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Beneath us is forever



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Mon Mar 26, 2018 8:15 am
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PenguinAttack says...



We are one step from the broken and so far from our beginning.

#1: the fracture of being

And this, here, it speaks
So loud the echo passes by
Into the darkening tunnel behind.

I crouched there when i was six
Like a trilobite, limbs atrophied
My simple structure took on new meaning.

So outrageous was this untold form
By seven i was someone new,
I sent the address by post.

You welcomed me in the new state
And collided lip to jaw,
The traditional greeting of our people

And i did not miss this.
I swallowed the world whole
And returned to you all grown

(and i did not miss this,
echoing into the darkness,
i was someone new)



I like comments but please in mind the personal nature of napo... conversations are for walls. :)
I like you as an enemy, but I love you as a friend.
  





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Sun Apr 01, 2018 2:25 pm
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PenguinAttack says...



#2: i don't care

At midnight i remember you
and wonder what it means
to have lost someone so completely
that their name takes four beats instead of two.

The cold anger of three am
doesn't leave us there, together and alone,
Instead we become as strangers
and the better for it - did you smile at me when i left?

I left all the lights on in a flashback we both had,
The doors locked and windows tight
I said it was petty revenge, pushing the power bill
As though i didn't owe it all to you anyway.

It was my fault, so i left the lights on.
It was my fault, i didn't smile when i left.
It was my fault, your name stutters on my tongue.

And wasn't it fun.
I like you as an enemy, but I love you as a friend.
  





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Mon Apr 02, 2018 2:03 pm
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Audy says...



These are achingly beautiful <3

I'm going to have trilobite on my mind for days, I think that image never wants to leave my skull. There is a tonal sadness in both of these poems, I feel like they're both exploring similar themes of growing apart, of growing older, and the fallouts - this by the way, this, this just really really punched me in the gut.

Have lost someone so completely
that their name takes four beats instead of two.


D; uhhhhh prolly because I relate so hard ;-; ;-; That irony "wasn't it fun" is just so biting, so fitting.
  





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Tue Apr 03, 2018 6:17 am
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PenguinAttack says...



#3: keep calm and

I carried on.
Isn't that what we're taught to do?
Move on, keep going, charge ahead.

There were no stop signs,
No lines in the sand
No calm rock form shouting

This is not the way
Go back, turn away,
Go home.

My slippers filled with gravel
On the way between house and drive,
A collection of a thousand trips

That didn't say anymore than the dirt
Which filled my thongs the week before,
Just push through, what's a little discomfort

When the going looked so good,
Thinking of all the gains the pain was leading toward
It all seemed so terribly possible.

I pulled my shoulders back and didn't hear
When it gave way, vertebra cascading
With an accordian sigh.

i was icarus falling
Lifted too high on advice and lies
Threaded into gossamar wings

Falling in the heat of a moment
The day finally won.
I like you as an enemy, but I love you as a friend.
  





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Tue Apr 03, 2018 12:06 pm
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PenguinAttack says...



#4: they say

The house is dark
In 60 years it has been before
But not the way it is tonight
And will be for every night after.

I ache for the small kindess
Of silences in the hallways,
No whispered tears
Or heavy handed gasps.

They say be careful what you wish for,
They say it over and over again,
For 60 years and more,
But was it for tonight?

Did a strange man in a strange house
Write those words to ward my heart
From the empty rattatat of grief?
I didn't think so.

Take comfort from what you can,
I saturate in the warmth of good intention
Laid against my skin like lanolin,
A smooth suffocation so gently applied.

And return home
To a house gone dark
In more ways than one.
I like you as an enemy, but I love you as a friend.
  





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Wed Apr 04, 2018 1:53 pm
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PenguinAttack says...



#5: The day I broke

I heard the crunch
of ribs bending in on themselves,
it was always so hard to breathe
but finally it seemed to be over,
the endless draw and sigh.

The sound echoed across the empty pools,
their liquid still lapping gently at the ridge,
but no one to see that peaceful end.

No one to suck in the deep weeze
of perforated lungs, except me,
sitting on bleachers I had never noticed,
in the calm of the blue wave
slowly crawling me in, bone by bone.

If they had been there - what then?
An ambulance careening through streets
barely coping with rush hour clog.

I could have bled out in the showers,
one long drain sinking into another,
hair plastered to my hips, fishmouth
pumping that goggle eyed gasp,
but I didn't like the pressure.

The cold dark hand lay against my nape
and lips less blue than blue pressed
and bones knit into themselves.

We sleep only to wake up again.
I like you as an enemy, but I love you as a friend.
  





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Thu Apr 05, 2018 12:44 pm
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PenguinAttack says...



#6: teasing icarus

28 steps from door to back,
half that and you reach my room.

I wander from room to room
in the morning, watching sunlight filter
through the venetian blinds,
a scatterbrained sight until she bursts,
broken filaments suddenly in working order,
spilling orange heat onto the carpet.

I like most to stand just beyond
the sharp beams, toes just warming
to the idea of morning, even as the alarm starts.

Routine is important, it provides structure.
Structure reinforces the body lines,
keeps the insulation from falling out.
But this house was already failing,
made too long ago to change it sits
breathing a familiar rhythm,
the one that lies beneath it all.

In the mornings, before light shudders
into the tangible world, i hear that rhythm.
It keeps me awake, leaning forever forward
as though to press my face against the plaster
would regulate the heartbeat

I didn't know was out of sync.
I like you as an enemy, but I love you as a friend.
  





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Sat Apr 07, 2018 1:54 pm
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PenguinAttack says...



#7: she looks like me

The girl in the mirror is always smiling,
Thin crease still holding between eyebrows,
She lays on the foundations of the day.
Not liquid eyeliner and matte lipstick
(A skill she never developed)
But wide open eyes, broad smile,
A slow hand through dark hair
(Skills she didn't know she had til now)
And then the day can begin.

The more i look at her, the more differences
I see the thinly concealed bags under eyes,
The way her mouth ticks upward on the right,
A nervous tick that mimics a smile,
No committment in this face,
Everything is half formed (or mostly hidden)
And by the time the morning truly begins
I can say she is not like me at all,
This professional walking toward her car,
Bag ready, keys handy, she is smooth silk
And i am ready still for bed.
I like you as an enemy, but I love you as a friend.
  





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Mon Apr 09, 2018 7:02 pm
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Audy says...



Nom, nom, nom!

I want to print these, just the way it captures so much of the everyday grind and getting caught in a rut. I love the emphasis on the house, on the looking on to another self, the breaking. And that icarus metaphor slipping in there is just too cool!
  





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Thu Apr 26, 2018 3:35 pm
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PenguinAttack says...



#8: frames

I spent today counting hooks;
each one a painting packed away
to live on different walls,
staring toward different faces.

I unpacked packed boxes,
resealed them once I was done.
that thin stick tape slice under the bread knife,
I can hear her voice tsking in my ear
"don't use a serrated edge"
and I listen to it while I scrape another box open,
blunting all the cutlery I can.

Outside the birds and trees and sky are the same
and they sink below their own edges,
hiding from my disappointment.
Tomorrow the rose bush will be ripped up,
another blank space for my memory to fill.
I like you as an enemy, but I love you as a friend.
  








I am always saying "Glad to've met you" to somebody I'm not at all glad I met. If you want to stay alive, you have to say that stuff, though.
— Holden Caulfield