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The Dreadful Penny Sonnets



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Tue Apr 02, 2013 4:09 am
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Kit says...



What I am doing for NaPo this year is writing sonnets incorporating weird suggestions, the weirder the better. The first two were "Chicken poo" and "A shark with a laser"

1. Chicken Poo

Forgotten turnips which began to spoil,
Peelings, scraps browned but not yet rot,
tender sprouts finally free of soil
Crawlers, wrigglers wishing they were not.
Discarded waste, he thought, would strangely fit.
He missed the day at school when teenage boys
became invincible. Chicken shit?
They'll see. (Expanding earplugs for the noise)
What is to them a green and viscous goo
to scrape off steelcapped boots is naturally
a flicker of the hell they put him through,
Née NH4NO3.
The earth below ignites, he thinks, those fools,
they should have spent the time on biofuels.

2. A Shark with A Laser

I remember waking, with a woolly head.
It soon wore off, I thrashed my tail in pain
and all about my family was dead,
I, their stricken murderer, remain.
There is no sleep, no resting else I drown,
a dream adrift would lay waste to this reef
in seconds. This inferno in my crown
unquenched by sea, nor tears can quench my grief.
And teeth, and teeth, and teeth can not remove
the laser nor gnaw off what it has done,
and if I could what then would it prove?
They'll only sew one to another's son.
No life is without hope, no fate so dark
as the lot of a laser wielding shark.
Princess of Parataxis, Mistress of Manichean McGuffins
  





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Tue Apr 02, 2013 5:33 am
Hannah says...



You're ALMOST managing to take the crazy prompts and make completely elegant poems. Not elegant, but smooth and not weakly connected to the prompt. By weakly I mean directly. Just repeating the phrase. You can do more than that, I think.

I love this:

I remember waking, with a woolly head.
you can message me with anything: questions, review requests, rants
are you a green room knight yet?
have you read this week's Squills?
  





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Wed Apr 03, 2013 1:56 am
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Aley says...



You should do "rough hair" and send it to reason. That would make her day.
  





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Wed Apr 10, 2013 2:02 pm
Kit says...



3.
The feckless fug of another sleepless night
seeps in through breathing cracks of house and skin,
the reckless rug askew and out of sight
Wine glass shards regifted for the bin.
There are no lids to fit my restless eyes
Can't quite quiet the dull din of my mind.
Luxurious, the snores of sane and wise,
immersed in all I am too blind to find.
And there's the rub, what's sleeping in the dark
which stirs and draws my breath when I let go?
Have I the pus can heal the monsters mark,
the callused hands to reap what it may sow?
Perhaps it's best for now to serve my sake
to keep the fiend asleep, and stay awake.
Princess of Parataxis, Mistress of Manichean McGuffins
  





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Thu Apr 11, 2013 3:14 am
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Kit says...



4. Silly Rabbit

Louie Louie Louie Louie whoops!
Louie whoops! Louie Louie Louie
Bounding down the stairs, to the coops
full of friends? Friends? Friends? Who? He
gets a bitter bite from a chook.
How? Betrayed! Never in his days
will he forgive this slight-OMG LOOK!
A BUTTERFLY YOU GUYS! Another phase.
Little Louie jumps as fast as thought.
In an instant he forgets, forgives,
it's not from platitudes that he was taught,
but as he has the balls to go and live.
That's why I've not the heart to rouse on him
though often tries to hump my limbs.
Princess of Parataxis, Mistress of Manichean McGuffins
  





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Thu Apr 11, 2013 9:20 am
Karzkin says...



New prompt: why saxophones are the best ever.
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

K's Killa Kritiques

#TNT

All Hail the undisputed king of the YWS helicopter game.
  





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Thu Apr 11, 2013 10:01 am
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Kit says...



5.
Saxophones are the best ever
they're absolutely worth all that you paid.
Contraception: play one and you'll never
have to worry about getting laid.
Your art could be preserved for posterity:
Those seventies compilations people treasure!
Love: it increases manual dexterity
so your life is not entirely devoid of pleasure.
Light workload: you're not much in demand.
Diversifies your skills: in pizza delivery
Maybe a better weapon than your hand,
Nothing else though, best to forget chivalry.
Buy ten from a pawn shop for a song:
No instrument can make a better bong.
Princess of Parataxis, Mistress of Manichean McGuffins
  





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Thu Apr 11, 2013 1:44 pm
Karzkin says...



There are no gifs to appropriately represent my emotion right now.
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

K's Killa Kritiques

#TNT

All Hail the undisputed king of the YWS helicopter game.
  





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Tue Apr 23, 2013 1:26 pm
Kit says...



6. Seasonal Affected Disorder
Come storms! Thrash against the curdled moon!
Roll up, tightly packed with all your fellows
like socks upon long journeys which too soon
abandon form and will to fit. Bellow!
Come dark rain, drop down your shredded sheets!
Surely there is laundry to be found
fresh and crisp from stolen sun, pressed neat.
Throw them drenched and muddy on the ground!
But if you even shade my lover's sky
Enough to wake the tiniest of moths
Oh Storms I'll give you cause enough to cry
No tempests you can conjure match my wrath.
Fall even a dew drop on my love,
they'll be no place to hide you there above!
Princess of Parataxis, Mistress of Manichean McGuffins
  





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Tue Apr 23, 2013 1:41 pm
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Kit says...



7. Jess in the Kitchen.

Force water into your cells! Become delicious!
Remember what it was to be so lush
so watersick you'd moan at the capricious
autumn wind for its sudden rush.
Dark battle ships crossing your gold face,
crumbling in ragged rhinoceros whisps,
and there in that indomitable space
the voice that called you from the soil lisps
"Goodbye my sweetest one, my dearest treasure,
so close so close, my love and yet so far"
Your ears so full, you do not hear the thresher,
your stalks were felled, and so now here you are.
I respect this life, oh noble pasta
but all the same, I wish you would cook faster.
Princess of Parataxis, Mistress of Manichean McGuffins
  





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Tue Apr 23, 2013 1:44 pm
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Kit says...



I should mention that "Force water into your cells! Become more delicious!" is literally what my housemate said while cooking pasta. Which is one of the infinite reasons I love her. That, and she looks like a supermodel, plays music like a god, and makes poo jokes.
Princess of Parataxis, Mistress of Manichean McGuffins
  





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Wed Apr 24, 2013 3:44 pm
Kit says...



8. For Maisi

With the sparrows she could catch, surely
eighty or ninety would do, she will fly!
Net the wriggling stars like fish. (Naturally
the sparrows must have a share and alibi)
She'll lap up the sky, curling her tongue,
snooze by the sun, before it gets gets too warm
yowl with the moon from which the sea is hung,
bat her paw to split a building storm.
But who would guard her human in repose?
Who would nap to warm up his sheet?
Chase the demons from his twitching toes?
Who'd cause food by dancing with his feet?
She jumps down to find her fluffy panda.
Though her human can't fly, he seems to understand her.
Princess of Parataxis, Mistress of Manichean McGuffins
  





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Thu Apr 25, 2013 1:50 am
Kit says...



9. Lest we forget the Vet

I used to march in the ANZAC day parade.
I'd always end up eating the rosemary
praying for the sacrifice they made,
are making still abroad, those very
brave and noble pawns sacrificed for queen
a number written off in rival ledgers
a body, a mind, a life for the unseen.
Will the silent monarch hedge her
bets and withdraw? No, a pawn's a pawn.
And what of the men who avoid being killed
broken toys, haunted and forlorn,
I wasn't to know that it was my blood spilled.
Generations on, the family pays, it seems.
At least rosemary helps ward off the dreams.
Last edited by Kit on Thu Apr 25, 2013 11:39 am, edited 1 time in total.
Princess of Parataxis, Mistress of Manichean McGuffins
  





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Thu Apr 25, 2013 9:45 am
Kit says...



10. Sister, Sister.

She told me life is complicated
A symphony, many parts in a score.
So many sins go unexpatiated
with the cloaking of simpering metaphor.
Did you fight them back to words on a page?
Bury them in endless rosary,
Does it sting you, dear, to see my rage
to recognise what has come over me?
The flesh remembers, the meat of your brain
you share the guilt, the violence undeterred
there is no antidote for that pain
no shelter left in god or in word.
If that was my symphony to play
I'd break the baton, I would walk away.
Princess of Parataxis, Mistress of Manichean McGuffins
  





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Thu Apr 25, 2013 10:40 am
Kit says...



11. Inappropriate Language

The use of profanity releases
endorphins into your system, and in turn
the agony which caused your outburst ceases
(for example, a bite, a cut or burn).
We get so caught up in dirty language,
for the precious kids may be effected,
more than actual exsanguinage.
Our priorities are misdirected.
The words themselves refer to natural act
procreation, excretion, our anatomy,
what horror can naming them exact,
when we see them daily, explain that to me.
Why isn't an act of violence worse
than the painkilling resulting curse?
Princess of Parataxis, Mistress of Manichean McGuffins
  








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