Young Writers Society

are they over, these salad days?
instead of blues and pinks is it now blacks and greys? because i thought i heard a
scream last night. a blood-curdling scream, sounding like cold-blooded murder
and i threw off the sheets, clambered out of bed and into the hall though i
had no candle and the power was out. there were only
fluffy shadows that were so slippery they could slide along the carpet like the hot sunset
slides across the sky. (and believe me,
i checked under every
cushion, every lampshade
but i could not find a
thing). no clues were
lurking in deep black corners.

there must be something finer beyond all this
for god could not have been so cruel as to
make this the extent of all entirety
and occassionally, when silence is echoing beyond my own mind,
a glimpse of warmth gathers in the corner of my eye
like sunlight and yet surpassing any stitch of sunlight we have ever known
i have hope yet for this field of horrific beauty
although it is not up to me to give it hope.

like a slash of morning across the gardens fair
the tingling shriek is more than i can bare
yet bandage its bleeding gash, wipe its tears away
now does the speckle of light in its eyes show even the most
tiny particle of promise?
pastel moonlight is falling on this sombre grass: surely
such immortalities do not use the weak excuse of time to die
are they over, these salad days?
thinking it over, maybe they are never slayed
maybe they go on dancing under grass,
through the sky, leaping between globes of pure light,
flying with the hush of the winter breeze.
written: started - Saturday 20th march 2004, 10:00pm, finished -Tuesday 22nd March 2004, 6:55pm

I liked the first stanza, but the second one kind of lost my attention. It picked up again after that, though. Not sure what salad days is all about, but overall I enjoyed reading it.

pretty, but it rambled a bit, and what's a salad day? careful not to get too obscure with your metaphors, otherwise they just confuse the reader and break the spell the poem is supposed to put over someone. unless the poem is supposed to be extremely avant garde and abstract. i think the first line kind of threw me off because the rest of the poem was rather serious and sinister.

Like was said before, I liked the first and third stanzas, they were really attention-grabbing.
And I too wonder what a salad day is.

Thanks guys!
"Salad days" is a term coined by Shakepeare in "Anthony and Cleopatra" meaning a time of youth and innocence. So the whole poem is hinged on that phrase, it's just about the end of youth and innocence. But the question whether it is really gone forever.