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Young Writers Society


April Madness 2019



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1227 Reviews



Gender: Female
Points: 147270
Reviews: 1227
Mon Apr 08, 2019 5:22 pm
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alliyah says...



Here's everyone's reminder to get those poems in today by in order for it to be considered. :)

@GigiNicole17 @Querencia @Aley @tgirly @ellasnotebook @Audy @paperforest @niteowl @TheSilverFox @alliyah @Meshugenah @PenguinAttack

Also if you do change your poem before that time (which is allowed!) make sure to make a note in your post like "Poem Edited" or something so that I notice and can change it in the submission document. Thanks!

Good luck everyone!
you should know i am a time traveler &
there is no season as achingly temporary as now
but i have promised to return
  





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498 Reviews



Gender: Female
Points: 5916
Reviews: 498
Mon Apr 08, 2019 8:25 pm
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Que says...



Here's mine. :)

Spoiler! :
you always said that
you would catch me
if I fell
(you should've said when
instead of if).

but I'm falling at
9.8 meters
per second
squared,
reaching terminal velocity,
(terminal means the end)

and I no longer believe that
love works like that.
Est-ce que vous parlez français?
  





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51 Reviews



Gender: Female
Points: 67
Reviews: 51
Mon Apr 08, 2019 9:49 pm
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ellasnotebook says...



Spoiler! :
oh beautiful sky
oh round gray stones
I wanna go where the bluebells grow

I've thought of it often and
I've thought of it fierce but
the flowers out there dry all my tears

used to think I was a city girl
now I'm all grown up
and the clear blue lake is my
sippy cup
I will drink it up
I cannot get enough
where the skyscrapers are the ground is all dried up

oh beautiful sky
oh borrowed home
I wanna go where the bluebells grow
  





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1227 Reviews



Gender: Female
Points: 147270
Reviews: 1227
Mon Apr 08, 2019 10:15 pm
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alliyah says...



I'm going to leave this one for now, in case I don't get something else written by tonight...

Spoiler! :


Image

you should know i am a time traveler &
there is no season as achingly temporary as now
but i have promised to return
  





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488 Reviews



Gender: Female
Points: 3866
Reviews: 488
Tue Apr 09, 2019 12:38 am
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Meshugenah says...



uuuuuuuuugh.

Spoiler! :

7
spring smells like matzo ball soup and rainy days,
almost summer afternoons, and evenings watching
fog roll across the bay and over hills
still green from winter rain:
the only tradition held scared -
food.
***Under the Responsibility of S.P.E.W.***
(Sadistic Perplexion of Everyone's Wits)

Medieval Lit! Come here to find out who Chaucer plagiarized and translated - and why and how it worked in the late 1300s.

I <3 Rydia
  





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1274 Reviews

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Tue Apr 09, 2019 1:05 am
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niteowl says...



Spoiler! :
for all the times i should have known better

desire fades day by day.

it begins in the high of being near you,
followed by the torment of reminding myself
over and over
that you are only here because you have to be
(and no one would ever choose to stay).

it should end when you leave,
but somehow it lingers on week after week,
as i look for you in unfamiliar faces,
though my inner logician knows
you will never return
(and even if you did, it wouldn't matter).

the pain dulls
into a tiny but constant ache
that only sharpens when i hear that song
or hear a name too much like yours
(and think about how you don't care to remember).

when it leaves, i don't even notice
until i wake up and realize
that you were in my dreams again,
and i feel only confusion
in place of longing
(except now there is another face
and the pointless pain begins anew).
"You do ill if you praise, but worse if you censure, what you do not understand." Leonardo Da Vinci

<YWS><R1>
  





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299 Reviews



Gender: None specified
Points: 24185
Reviews: 299
Tue Apr 09, 2019 1:16 am
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TheSilverFox says...



Whooop, thought I had time to write another poem, found out I didn't, and I have a chem exam that goes until 9 pm, which just so happens to be the submission deadline. Rip me.

So yeah, @Ventomology, going for the laundry poem. :P

Spoiler! :
VII. The Weaver Towers West Laundry Room

I drag the basket up and down the elevator
(and sometimes I'm afraid the elevator will finally fail
and trap me inside, because it's old and battered
and sometimes the door doesn't want to open),
haul my clothes into the washer and dryer,
pull my textbooks out of my backpack,
and bury myself in cell structure
or how DNA splits apart
or how to fling bricks
so they break windows.

The words and the ink and the paper mold together,
pulling in my eyes and yanking on my ears
and hiding the steady stream of people flowing around me
as they find better ways to spend a Sunday morning
(but I can't hear them over my headphones,
and maybe that's for the best,
because I have work to do).
S'io credesse che mia risposta fosse
a persona che mai tornasse al mondo,
questa fiamma staria senza piu scosse.
Ma per ciò che giammai di questo fondo
non tornò vivo alcun, s'i' odo il vero,
senza tema d'infamia ti rispondo.

Inferno, Canto 27, l 61-66.
  





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24 Reviews



Gender: Female
Points: 4033
Reviews: 24
Tue Apr 09, 2019 1:24 am
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paperforest says...



I'll submit this for now, but might change it if I finish the one I'm working on in time.

Spoiler! :

city nights are paradoxes of quiet loudness and bright darkness
shadows at the edges of your eyes resolve into neon beings,
angels watching from the churchtops,
hallowed sirens spinning redbluewhitebright signalling to the heavens
stopping hearts with unknown fear and offering momentary lives until
the church bells toll on the hour and the sound
fills ears and breathes new life into
souls that still need resuscitating even after
all these years of hearing sins and punishments renounced
across the downtown radio & television-altar news -
prayers in dark quiet streets are made quieter by the faraway car horns as
crosswalk blasters singe the near-cool pavement through a red light -
no one asks for rain but the rooftop gardeners, yet it still patters down
sending figures scattering for empty doorways and forgotten
Superman umbrellas and lit-up gas station asphalt, anywhere dry enough
to sit and inhale the oildusted petrichor, watching the flickers of
streetlight halos in this dripping wilderness of metal plastic and cement -
petroglyphs betray the oldness of the stones, yellow black and silver
spraypaint proclaims visions seen in waking sleep: we are lonely
in the crowds (we are surrounded by breathing bodies yet see no one)
city nights are paradoxes
  





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896 Reviews

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Points: 240
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Tue Apr 09, 2019 1:42 am
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PenguinAttack says...



Spoiler! :
#3 - burden

Grief is my mistress' son,
I have known him in so many faces
All leaning toward the light
And looking away into a distance
Not yet formed over the horizon.
I learnt his name in Here
And in Now - the aching
Vowel sounds of my youth
Returning the echo.
I have seen him again,
The apertures of departure
Lingering on sharp cheekbones
And offering reflection.

My mistress lingers there too,
Nails pressing into wristbones
To imprint there - as everywhere.
At three am I wonder
About the tattoo beating in my veins
And whether it is mine or hers.
And does it matter when all i have is her
Love and grief.

Edited
I like you as an enemy, but I love you as a friend.
  





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806 Reviews

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Points: 1883
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Tue Apr 09, 2019 2:19 am
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Aley says...



Spoiler! :
The trees whisper
____go home, go home
__stranger among us

as I walk along their midnight path
flashlight wash along the stones
they crackle as I step
__go home, go home
____stranger, among us
___there is no promise
but I ignore it to worship the sounds

crickets and late night rustles
bushes and twigs, a distant hum
of life to whom I am familiar,
____go, home, go! home
_____stranger among us
____there is no promise
__that we will understand
___but you are welcome
  





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374 Reviews



Gender: Female
Points: 1147
Reviews: 374
Tue Apr 09, 2019 2:50 am
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tgirly says...



Poem Edited

Spoiler! :
Aurora Borealis

They are burning Kansas today.
And I don’t mean some metaphorical Somewhere-Over-the-Rainbow-
click-your-heels-to-go-home-Kansas. I mean the fields
in Kansas are being burned on purpose,
and we in nearby states are breathing
just a bit less easy because of it.
There is no fog,
only an itching in the back of the throat.
Do you know what it feels like
to know of another’s fire, with no way to reach it?
To feel the itch in the back of your throat or
on the tip of your tongue, to know
that you are not their Kansas,
can never be their Kansas
(and here I mean the metaphysical one,
the there’s-no-place-like one.) Maybe you
are Canada or Antarctica or a missing point on a map,
and all your rainbows are rotten,
And none of your tornadoes contain oases.
There is no deeper meaning in your color-coded streets,
and maybe you chose the wrong building materials because you
were never very good at architecture.
It is best to remember that even the Arctic
has moisture, that snow can sooth the worst flames,
can cool the most aching of throats, and there are those
who have been waiting their whole lives for your light show—
you quiet dancing rainbow.
When I was young, I admired clever people. Now that I am old, I admire kind people.
-Abraham Joshua Heschel
  





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696 Reviews

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Tue Apr 09, 2019 3:59 am
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Audy says...



Spoiler! :

Breath.

I wake to breath. Drift to breath.
Fall to my knees and grieve to breath.
But in the water, I am a diver
holding on to a thread of breath
and the sea skirts bursting with spray
and glistening foam. I plunge
away at breath with each
flipper-stroke pumping under
cold weight, fighting towards
less of myself- less of breath-
holding on to that gathering darkness
and let me preserve what's left
slow, lolling strides and urge,
urge, urge, urge to be alive, to
fight, I can be kicks
and splashes and elbows and breath
wild wet smiles and breath
of the light bending and breaking
and breath fumbling, feebling
crashing through surface, hard,
rich, bright Hawaiian summers
and breath
stretched to the horizon.
  





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1227 Reviews



Gender: Female
Points: 147270
Reviews: 1227
Sat Apr 13, 2019 6:05 am
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alliyah says...



Thanks for those first entries everyone! The judges have deliberated, and the results are here! (Winners from each group have their names in bold)

Group 1
@GigiNicole17 vs. @Querencia vs. @DEA vs. @fraey

Group 2
@Aley vs. @fishsashimi vs. @tgirly vs. @ellasnotebook vs @Audy

Group 3
@Ventomology vs. @paperforest vs. @Liberty500 vs. @niteowl vs @Magestorrow

Group 4
@TheSilverFox vs. @alliyah vs. @Meshugenah vs. @PenguinAttack

Congrats to those winning poets! If you didn't win, don't worry you still have a chance to advance and have been put in the Redemption Bracket.

Here's the pairings for next round....

ROUND TWO

Winner's Bracket
(2 from each of these groups will advance)

Group 1
Querencia vs fraey vs Aley vs. tgirly

Group 2
Ventomology vs paperforest vs TheSilverFox vs Meshugenah


Redemption Bracket
(1 person from each of these groups will advance)

Group 3
GigiNicole17 vs. DEA vs. fishsashimi vs ellasnotebook vs Audy

Group 4
Liberty500 vs niteowl vs Magestorrow vs alliyah vs PenguinAttack


Good Luck poets!

***Entries for Round 2 are due ****

(Entries for Round 2 can be any poem you've written in April as long as you did not already use it for Round 1, comment below if you have additional questions)

Spoiler! :

Here's the Beautiful Bracket version of what's happening:

Image
you should know i am a time traveler &
there is no season as achingly temporary as now
but i have promised to return
  





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414 Reviews



Gender: None specified
Points: 31420
Reviews: 414
Sun Apr 14, 2019 12:30 am
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keystrings says...



Poem Edited (sorry!)

Spoiler! :
i wasn't sure whether to feel elated by
a house-flower we could take care of,
or nervous because you're an orchid,
cursed to wither in my shaky hands.

we had bad luck with a pretty pale
purple-pink plant that never bloomed
more than it had before, and simply
faded away and shed all its leaves.

you're light-hearted, quiet-shaded
with a slightly shiny middle dusted with
a sprinkle of red flakes that looks closer
to a light peppering of spice on a near-white
canvas, slight tea-stained tinge in splotches.

i find myself falling for your sweet, slowly
blooming buds, while i let my parents' pierced
words about your pasty colors pass through
an open window to even more flowers i want
to watch grow and cultivate for years to come.
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)
  





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557 Reviews



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Points: 33593
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Mon Apr 15, 2019 2:50 am
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Ventomology says...



Haha I'm in class the whole day on Monday so might as well submit now.

Spoiler! :
Sunday Sonnet No. 2

Our meetings fill my mouth, my mind, my heart
with food and words exquisite on my tongue.
The fire of spices burns when we speak smart,
while words as sweet as cream clear out my lungs.

We sit at tiny tables, dimly lit,
our legs so close, like pasta they entwine,
bent o’er paired dishes, passing small tidbits
of tales from life combined with bites divine.

My meal tastes stronger when I eat with you,
but as we part, doubt simmers in my gut.
You may be comfort on a new menu.
The pattern: fall for friends as, from trees, nuts.

Am I in love, without a second thought,
or am I Pavlov’s dog, with food, so taught?
"I've got dreams like you--no really!--just much less, touchy-feeley.
They mainly happen somewhere warm and sunny
on an island that I own, tanned and rested and alone
surrounded by enormous piles of money." -Flynn Rider, Tangled
  








A poet is, before anything else, a person who is passionately in love with language.
— W.H. Auden