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14 June 2022

Glass

This week, we were responding to the latest YPN challenge on the theme of glass. As a warm up, the young writers were challenged to write a poem/description about glass without using the words clear, transparent, breakable, fragile or shiny.

From Aurora:

My Winter lake, stained with words and daffodil’s tears, paint the picture of sacrifice upon your glazed face. I see mothers buried behind your crystal surface, lament artfully scribed into your pale cheeks all twisted with crowns of thorns. King of glass, shattered now, denied.  You are a mirror, one-way and secretive, cultish and adamant about your benevolent actions, argumentative even. I watch your gilded groans with pity, a single,  crystalline tear drops miles to my feet for your sacrifice. Never obvious, from translucent to opaque, you died for nothing – bloodstains are flattened and meaningless.

Next, we wrote from the perspective of glass itself - either glass in general, or a specific piece/kind of glass (e.g. a window, glasses, stained glass, a drinking glass, etc) - Zoe's was about how glass was made, using some beautiful personification:

From Zoe:

Taken from my life,
From traveling the world,
I was captured and torched.  

My life was perfect,
Riding along,
Relaxing in the sea.  

Then they came along,
And swept me up, Into a prison. 
They torched me, 

So angry I was,
When I was thrown into the flames. 
Taken out again, 

I was blown into shape,
Like I was a victim of a car crash. 
Dyed I was, 

Mixed with metal,
Poisoned with cobalt oxide.  
Now the world is my enemy

An ornament I will be for life,
Stuck here in my dreadful slumber.   
Goodbye for ever good friend…

From Aurora:

Feel blown out. Wistful underneath the tree with the olive leaves, flopping like the rabbit’s foot but it holds no such luck. Long and hollow, make a ringing sound but no bell is sounded, no time called for this round of abuse, refuted and left for dead beneath the shallow tree, hallowed.  Freedom traded for the glint of avarice, fill me with greed, yes, drown me in these golden coins until they overflow the branching vines and topple from the sky, worthless by the end. Too many rings circle this trunk, and death do us part on the anniversary of my swallowed humility. Worst.

There are chips and cracks running through me, soon let the water burst out and flood my valley, flood the sky and the stars in a deep marine hue that burns its impression on my landscape, tattooed into my skin. How old am I now, that my wrinkles have not decayed with the minutes, stayed resolute.  Antique, fragile – do not touch. I become a museum, luckless and alone under the twisted leaves. I am the shadows beneath the stump, the end of something ancient, while the last flares of life fall around me, collecting in the grass like skin. I pick one up, examine it. My resolve is flaking, my olive tears are fading away.

From Leo:

Clear like crystal,
Clear like water,
Though of stone I am,
Of sand of stone of Earth  

Transfigured beyond recognition,
Nothing more perfectly calm,
To think, Forged in Fire,
Yet how calm can I be.  

Am I a cripple?
A cripple is what you call
Something fractured,
And oh how close I am.  

Am I a sage?
Much has passed through my clear mind,
Un-deformed, Perfectly Replicated.
On all my sides. 

I may be of great art, of great wisdom,
I hear nothing yet see everything.
I can never think to move, B
ut when moved be careful.

I have a tendency to…
To become a cripple at will.


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