Young Writers Society

April 8

The Pine Box

III.

Streetlights crane their necks,
reedy and skeletal, glowering down at the asphalt,
whispering disapproval and nodding heads
in synchronized spasms.
Showering in the creased and fading glow,
two men dance,
they waltz on the downbeat of gasps and
punctuating droplets of blood,
twisting and bending and responding to
brutal intimacy.
Leaning like tender saplings in the heart
of a blistering typhoon, one man falls,
his hair rupturing in wild explosions
like the outstretched and begging fingers of roots:
the storm-severed muscles of a tree.
The other follows.
Flashing dully in the violated illumination of
the slumped and easy streetlights,
bolts of lightening jackknife open
impaling greedily. The grounded man gasps
and watches roses flourish across his stomach.

A wallet is reverently embraced by stained hands.

April 9

The closing scene of the trimester

“How the hell did I get a B?”
he spat, chewing furiously on
blistering curses and charbroiled anger.

His jaws were swollen

with writhing Scarab beetles of
disgust, fury spattered in acidic graffiti
across the wall,

dribbling shadows.

Iron-rusted hands, jagged with
cut-glass rigidity are shoved into pockets,
restraining fists, leaden with white-horse grey acrimony.

Defeated, his eyes are like charcoal briquettes
shaded with depthless
indignity.

Firstly, "dribbling shadows" is a great line. Secondly, I'm sensing a pattern in your style - rather dark, no? I loved the first poem particularly, the first three lines really grabbed me. Also, "synchronised spasms" is a great use of alliteration in April 8th. I'll come back in a few days to hopefully find something more helpful to say Good luck with the rest of the month!

April 10

Of Woodpushers and Sacred Hearts

Creased Japanese cherry blossoms
fall at Saint Peter's feet
like ivory tear drops,
pirouetting from the coarse and wiry hair of an arbor bride
like some disjointed wedding train.

Saint Peter, exhaling these delicate cherry blossoms,
groans as the product of suburban rebellion
grinds along his metatarsal bones
with snaking wires bleeding from their ears.
On pockmarked wheels, they

glide through snow drifts of cherry blossoms,
kicking back, flipping up,
arching over well-worn granite stair steps
(a perfect bell-curve of sweat and grunts)
their feet executing a Riverdance in mid-air.

Over-calculated.

To a symphony of guitars and bass and drums that shatter cherry blossoms
(Numbing minds like audio injected Novocaine)
a youthful product of society's iron grasp,
loses his wheels and crumples to the ground
lying there gasping along with the cherry blossoms

which caress his face with
sweet whispers of Saint Peter's disapproval.

This is really great, Kylan. I might put;
"of an arbor bride "

and

"and drums that shatter cherry blossoms"

on lines of their own, purely for the sake of making the format more pleasing to the eye.

Your imagery is beautiful throughout. I especially love;
"a youthful product of society's iron grasp,
loses his wheels and crumples to the ground
lying there gasping along with the cherry blossoms ".

I also love;
"On pockmarked wheels."

I think I'd cut;
"and wiry"
and
"stair"
as it's just too many words, and they don't really add anything.

I love the ending.

Hope this helps.

Jas

April 11

A Ferromagnetic Soliloquy

I am Iron Man.

With fingers like
sheet-metal silos, I grope for your radiance,
which only shatters around me
like prismatic fireflies.

Uncoordinated and
awkward.

You must see
the way desire bleeds from my eyes
twisting down my face in tear-rivers;
a cocktail of rust and sorrow-black napalm.

Like a trillion gallons of acid,
consumed with the utmost purity.

Somehow I know
that skin – unalloyed, porcelain skin –
and this oxidized shell, pulsating a dusty red
that comes away in cigarette smoke clouds can

never coalesce.
A metal titan in every way but this.

Your eyes are like a
foundry, molding my decaying corpse into
a homogeneous mixture, igniting my fervor,
my craving like crumpled scraps of newspaper.

Your existence, your glass blossom permanence
reminds me that

I am an iron man.

April 12

Symphony en masse

Intermingling on the sidewalk –
forming instantaneous relationships
that whisper of clandestine liaisons –
in an ocean of black
accented by well-tied corporate
nooses, they sing.

Voicelessly

they drop notes like unwanted coins to the asphalt –
which scintillate in the shrouded light
trickling through the granite fissures of the downtown’s façade
like threads of water –
skipping over sidewalk cracks and singing
with the resonance of an operatic contralto.

Shedding

These notes – these symphonic thoughts – like shreds of
cigarette smoke, the crowd of individuals leak musicality
that combines to form
some kind of silent street chorus
which clings to shop fronts
and lives in the heart of the traffic lights.

April 13

Osculating

The curvature of space-time
is nothing compared
to the slipstream of her body
where desire is distilled and
weeps across porcelain skin.

April 13:
I'll admit that I don't get it, but the language is lovely and it flows well. Maybe think about "porcelain skin", as I think it's a tad cliche.

April 14

Death Strip

Civil blood is spattered against
this curtain in multi-colored splotches

that seethe indignation
and hate which is painted in mushroom clouds

across the municipal sky-line.
Iron strikes iron

(ringing out with the sound
of a trillion clenched fists puncturing the air,

of conglomerated voices screaming emancipation
tossing cries of joy at the wall like hand grenades).

Swing.
Contact.

Swing.
Contact.

Swings that whisper of Sinews of Peace.
Contact that uproots Lenin's parasitic fingers.

Plaster erupts from the mouth of a sledgehammer,
freckling the the East with shrapnel from the West:

bits and pieces of pure ideology
hailed by a chorus of civic angels

whose voices eat at the wall of this iron Jericho.

I really like 13 April. Short and sweet, yes?

14 is not as impressive. It's very wordy (as a lot of your stuff is ), rather like slogging through some sort of metaphorical swamp of thesaurus droppings, and it hinders not only the reader, but you as well, I think. It's hard to make your point through all of that. And I generally don't go in for overtly political poetry.

I really liked the line "freckling the East with shrapnel from the West." The part about "Lenin's parasitic fingers" was enjoyable, but I'm not sure I like it in the poem; I see it more in my history textbook, or in some sort of anti-commie speech. Yeah.

-Colleen