Young Writers 2019
My Father’s Ship - Noah Mercado
My father used to sing me a song when I was a boy called “La Canción del Pirata” or “The Song of the Pirate.” The song tells of a pirate who lives on the margins of society with nothing but his boat and the sea. His whole life, my father had longed to be a seafarer and dreamt of exploring new lands. As is the curse of many men, he lacked the means to pursue his heart’s aching desire… to be one with the sea. And so he forced himself to settle down, finding work at a local marketplace by the docks. While he could never leave, never sail away on one of the glistening boats to lands far away, he remained close to the sea.
Many afternoons, he would take me down to the docks where he could breathe in and taste the sea salt. I would sit and watch him gaze out upon the waters, humming the tune to “La Canción del Pirata.”
In many ways, I am my father’s son. The burning desire he had for exploration burns in me, as well. The connection he had with the sea, I feel too. And so when he died, I promised him one thing, that I would live the life he never could have.
“Ships at a distance have every man’s wish on board,” I remember my mother saying. My father’s ship remained at a distance for his whole life, never coming to shore, but never sailing away. Always in sight, but never attainable. And so he died with his dream still out there, sailing along the horizon.
Right here, right now, as I sit and watch the boats sail into the morning light, I feel my father’s presence drifting in the ocean breeze. Out there along the horizon I can see the ship, my father’s ship.“Come,”I call to it.“Come to shore, and together we will sail into the light.”
Kairos - Jeremy Hannon
The heavens above, clear and blue,
Gaze like the eyes of God in azure hue,
Upon me, I suppose, or the barren field where I lay,
Or the mythless labyrinth in trees of gray.
No rumble or roar shatters the cosmic stare,
No witless whisper in the wind, or beckoning buzz in the air,
Can deliver me from the startling nakedness of my heart,
One infinitely deepened when familiar pretense departs.
Gone is the mangled mask of expectation,
Supplanted only by a quiet invitation,
That gurgles in the crystalline rollick of the stream,
Twinkles in the distant lake’s placid gleam,
Crackles in the broken earth beneath my feet,
Guiding wandering steps in endless fields of trampled wheat,
To the man I am to be, And the God I now see.
The Root Of Evil - Idris Mansaray
When she stumbled into Satan’s pocketed alley, she first noticed the scars that filled its belly. Veiled by the cover of blackest night, its intestines rumbled in an orgy of human filth. She groomed her kinky sable fur as she looked on the jimble jamble of arms and legs that rose from their faded sleeping bags. They oozed from their dark nest, not daring to go further than the dirt caked walls. The creatures looked at her and grinned their toothless grins.
Here kitty kitty one burped. It brought its hand to her nape and lifted her higher than the rest. She looked the creature in its serpentine eye, and for a moment, thought she saw the face of God in its cave, but behind the bluish green nebula, she gazed upon Satan’s own face, brandished her claws,
and plucked Him from the crib.