Note: While authors are asked to place warnings on their stories for some moderated content, everyone has different thresholds, and it is your responsibility as a reader to avoid stories or stop reading if something bothers you.
A year of schoolwork: poems I submitted for a grade - 1. Seasons
Spring
Columbine (Ballad)
First there was the constant itching.
Then came the awful squirm.
Something shifting under the skin,
his palm a writhing worm.
So nails dug into flesh like hoes
carve furrows into dirt
and from the gash flowed vital blood,
like rain that floods the earth.
He drowns in it, or so it feels
when everything goes black.
For frightfully, a growing thing
comes crawling from the crack.
When he awakes the wound has gone
sewn shut by twisting roots.
All that remains to show the truth
a tiny pale green shoot.
He tries to hide his new companion
with gloves and careful smiles.
Daily he finds it grows and grows
as if to thwart his guile.
So then he thinks “I’ll cut it out,
violent abdication.”
The blade sinks deep into his skin,
agony/salvation.
Too late, it seems, for when he pulls
his flesh back in a flap
he finds beneath that vines now curl
‘round bones with blood now sap.
He vomits when they start to move
snaking ‘round his innards
a wicked mind all their own slides
up and ever inwards.
His body now is not his own,
it belongs to the vine
And from his palm it’s flower spreads
A purple columbine.
Summer
Anything’s a poem: An Essay Outline
“Summersong”
by the Decemberists
presents it’s audience with an
idealized summer as a metaphor for
Thesis: (and criticism of)
the way that romantic relationships
can be idealized and undermined
by that idealization.
It repeatedly juxtaposes beautiful,
perfect imagery against a dark,
Support: crawling underbelly and utilizes alliteration
to lull the audience into a passive state;
to brush these darker moments under the rug.
“Waylay, the din of the day
Boats bobbing in the blue of the bay
In deep, far beneath
all the dead sailors slowly slipping to sleep”
Examples: and
“Been saved, the warmer the waves
I felt us slip into a watery grave”
are both examples of this literary tool in
action.
As you can see, “Summersong”
is an excellent example of poetic technique
Conclusion: highlighting theme and clarifying
the message of the broader work.
The song is one not of the glory of summer
but of the folly of artificial glorification.
Fall
Serial Killer (Sestina)
I want you to love me
like a serial killer
Drill a hole
in my head,
make me wish
I was dead.
Taste my flesh, dead,
red, raw, gushing your
nails like knives, wishing
to carve virgin skin - fresh kill
into fresh filets, fish dripping headless
and blue - eyes like holes
waiting to be filled, holes
gaping, wide and wet and dead.
I’ll give you head,
one more for the freezer, my
tongue frostbitten, cold teeth killing
tastebuds across skin like a wish
but I don’t know what I’m wishing
for, so just treat me like the hole
that I am. Come to me, killer
and fuck me till I’m dead,
till all I can feel is an open wound, your
friction the only thing in my head.
Give me the gift of no heading
no future-tense pathetic wishing
clean me out, clean me off till my
bleach-white skull all lined with holes
is thoughtless and shuffling, living dead
sounds like heaven when your head’s a killer.
And when you’re done, my killer,
and I’m lying on a kitchen floor headless
and dripping, just me and the dead
flies, eggs already hatching under my skin, wish
me luck before you toss me in my shallow hole.
I’ll need it when I’m finally without you.
With nothing left between me and my head.
Just this dirt-filled hole and the other dead,
all wishing they too had the love of a serial killer.
Winter
The Giving Tree in White
Winter came to him like a mother.
Branches withered, their fruit long rotten,
snow dressed the giving tree
in white.
And his hands ached
From clutching
From clutching
From clutching too hard
She always looked so stern
arms akimbo, looking down at him,
a whisper of a smile, disapproving.
He had no reason to be afraid.
She taught him well
or as well as she could,
stern words and calm correction -
he had no reason to be afraid.
The line soon grew worn from careful toeing
eyes always down so not to trip and fall to either side
and her praise was warm and kind, almost like love.
He knew he had no reason to be afraid.
But still his knuckles were white
from clutching
from clutching
from clutching too hard.
Love sat wide and heavy
a yoke on narrow shoulders
and he, always unsure
exactly what it was carved to carry.
So he dragged it on the ground
always looking for a worthy burden,
something heavy enough to deserve him
but not so heavy it would snap.
She told him once
“Life’s not so serious
as you make it out to be boy
lighten up a little.
Anybody with eyes can see
you’re clutching
you’re clutching
you’re clutching too hard”
But words like that they don’t set in
when your palms are lined in half-moon scars
so he lived his life on a tightrope
strung across the void between stars
She asked him once
“What’d I ever do to make you feel
like nobody could ever want you,
not even yourself?”
But that answer wouldn’t come
until there was no voice left asking it,
pale marble sits heavy and quiet
under the apple boughs.
Hands gripping branches soaring
once clutching,
not clutching,
but spreading in the wind.
Spring came to him like a mother
stealing his nights and selling them to the sun
and flowers dressed the giving tree
in white.
- 4
- 5
Note: While authors are asked to place warnings on their stories for some moderated content, everyone has different thresholds, and it is your responsibility as a reader to avoid stories or stop reading if something bothers you.
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