z

Young Writers Society


heavy dreams & lofty responsibilities



User avatar
1227 Reviews



Gender: Female
Points: 147270
Reviews: 1227
Wed Apr 25, 2018 8:19 pm
View Likes
alliyah says...



Spoiler! :
thanks snowmonkey9! :)


Poem 32

living forward - 4.25.18

(this was more of just a fun poem where I challenged myself to use... all of the words I had put down for my "inspo" - this is not a great way to make a poem since it ends up being a bit like dictionary soup, but it was fun to write!)

i remember still what it is to want to be older
i guess i still relate to the desires with little foundation in truth
and the limited veracity that comes with false hope
that longed to be wise or in control or maybe
rejecting a false gasconade in favor of vituperations
my aspiration was only ever to know who i am
but i'm learning this discernment is not entrusted with age

i find now that age seems to be a piacular offense
and i'm only 22, but i look for lines in my face,
or grey worn threads from my scalp,
and feel my feet sinking into the grave
and the ambience of death is almost fitting
because who has time, who has time, who has time
becomes a mantra, and i don't know where i'm going
so i have sworn off catoptromancy
because i'm not sure what i'm looking for
and i dread not recognizing the reflection
or worse, knowing it, and seeing something false.

with virulence i run away from this self-searching
then cling to who i've been with a ravenous greed
and memories sprinkle like blood from a aspergillum
yet i find no atonement or clarity in them.
so i bask in the luculent flames of birthday candles
and wish i knew whose face they illuminate
or what it means to be an adult,
or what it means to live
when you're still reconciling with having lived
where do two stones meet and give
where in the mist of a past that grows and shifts
can we ever grow into the other direction of eternity?
you should know i am a time traveler &
there is no season as achingly temporary as now
but i have promised to return
  





User avatar
1227 Reviews



Gender: Female
Points: 147270
Reviews: 1227
Thu Apr 26, 2018 5:11 am
View Likes
alliyah says...



Poem 33

just let me write in dark cyan - 4.26.18


they told me that dark cyan
and teal were the same
like they would know
and anyways this is a poem
so the they is simply a figment of poetic invention
from which i might discuss my unsolicited opinion against,
but the point is they're different colors
and i'm not sure why it means so much to me

but they would know if they had ever written a poem
about the exact shade that the water catches
in the shadow of a wave that dark cyan and teal
are worlds and oceans and rain drops apart
and that i'll write rivers in the hue of heartaches
and dreams over winter sunsets in dark cyan a million times over
before i'd willingly choose to settle upon the one-syllabic
color that's only purpose might be an uninspired rhyme with eel

and anyways he always told me it didn't really matter
what we called the colors
and again this might just be a poetic invention to say
that i thought i loved someone who felt the world as if color-blind
and everything i felt or dreamt was painted a color he couldn't see
and there's these conversations that still ring wrong in my ears
because i don't think he ever saw the poetry in the sea
or pondered what memoirs the sun might write
and i know my veins may just be braided too tight in sentimentality
and maybe i make up colors for poetic cadence
because i am a hopelessly always hopeful romantic to a fault
but i don't think i can ever love someone
who doesn't understand that teal
is a different color than dark cyan.
you should know i am a time traveler &
there is no season as achingly temporary as now
but i have promised to return
  





User avatar
102 Reviews



Gender: Female
Points: 1846
Reviews: 102
Thu Apr 26, 2018 1:02 pm
View Likes
TheBlueCat says...



That last one is very pleasing, both to the eye and my brain. It made me think a little and ponder some things. Very, very nice <3
Unofficial Blue Cat of YWS =^-^=
she/her please <3
  





User avatar
1227 Reviews



Gender: Female
Points: 147270
Reviews: 1227
Sat Apr 28, 2018 5:33 am
View Likes
alliyah says...



Spoiler! :
Thanks TheBlueCat - dark cyan is my sub-theme for NaPo this year, I think this is one of my favorite poems - glad you enjoyed it! :)


Poem 34- 4.27.18

virulent

I do not know
what this word means;
I do not care.
you should know i am a time traveler &
there is no season as achingly temporary as now
but i have promised to return
  





User avatar
107 Reviews



Gender: None specified
Points: 9326
Reviews: 107
Sat Apr 28, 2018 8:30 pm
View Likes
Cadi says...



Congrats on making it to 30 poems! Glad to see you're keeping going with Bonus Poems! :D

#23 made me smile :D

#24 is superb, it has a really nice flow to it. I love the rhythm of this line, in particular:
but you inhale, exhale, live, and write, and breathe -


Also, #26 is properly hashtag-relatable - I've had that feel at parties. (Though in recent years I've managed to curate myself a social group full of people who also get that feel, which rather cuts down on the number of that kind of party I end up at!)
"The fact is, I don't know where my ideas come from. Nor does any writer. The only real answer is to drink way too much coffee and buy yourself a desk that doesn't collapse when you beat your head against it." --Douglas Adams
  





User avatar
1227 Reviews



Gender: Female
Points: 147270
Reviews: 1227
Sun Apr 29, 2018 5:46 am
View Likes
alliyah says...



Spoiler! :
Thanks Cadi! <3 And yes #26 was a bit hyperbolic, but at the same time a little bit *ugh* parties. :D


Poem 35

unnecessary author's note - I don't smoke, but the phrase fit in the poem so I went with it.

growing pains - 4.28.18

i remember carving scars out of their bedroom door
to see how much we'd grown in a year
and in seventh grade i think we stopped
because i was terrified that i hadn't grown at all
and if i hadn't gotten any taller, then i guessed, this was it -
so i've avoided looking at the top mark for years
instead running my hand over the scratches level with my heart
and wondering
when exactly does a person grow up
i wish there was some birthday, or landmark,
i could point to like candles in a cake
and say, here now, i will make no more wishes
because wishes are for children
and i am an adult
but i still make wishes, if not in frosted candles, sometimes in cigarette smoke and pay checks and phone calls and checking one more email
and sometimes on shooting stars or full moons
when i feel like a child

and i can remember the first time i really thought my parents were fallible
when he left, and she didn't quite have it all under control,
and i didn't know what family meant anymore
though i remember only through feelings held heavy in a child's grip
i don't mark those memories as the end of growing up
but maybe the beginning
and i'd like to think that maybe when i finally forgave him
because parents are fallible
and sometimes we inherit our parents' faults
and i don't want to inherit any of the bitterness
that maybe then was when i grew up
but forgiveness isn't once and done
it's every day
and sometimes i can't that day
because i had a parent that failed
and the cuts to the heart sometimes run too deep
so with gentle hands i trace those scars level with my heart
and trust that i'm not done growing.
you should know i am a time traveler &
there is no season as achingly temporary as now
but i have promised to return
  





User avatar
1227 Reviews



Gender: Female
Points: 147270
Reviews: 1227
Mon Apr 30, 2018 6:25 am
View Likes
alliyah says...



Poem 36

ehh this one's pretty mushy. one poem left for the month after this!

reassurance - 4.29.18

for a soul who starts all emotion in worry
i'm sometimes uneasy with contentment
when the wind is brisk, yet the sun warm,
and my hands are folded into yours.

tell me, tell me one more time
just so that i know, tell me, tell me
that you love me. and that you'll never go.


i more easily fill silence with doubt
for courage feels like miscalculated risk
but i think i trust you. and that
makes it almost possible to hope.

so tell me, tell me one time more dear,
whisper in my ear. tell me, tell me
if it's true, that you trust me too.
you should know i am a time traveler &
there is no season as achingly temporary as now
but i have promised to return
  





User avatar
1227 Reviews



Gender: Female
Points: 147270
Reviews: 1227
Tue May 01, 2018 3:31 am
View Likes
alliyah says...



Poem 37

Long Author's Note: I am stealing @Kaylaa 's idea from last year (Collage) because I thought it was a beautiful tribute to NaPo. I took all the titles from this year's NaPo threads and used a piece of them for this poem. It was a wonderful NaPo thanks everyone for sharing your poetry - I actually can say that I read most, if not all, of the threads this year and I thoroughly enjoyed it. An extra big thank you to @TheBlueCat @Cadi @bluewaterlily @killeham and @rosette and everyone who liked, left comments, or read my poetry! I so appreciate your support! :)

one more poem - 4/30/18

A month can leave so much and
so little behind. Between these brass tacks
and stray stitches of lines holding up life as we know it,
with memories forever sinking beneath us in an hourglass
and memories fading into words in another time,
what does it all mean when it's all said and done
when all I have to show for this journey to hell
and the sun and all the cracks in the galaxy
are just a few attempts at poetry, of panic on paper?

Let us search these poems or notes
from under mounds of existential disarray
of all our heavy dreams and lofty responsibilities
and read between the lines and squeeze out themes
like lemonade made from limes and desert rain.
There might be hideous attrocities and demons here
when you sort out cliches against
all the thoughts you wish weren't real,
but maybe in these metaphors
and hopeful commitments there's something
lingering in the footnotes that we might have joy.

All of life sorts itself out in this paradox of poetry
from the rising phoenix and sleeping dragon
we might discover nothing more than
flightless birds and lazy lizzards
and maybe it's all hyperbole from cosmic lattes
brewed in exotic coffehouse specials and
treasures rescued from beneath the foam and spray
nothing more than crab cakes,
but if you never wrote about magic forests
a farm could never be a garden of stars and cats.

So maybe these words are more than hopes and fears
or maybe our hopes and fears are more than words
or an anomolous playlist for travel on unfinished pilgrimages
for this thing they call wanderlust whether
we're falling down or falling up or vanishing
there is something about writing that is truth
and if truth is light, then poetry is everything
the light touches and fragments of little light
and even the man beneath the lamppost
or maybe just the streetlight devils.

And sometimes it feels like poetry
is just all the ghosts of our emotions wrapped into
words made from screams and
conversations with shame at five in the morning
I'm sorry and I would for you always and
we love our complaints about all the little things in life
and we fear we are just a lonely solivagant
with twisted steel and a broken spine
holding our own hands, hand in unloveable hand,
pleading with our poetry, let me be okay
and hoping though our hopes are strong as bubbles
that these characters can see you.

But at the end of the day I am doing NaPo this year
despite being so busy or so help me
because poetry is more than paradox
more than truth and more than stray emotion
and that is not to say that at the end of thirty spring days
that I expect to find greatness.
But in the heights of this metaphor
and run-on sentences that travel through
witching cites and a retaliation against all
formal forms of punctuation though
the purists might dance with counting syllables.
Poetry is like unembellished love
in the sky, in the water, love, love and so on
poetry is nothing more and nothing less
than breathing, than writing words and finding ourselves
and for that, we'll need more than luck.
you should know i am a time traveler &
there is no season as achingly temporary as now
but i have promised to return
  





User avatar
414 Reviews



Gender: None specified
Points: 31420
Reviews: 414
Tue May 01, 2018 3:34 am
View Likes
keystrings says...



I have loved reading your NaPo alliyah!
name: key/string/perks
pronouns: she/her/hers and they/them/theirs


novel: the clocktower (camp nano apr 24)
poetry: the beauty of the untold (napo 2024)
  





User avatar
32 Reviews



Gender: Female
Points: 2960
Reviews: 32
Tue May 01, 2018 4:52 am
View Likes
SnowGhost says...



Incredible job getting so many poems done!
Just killing time until time kills me.
  





User avatar
102 Reviews



Gender: Female
Points: 1846
Reviews: 102
Tue May 01, 2018 1:18 pm
View Likes
TheBlueCat says...



You're welcome! I have very much enjoyed your whole NaPo <3 That last poem is great! c:
Unofficial Blue Cat of YWS =^-^=
she/her please <3
  








Sometimes I'm terrified of my heart; of its constant hunger for whatever it is it wants. The way it stops and starts.
— Poe