• 18
• Destry's digital outpuoring
• The maidens they bowled over
• 

18

Please remember the 100 word limit though.

The theme for March is "EDGE". Please send in your contributions before March 17 to

Madhubashini Ratnayake,
C/o The Sunday Times,
No. 8, Hunupitiya Cross Rd,
Colombo 2.

18 to Eighty

Her Victorian grand-mother
She'd been told.........
Married at fifteen,
Was a mother of three
By eighteen.
Left dozens of descendants
To fill the family tree.

She's a modern independent girl
Of eighteen....
She cares about orphans
Human and animal victims
Of unbelievable cruelty.
She's a trainee teacher..........
She knows how violence
Boils and bubbles beneath
The solid serene earth.

She remembers with sadness
Her young mother (only from photographs)
She had bled to death despite
The medicine men.
She had married in the bloom
Of her emerging womanhood.
She was eighteen.

Jegatheeswari Nagendran

I wish I'm eighteen again

He comes home victorious
The champion's cup in his hand
Looks in the mirror to see
How much of a man he is.
Oh! I wish I'm eighteen again

He laughs with his friends
As they crack silly jokes
But the dialect they speak
I fail to comprehend
And I wish I'm eighteen again

He goes into the blues
Keeps awake at night, listens to sad songs
For the girl has left him
Now he feels alone in the world,
I wish I'm eighteen again

I'm old and gray
My bones ache when I walk away
With blurred vision I see my grandson
Full of spirit and full of life.
And I wish I am eighteen again!

Jayatilake

Rebellious Eighteen

Sixteen is sweet.
So they say.
A flower blooming at its best.
But then-
Eighteen is the crossroads of youth.
At eighteen they get confused.
And they rebel.
Not with any particular aim.
Just for a change,
for better or for worse.

Sunanda Mahawela

To be 18

Be eighteen
Ace the ultimate test
See mom smile
Be on top of the world.
Kiss that special rose
See her eyes water
Be faithful.
Hit top speed in a convertible
See the gaping mouths
Be over the moon.
Vote proper
See the system change
Be responsible.
Stand on your own
See dad's proud face
Be respected.
End the child within
See the world spin
Be.............. bored!
Oh! No!
Never!

Thushara Chathuranga

Those wild, wild dreams

It wasn't yesterday
It only seems that way
I was eighteen
My heart full of dreams
The world at my feet
Then the inevitable happened
I grew up!
The man in my deams
I married
The life I always dreamed of
I lived.
"Now I have everything"
And maybe I do
But those wild, wild dreams
I don't have them anymore.

Shashini

At the eighteenth hurdle

Left behind are immature notions,
As I'm poised to leap the hurdle
'Too much time and toil have been wasted,'
I feel,
To grab the liberty and euphoria ahead.
But wait!

The once lucid panorama appears blurred,
In a light-tinged fog.
Was it a too realistic illusion?
Or a too illusive reality?
I ponder,
And as I look back,
The grass looks greener than ever behind me.

Sachithra Somarathna

Eighteen

Million years old
Dash of starlight glistening in an
eighteen-year-old's eyes.

Rohini Gooneratne Cooray

After 18 what next?

Waiting impatiently at nine, to be ten,
Dreaming badly at ten, to be thirteen,
Then wondering when I'll be sweet sixteen,
and next excited about eighteen,
Finally became a young adult, but there's no
Excitement as such...........
Twenty one and go on?

By N. Palliyaguru

Death

He was thinking; about his home,
ageing parents, sister and brother still at school
The leak in the roof, the crack in the wall
When the crossfire started and the bullet hit him
He was just eighteen
Oblivious to all this
In a five star hotel
another young man
thought about the new Ferrari
the girls and the dances
when the bomb went off.
He was eighteen too.

Veranja Liyanapathirana

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