary

into my arms, oh lord,

the weight of the world
sinks desperately onto atlas
and anchors him there,
proud man bent forward.
this is legacy unbound,
the realisation of time
coming around for one more year
and we lay at the bottom
of that bridge when we get to it,
ready for the swell to take
all our gains away.

#22: the things we left behind

pantheons belong in open doors,
their endless columns an upset
to the laquered hardwood floors,
in stately respite they incline
toward the ground, growing closer
by the well wined moment.

this i watched from my seat
beyond the open courtyard,
a hidden place behind the trees
and situated in warm comfort,
and i lingered there til my limbs were long,
when the world invited me in
to laquered doors and leaning floors
and a space that never seemed to end.