Young Writers Society

#14

Night vision is black
with ground soft underfoot
and the milky way unpolluted.

This here is the fairy bridge,
amongst moors
and heather burnt black.

To give secrets requires more
than a record button
and six sets of feet.

The car idles,
seatbelt caught in the door
and glove compartment cables.

Is that a trick of the light
or an orb
and a flicker of wings.

Whatever you do,
Don’t step inside the ring.

#15

Down tilted cobbles,
past bent backed barns.
A dog yaps on the corner,
leash worn into place on a down pipe.
Crates of glass bottles
clink fresh where they are
cleaned of the sea.
Behind murky panes
this is a shop for the curious
and a shop of curiosity.
The owner wishes a faint
Hello, it’s a chilly day with the wind.
Mind the mismatched china.
These clothes hold the scent
of another
And these drawers
open and full to spilling
of memories for sale.

#16

Never ask who they are,
or open the door too wide.
It’s the pieces of you that go missing,
it’s the past delivered
in a lesson
a legend,
contained in a family of four.
If you feel someone watching,
is it the future looking back
or a whispered bed time story.
How can I trust what you told me
when you don’t believe it,
when you don’t exist.
Except in the kitchen,
where damp sags the ceiling
and the cats kick up litter.

#17

Pure shite,
amirite?
Proper raging.
Cannae get the words oot.
Dae ye ken?
This poem just
isnae coming.
It’s a wee skelf,
giving me the boak.
Or a bairn,
Carrying on
to its Mammmy.
Pure pish,
amirite?

Aye.
It is like.

#18

Behind the house, out of the close and up the hill,
The grip of tires or the tug of a leash
Leads you to the open fields of a city.
Tadpoles languish in puddles cracked and ready to dry.
Safety comes in an open jar, the curiosity of a child.
Grass perfect for hiding, tops the heads of siblings.
The collie bounds, finds them, loses them again.
At home the father is fashioning wooden swords.
The mother shakes out the frame tent.
Tomorrow a medieval banquet and tournament.
Today knees and elbows are skinned from the hill home
And the dog sleeps soundly by the fire.

#19

It’s nice to be nice.
But for whom?

The aging man
Born of antagonism,
Spits carrying words
Meant for another.

The contractor
Perennially overloaded,
Promises a handful of tomorrows
That never come.

The friend
In desperate need
Of a shoulder, of opinions
Never reciprocated.

The Stranger
Amongst other strangers,
Friendly and engaging
But without space.

It’s nice to be nice,
But who will be nice to me?

#20

She likes to sit
beneath the yew tree
and wonder.
Not to the hills
crowding the cottage
or the red phone box
with no one to make calls.
She wonders about dwarves
and elves
and why her hand is stained black.
She wanders lined pages
and rolling hills of words
and trips on the snap of graphite.
Only the crunch of gravel
rouses her
and she wonders
if it’s time for tea.

#21

Scotland lives in the greenhouse
that houses tantrums with tomato vines.
If she looks through moss frosted glass,
cows with wings peck the lawn in groups.
Home can be wherever you are left
but inside is the woman who has always been old
and faces raw from bedtime cold water.

#22

Tell me stories. Unprompted. Often repeated.
You’re four years old and the station is clogged with steam.
There’s a white shirt. Mischief. Trailing fingers.
You watch from your father’s arms as your brother wipes soot down his front.

Tell me about the war. Again. Be lost.
You’re eight years old and the woods are thick with night.
There’s laughter. Planes. Spun arms.
You have a thick ear when returning home—those were German planes.

Tell me about my family. Always. Carry on.
You’re eighty four years old and you miss him.
There’s a loss. Nostalgia. A father.
You tell me he would’ve loved us, his great grand children.

Write your stories down. Lovingly. With happiness.
You’re old and you say it every phone call.
There’s no time. Aches. Misty eyes.
You say you will and we won't say those words—before it’s too late.

#23

Lullaby of synth,
and grainy 35mm.
The ground opens
with demons
defeated by
content purring,
squashed in the middle.

Dipped mattress
with Sunday fatigue
and three separate breaths.
The monster is defeated
but slumber creeps
and no one is afraid
of what's under the bed.

#24

Let me tell you about ghosts.
We have many.
I’ll pull you in with my cloak,
the promise of a night time walk.
To the graveyard to be sure.
The graveyard.
I lull you in with fictional characters
on gravestones.
The tale of a dog,
too loyal even to leave its dead master.
Place a toy.
Take a photo.
And I will take you to the jail.
Prisoners of religion or persecution
or both.
Locked in even after death.
No one walks here during the day.
No one is allowed.
If you were knocked off your feet by nothing
you would lock the crime scene away too.
Tonight only
(and every other night)
I will take you to the black tomb.
A poltergeist lives here.
It likes to scratch.
To scare.
To push and throw its weight around.
As it did in life.
I’ll pull you in closer and say,
This poltergeist was buried deep,
till a homeless man fell on its bones.
And then, I say, tone low to a whisper,
Come close, and closer still—
You scream.
The masked man? I laugh. He’s a friend of mine.
Just a bit of fun.
Then who's that in the corner.

Let me tell you about ghosts.
It's always fun.
Until it isn't.

#25

She climbs the ladder forwards with gripped toes.
and snaps the art away.
Damp makes colours bleed across splattered floorboards.
And sometimes she hears her named called
but not by anyone alive.
Mother works and bathes in the tower
and finds men who speak in a tongue that is hers but isn’t.
She doesn't care about the cracked shells
of the dead littering the path to the door.
Their shed is a battleground for rats.
At least that’s what the one eyed bunny told the girl.
He doesn’t know there are rats inside too,
looking out of sawdust tanks.
Some nights a man called Pig swings from the banister.
Whatever she tries she can’t make him leave.
She thinks he likes his costume a little too much
but he teases the bared teeth and is surprised when they sink in.
Father often tells her a cat is trapped under the floorboards.
When his tread creaks the hallway she hears the cry
and she's sure it’s really the hole in his shoe.
It never stops him looking.
In the attic there are encyclopaedias from 1865.
The girl has never read them but they’re not for sale.
She wouldn’t like to spend over 100 years next to spiders.
When the fireworks explode close to the house
her dogs hide atop vinyl records in the cupboards with no doors.
But at least they won’t get skewered by a rocket.
One night the outbuilding went up in flame,
lighting up the net curtain that watches another window.
She found her brother in the alley in full fatigues.
He left is sword inside but he has his torch and the embers in his hair.
If helicopters circle there’s trouble.
Someone hopped the back gate this way.
She remembers her father’s face
when he saw a pale face in a dark night
on the other side of glass.
In Westbrook many things can happen,
will happen,
and often happen.
But she sleeps amongst rainbows and clouds
beneath a tiled sky
and she’ll miss this when it’s gone.

#26

In the bleak morning
Over Rice Krispies
And routine
I’ll say I didn’t sleep
Because they kept walking through
But didn’t use the door.

#27

The signal is dead.
Mountains have other ways
to speak.
They pull stories
from the soles of boots.
Lines on a page,
in circles and dashes.
Trails that can’t be paths,
paths that are cut for tripping.
This isn’t their voice.
It was crudely and rudely made for them.
They have ways to hide
the already hidden ridges.
Tarns that wait
around rocky outcrops.
And without the village
at your back or
strangers dripping in heather,
the mountains will trick you
into a long conversation.

#28

It’s never easy to admit
the depth of inadequacy
that sits hollow inside,
everyday.
I hate myself
is always said
with a breezy smile
on the edge of a joke.
Handily it hides
each and every way
this is true.