Young Writers Society

10.

I did not expect to find myself wrapped in this cocoon
Skin and brittle bones and flesh that weakens quickly
All wrapped too snugly, too bigger-than-me and pressed against me so I cannot see the sense of my own thoughts.
Had I had a moment to consider, I would have chosen
A puff of nitrogen.
Barely a handful, but oh, so fluid, so free
To scatter into the winds, into a thousand different unknown places,
Perhaps be breathed in by some creatures, and spend time
Flowing along the paths of their lifeblood, quietly-
i am not here
-and then be rushed back into the wild night, and fly on to some other mystery.

11.

There is a line , I think, that threads through all my dreams
All the way back to the shadowy time of nameless faces and everything in the world being oh so far out of reach
I want to unravel it, see the path it traces,
Pick out the bright points of constellation lights among the scattered pieces
But I hold my days in my hand like a pocketful of lint,
One much the same as the next, all
Musty and crumpled and something you’d rather not sift through.

12.

There's black and there's white, and
I imagine a kaleidoscope of colors in between,
blurring and flashing momentarily into clarity
Myself tumbling and lost amidst bursts brighter than my eyes know how to see.
But, what do you know, there is ground beneath my feet and the world is built in shades of grey,
gradients built like some stepping ladder I could climb if I just tried

but my feet are rooted to the earth.

13.

When life has drawn the line and said, you shall grow this high and no higher
It is easy to shrink down to size,
contort yourself into some paper model of who you were
(or thought you were, or only dreamed you might be)
trim off those unwanted, bothersome needs
The weighty bulk of foundation, dragging you into some gruesome nightmare of reality
It is better to drift, paper-thin, above the rooted growing things
With slits in your wings so the wind never carries you too high
(oh, what heights, what sights might you see! but no, here towards the earth you find you are not so easily pushed astry)

14.

Over and over I have told you, brother,
How it must be-
Charge on,
On,
On though the desert heat seems never to end,
On through the whispered lies of vapacious bystanders-
On though it seems sun will never dawn again.
But there are snakes circling my bones now,
I am weary,
The sense of constellations overhead has faded as my eyes grow weak.
How many times must I raise one bloodied foot after the other,
Before, in silence and in darkness, I must fall to my knees and cry,
There is no hope here, only dust and wind.

15.

In shadows I find my peace,
To look upon the world in wonder, and hide my face
Let me curl myself into the space where you are,
The empty shape of you,
And contort my bones to fit just inside the lines
Or let me go, and I will find some other quiet place
Where the sun does not scorch and I am not exposed

16.

there is a place in the cracks between all thought, and that is where I make my dwelling.
my particular favorite is halfway between "maybe..." and "I don't think..."
there, you see, you have soft silvery wings of unspoken hope on your left,
tempered and anchoring you with the weight of a back turned on your right.
the world shifts around me and i am sliding into- oh, horror,
a "but..."
deliberating between one point and another,
as if in motion towards the gravity of one solid thought over another.

17.

Sometimes I lay awake and think about the ways of the universe.
I can't help it, I
have all these words, these glimmers of color, some
flash of sunlight peaking through a tunnel
from the minds of my wonderfully monstrous kin,
these humans, these galaxies inside skulls.
There is sunlight, and darkness, and wonders and horrors unspeakable,
and all of this rushes from the breath like some great flood.
I am swimming in an ocean of tales,
with no rock beneath my feet
where I may stand and say, here I am.
Here is where I stand.
I see the stars overhead and cannot help but trace in my mind a million overlapping constellations
All pointed out to me by a million fingers
and with a million breaths the stories of our fates told.
I trace these outlines, but
I have never been able to see the shapes clearly.
I find myself as if lost among them,
so many pricks of light, shining down indifferent and offering no path through the darkness.

How I long to be carried to the shore
away from all the crashing and the rushing and the tugging of ceaseless waters
guided gently by hands of love,
or fortune, or error
no matter if there is a difference.
To feel with my own flesh the certainty of earth,
unshakeable and ever dependable
laying all these years in wait to gently kiss our feet.
To build a home, to lay a foundation, where so many have gone before
brother touching brother across time.
To lay back and look up at the stars,
and read in them my place in the world, my place in time.
To know, and to be known
To love and hold, and be in turn cherished and cradled
To rest my weary eyes without fear of slipping under and losing sight of the light.
Oh, to be at peace, to be somewhere called home.
To look upon the faces of my fellow man, and think,
Here is family.
Here is my own.
Here is a reflection of who I am, who I have yet to be,
who I might have become.
Here is the map of my fate.

Yet I tremble to think such thoughts
of being caught in the mud, dragging at my feet
ever looking over my shoulder for the knife that must be.
Every face a mask over some lurking darkness,
the twisted likeness of mankind.
Tripping and tangling myself in vines as I try to make my way through the unknown
trapped in pitfalls I could not have seen coming.
Bruising stones and scorching sun,
and the dirt that covers everything,
drawing rich fertility from the remnants of dead things.
I have chosen to keep myself afloat, unflaggingly,
though my arms scream weariness and the salt is slowly cracking open my skin.
Here, to know that my own strength will save me,
that I need not be bound to any earth,
that I may see a thousand stars rippling broken and blinding across the surface of an endless tide of dreams.

18.

Six lives I have lived- one remains.
Those who have fallen me-
Ignorance, Tolerance,
Fear and Shame,
Indulgence, and Despair-
these are the names I whisper to myself time and time again,
carved on skin,
reading like a roadmap back to the start.
There was I, yet
here I am,
and these scars do not point out tomorrow's road.

19.

You offer up an outcry,
an ocean,
a tidal wave of words meant to wash away the scars your sins have left
but some wounds leave hearts denser than stone.
The force of your utterance falls only as teardrops,
sliding slowly across unmoved surface and taken in by the dark, stoic earth below

20.

You are an enigma written in a language I have not yet learned to decode
I ask myself in the mirror if I've met you before, some lifetime ago
Because I swear there's a voice in my head that sounds just like you
And it wants to ask you the riddles of the universe
The secrets of life and their hidden answers you seem to adorn yourself with
So gracefully and so casually

The thunder seems louder tonight
Though it rolls on angry as ever
When the high tide rolls in, I long to shelter you
And gaze in endless wonder at your face
Learning to read the light in your eyes, and when it dims, how to breathe it back to life
Unfolding the depths in your gaze that carry so many words unspoken, and read them like a map
Back to the heart of you, for there I swear lies a man I could love
But I am drowning in my own lifeboat
Save your secrets for another night, when the waves are rocking you gently
Save them for some other being wrapped in human form
Who can sing you gently through the night,
Who knows the way to shore.