Write Out Loud – Day 7

This poem was written by SNW community member Throwbot, who dropped by my last class at Ryerson to participate in this exercise. “I’ve never written a poem before,” she keeps telling me, and as I keep reminding her, you could never tell by reading this piece. The ABC formatting gives her structure and flow, but it’s the honesty of the piece that really gets me. I hope it’s not her last poem!

Postponement – by Lauren Dwyer

Afterwards he smiled, and
Broken never looked so sexy.
Creases on his face, lines
Drawn from years of beaming,
Every one a hint of some
Faded laugh or worry or
Game played, each misplaced
Hair telling a story.
Imagined futures
Just out of reach,
Keeping secrets of fucked up
Love, falling without a pattern
Messy across his eyes,
He never could quite hide them –
Open or closed they betrayed his story.
People wonder at the lines
Question the hair, the burns, the scars
Riddles written in skin,
Stopping short at the eyes.
The truth there has a funny way of
Undoing the people searching for it
Venturing into lives they shouldn’t,
Waiting for answers they already know.
Xanex can’t bring back wasted youth,
Youth is wasted on the young anyway,
Zealous kids with no purpose, running out of time.