Young Writers Society

Mrs. Crow and the Dealer Man

Look at this night that all the black seeps out of.
Wind across the grass is a sigh but not a wail,
That rattles past your rusted dreams,
And makes them shake together,
And the clangor that you hear tonight,
It really isn’t anything,
It’s just all those rusted parts undoing.
You lie in bed, so unaware
That on the other side of the bedroom wall
Up against the clapboard siding,
There is a creature that no one can identify.
It stalks the yard, it paces and it gnaws,
It’s black and green and golden eyed,
And made up of all the thoughts
And memories you discarded.

In the mist, that mist that rises after falling rain,
You can see the road I used to spin,
From wind and clouds and smoke,
Gossamer, thick and ensnaring.
You remember that same small old longing,
Like drops of melted sunlight,
That makes virgins and sailors weep,
That I bottle for you,
Oh remember, that we used to drink.
But somehow you got confused,
You thought that just because
I tell the smoke up to the heavens,
I could easily find my way
Around your heart,
That maze of a rose garden.
Stumbling blindly,
Just trying not fall,
On that endless search to find the cage
That holds the nightingale.

Sunlight rips across the morning sky,
I’m staring up these stone temple steps,
It’s such a long walk to the pinnacle of enlightenment,
It would be so much easier
To grow wings and fly,
And then like Icarus, to burn,
To become melted honey-wax falling down,
To seep into the sky, or down on to the land,
To be absorbed into silence.

I’ve been sampling all the spices of my foreign land,
All these scented colours of taste,
Picture painted on my tongue,
While waiting for the train to pull into the station,
To come pull in and take me back
To the height of gray,
To speed and width and no depth,
And air that’s hard to breath without choking.
Surrounded by commotion of all that coming and going,
One stationary statue,
Lost in contemplative thought,
Sitting there and sipping tea,
Watching the beggar beg, learning from the master,
Soon to be interrupted by a cloud of steam and a screech of steel –
But not even that anymore either.

I meant to write to you the other day,
I saw someone who made me think
Of the way you described to me
Your etched vision of beauty.
I watched this woman, I met her from a distance,
She was so dark and pale and elegant,
Every one envied her,
So they forgot see,
She was cloaked in sadness,
Sorrow carving distant beauty,
Elegance where it should be glory –
Promise me you’ll never be that,
And I’ll promise you the same.

The ocean has been calling me,
The wind that never stops, never ceases,
Like a constant touch and energy,
An addiction of my skin,
And the waves a constant craving of my eyes and ears,
Glorified in memory, and held so dear.
Falling back on my dreams of sand,
And cool sun and worn out land,
Longing to be smoothed and easy and light.
And a fire in the night,
With story roads up to the heavens,
Or leading on to other pasts and futures,
And filled with all the warmth and energies of spices,
Oh, flame and smoke and magic and earth,
There are still so many ingredients missing,
I will tell you when I find them.


*Please tell me what you thought of it. also, is this the right catagory to have posted this poem in?