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Young Writers Society


to hell and back again



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Sun Apr 15, 2018 3:20 am
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Rosendorn says...



you go to your parents' place
to clear out the key threads of your life
and weave them back into a tapestry
free of their warp; you find your degree
in your mother's client room, achievements
not hers on display (what else is new) but
you dig through the closet and
a drawing you had given your father is
shoved in a box beside an art book
bent almost beyond repair, yours
cast aside behind closed doors. reassurance
they actually did like it but curtains
covered its old hanging spot come too quickly
for you to believe it, not completely, not when
any picture she liked was kept out and moved
immediately after it no longer fit

you go home and try to hold trembling hands taut
the threads you were working with cut much shorter
than you remember

— April 14, 2018
A writer is a world trapped in a person— Victor Hugo

Ink is blood. Paper is bandages. The wounded press books to their heart to know they're not alone.
  





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Sun Apr 15, 2018 7:11 pm
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Rosendorn says...



your life is a shattered stained glass window
dug into your skin, driven into your soul(ar
plexus), knots in your stomach turning
to blood stained sand pushing deeper into wounds
until you do not know how to breathe anymore,
diaphragm locked and ribs frozen, old colours
forgotten along with the pattern destroyed
from jealousy, nobody else wanting to see
what used to grace the halls of a church
dedicated to the love you were supposed to receive

your best friend always called herself a magpie
gathering up shiny things others had discarded
after no longer seeing their worth

— April 15, 2018
A writer is a world trapped in a person— Victor Hugo

Ink is blood. Paper is bandages. The wounded press books to their heart to know they're not alone.
  





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Tue Apr 17, 2018 2:00 am
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Rosendorn says...



an unfinished love poem or
a refusal to see humans as interdependent,
"alone" tattooed on the underside
of your tongue, forgotten but always
there, ready to slip out with a plethora
of "that's not worth it"s, where "that" is
your family, not the blood in your veins, or
the one person who has kept you alive
when "that" was existing, or

how if someone were to ask you
to define family, you wouldn't truly have an answer
or

a realization you have been using
the wrong logic pathways and love is
addition instead of multiple choice
where only one is correct

— April 16, 2018
A writer is a world trapped in a person— Victor Hugo

Ink is blood. Paper is bandages. The wounded press books to their heart to know they're not alone.
  





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Tue Apr 17, 2018 8:26 am
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Cadi says...



Throughout all of these, you're using wonderful imagery to communicate some really emotive stuff. In particular, the images in the poem for 15th Apr (your life is a shattered stained glass window are incredibly vivid; and I love the poem for 2nd Apr (memes teach statistics better) - using such a well-known meme to drive home a really painful experience.
"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
  





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Wed Apr 18, 2018 3:13 am
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Rosendorn says...



( @Cadi I should note that the stained glass imagery from that poem is actually borrowed from a conversation I was having with the best friend cited, and the metaphor was hers xP I just ran with it)

-

your soul is a wine cellar, collecting bottles
of fear you distilled, aged in barrels until
they burst and you learned to collect
dirt and whisky in coloured glass so nobody
could see what was inside, a stronger container
you could lay on its side and stack to the rafters
alcohol leaking through corks until the air
feels like it could explode even if
you opened a window; you know how dangerous
it is with an open basement, a crawl space
akin to a bomb always getting jostled as
new furniture comes in, an attempt
to build something in a crypt

at least you know if you light a match
it will be hot enough to burn the bones

— April 17, 2018
A writer is a world trapped in a person— Victor Hugo

Ink is blood. Paper is bandages. The wounded press books to their heart to know they're not alone.
  





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Thu Apr 19, 2018 3:20 am
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Rosendorn says...



scarcity is a concept you
wish you were unfamiliar with. not just
government dragging feet on paycheques
but the concept of worth, a financial
gain measured out with factors
that were never truly clear to you,
unsteady work from your father
a fact of life that always had to be
accounted for, a bunch of dreams
invested in with courses that took
your mother away too often and you
too flighty to ever place bets on
and it seemed that everything you wanted
did not bring enough value except
sometimes it did

(but you do remember one lesson:
a child that traps you in a marriage you hate
is not worth it; you have wondered why
your parents didn't divorce
since you were 5)

— April 18, 2018
A writer is a world trapped in a person— Victor Hugo

Ink is blood. Paper is bandages. The wounded press books to their heart to know they're not alone.
  





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Fri Apr 20, 2018 3:34 am
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Rosendorn says...



your life was orchestrated
before you were born, arrangement set
by a divine hand, your parents (mother)
the conductor, pointing to the flashcards
she made before you could form thought as why
you did so well in college, the mathamatics
in the tub as a toddler why you could
never have a learning disability with numbers, the
educational video games and television
why high school was so easy and

everything in your life was designed
to make you a better person. why should
hardships you have no control over
be any different

— April 19, 2018
A writer is a world trapped in a person— Victor Hugo

Ink is blood. Paper is bandages. The wounded press books to their heart to know they're not alone.
  





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Fri Apr 20, 2018 4:30 am
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Virgil says...



I've been lousy at leaving comments on other threads, but I want to pop in and say now that your poetry this NaPo is lovely! Your poems from the 8th, 10th, and the 15th are especially hard-hitting powerhouses, though I've enjoyed reading through all of the poetry that you've put out so far. A sense of raw and genuine emotion acts as a thread to connect all of your poems to make one single, powerful entity.

Keep up the beautiful poetry! <3 <3 <3

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Sat Apr 21, 2018 2:57 am
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Rosendorn says...



words have deserted you.
your vocal cords tremble too
much to speak, hands shaking as
you try to press keys and
keep missing letters, existing
to the left
a familiar concept
and even as you write, you cannot
make a pen work from pressing
too lightly. ghosts from yesterday
bleed through the page and

you want silence, not from the world
but from the inside, out.

— April 20, 2018
A writer is a world trapped in a person— Victor Hugo

Ink is blood. Paper is bandages. The wounded press books to their heart to know they're not alone.
  





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Sun Apr 22, 2018 3:26 am
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Rosendorn says...



the first step
is to estimate how long it will take you

set a timer, make sure it counts up
instead of down, elevating until
you have an accurate measure
of how you do not know yourself.

the second step
is to add extra time between tasks
in case they take you longer

make sure the school has special ed
because otherwise you will not
graduate on time (you will not
graduate at all), tests being
your achilles heel and
without accommodation you have
no brace to protect your weakness

the third step
is to make sure you stick to the schedule

you have to learn to trust yourself or else
you have thrown out every ounce of work
they have put into you and you don't
want to disappoint them again
(you are too used to disappointing yourself
to count it anymore)

the fourth step
is to do less because sometimes
it cannot all fit

you know this lesson, every invitation
to a party turned down because you
do not have the luxury
of enjoying yourself

(they tell you this is the price to adulthood and
you don't remember where you signed to say
you wanted admission)

— April 21, 2018
A writer is a world trapped in a person— Victor Hugo

Ink is blood. Paper is bandages. The wounded press books to their heart to know they're not alone.
  





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Points: 89625
Reviews: 1272
Mon Apr 23, 2018 3:26 am
Rosendorn says...



nothing makes you angrier
than watching friends be swallowed
by the hollowed out walls of a church,
taken away by more important connection
to something that may or may not
even exist, time carved out
with phones off, knees bent,
hands that may as well be holding weapons
you know will be turned against you
should you push against the doors
when they were locked in your presence
the moment you took your first breath. you
were supposed to be bathed in holy light
but only if you stayed in line, keeping
on the tight and narrow where
voices formed walls about never
make me choose between you and god
you will lose
and it's only
a small amount of time, entertain
yourself
. you knew the apple
was temptation but light
could not sustain you. you would
rather have knowledge than
become thinner
than your own shadow washed out
by floodlights

— April 22, 2018
A writer is a world trapped in a person— Victor Hugo

Ink is blood. Paper is bandages. The wounded press books to their heart to know they're not alone.
  





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Tue Apr 24, 2018 2:33 am
Rosendorn says...



you learned as a child l o v e was spelled
d e v o t i o n, letters strewn
on your mother's altar, prayers
spoken more often than iloveyou. each
morning you woke up too early and
you memorized how loud the volume
had to be after you were pushed aside
to not act as a distraction while she
would only stop for an emergency
(then pray more to prevent it
from getting worse)

you wish somebody would choose
your altar to pray at, a nun to
the holiness you were told
you should have

— April 23, 2018
A writer is a world trapped in a person— Victor Hugo

Ink is blood. Paper is bandages. The wounded press books to their heart to know they're not alone.
  





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Wed Apr 25, 2018 3:53 am
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Rosendorn says...



you used to write love poems with abandon, performing
the type of affection you saw played out. it's not
that the feelings were fake but the expression
was something you did not know how to articulate;
poetry seemed like the romantic thing to do, like the
loving thing to do, beautiful expression like a rose
apologizing for its own thorns. you knew you had
cut others but maybe with enough words they
would forget the string you had caused

it was never ugly. never anything less
than sweet nothings, fully heartfelt but
unable to withstand more
than a touch

you sit on the riverbank with mud on shoes
gotten with your best friend, sweat icy on your back
as you watch text flood your phone and knowing
with her
you do not need love poems any more

(but you will write them anyway because
she is more than you deserve and you do not know
how to repay her)

— April 24, 2018
A writer is a world trapped in a person— Victor Hugo

Ink is blood. Paper is bandages. The wounded press books to their heart to know they're not alone.
  





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1272 Reviews



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Reviews: 1272
Thu Apr 26, 2018 3:53 am
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Rosendorn says...



you put everything in boxes on a rainy day

a walk to the office becomes an afternoon
of checklists, of milestones, of tasks and
deadlines and compartments, the world
organized into something that resembles
enough time, adhd lifehack videos
put to what you hope is good use,
not enough turned into maybe this
will make it work, maybe this
will make you stop feeling like everything
is running in the background, waiting
for something better to take you away
(maybe this will make you feel that
everyone else is not waiting
for someone better
to replace you with)

— April 25, 2018
A writer is a world trapped in a person— Victor Hugo

Ink is blood. Paper is bandages. The wounded press books to their heart to know they're not alone.
  





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1272 Reviews



Gender: Other
Points: 89625
Reviews: 1272
Fri Apr 27, 2018 3:31 am
Rosendorn says...



you first understood tarot when you heard
the major arcana is a story; begin at
the fool, where you are either
making the best choice ever or about
to throw your life off a cliff. you
write out a note with everything
you want to end and rip it into enough pieces
maybe it isn't real anymore; one pile
goes to the wind, cherry blossoms
falling to mark a samurai's death; one
pile soaked in water until the ink
has run to the point you cannot see straight;
one to the flame, burned to ash, a phoenix
leaving behind only dust; one returned to
the earth, churned in mud until the pulp
returns to its roots

the magician is not a card familiar to you
but you know the first step after the fool
is to reach inside and strike a balance, remembering
that every way of ending is just a different promise
for a new beginning

— April 26, 2018
A writer is a world trapped in a person— Victor Hugo

Ink is blood. Paper is bandages. The wounded press books to their heart to know they're not alone.
  








We shall not cease from exploration, and the end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we started and know the place for the first time.
— T.S. Eliot