By Clara Monahan
A goodbye isn’t sad
When a memory is cold
Or the memory once had
Was never retold
When a goodbye isn’t sad
Long gone was a soul
Before their frail body
Was dug in a hole
But when a goodbye carries sorrow
Grief, pain, and tears
It’s true that what’s gone
Was loved all its years
But when a goodbye isn’t sad
The memories weren’t had
It was simply a man
A father, not a dad.
By Keegan Imami
My heart gallops to you like
a dark horse, my little land,
I penetrate the water of rivers and lakes
like a stone
singing and quivering and bursting song,
Bent into my solid marine madness.
This is where I should
like to take you:
Dark riverbeds rise
like a flower from the earth
and nuptial light,
In little canoes pure as wild honey
like oceanic magnolias
gripping thunderbolts
and us
descended and submerged
and unraveled
in the blue majesty
of its decorum,
Vineyards of battered hulls
and meteors,
raspberries and
blackberries.
I should like to lose
our feet in the pianos
and mountains,
sand and
thorns,
Where evergreen forests are born.
By Whitman Halverson
How am I supposed to know my limits when there’s so much more I need to know?
You ask about my scars- I am dappled like the doe
I drag my feet to therapy: “You are your greatest foe”
I sit and wonder, time again, if I'm really meant to grow
Or if the roaring, foaming, jaws below me
Reach up for me and adore me
From which I’m wrestling glory and its gory
Aftermath of writhing stories
One on top of the other
Pick and chose
Which life you lose in lieu of the rent being due
You cannot convince me I'll worship in a cubicle
That hiddeously warped and tortured place of flaming crucible
I am not a pheonix or a welded metal ton
You might rise from ashes but I'll burn
Fahrenheit 451
Like the crumbling collection of useless words that I am
I am
Sick. and tired. of self.
Put me on a shelf, please
Let me be your bejeweled success.
Gild me. Build me
Into something I am not
A success.
I am everything I was wanted to be
And I am so eternally, tumultuously, infernally, perniciously hollow.
I cannot swallow my smiles, shocked with bile, running the final and last of my miles
I am petering out of gas, facing backwards so I can reach for the past and pretend that the mass of glass stars shattering under the overpass
Isn't there
I don't care
I'm lying.
And I'm sorry
Rebbeca Huisman
By Isabelle Schremp
Compare
Compare
Comparing is all I can do
Taking pieces of others
Their looks
Their heart
Their wisdom
I try to replace theirs for mine
For I cannot compete with theirs
Scrolling through the never ending cycle
I add to my insecurities like making a grocery list
I have become a puzzle that doesn’t fit
By Paxton Anderson
The sun was shining over the horizon that day
Almost all were out enjoying its glorious display
The young, their parents, the animals too
The sky, they noticed, was gloriously blue
All but one were enjoying that day
Alone, depressed, an old man sat at bay
For he had been told to stay far away
Everyday he sat alone
Inside the most lonesome home
He had been neglected all his life
Day to night all he came to know was strife
It wasn’t his fault he was maimed
Children's fathers made him feel ashamed
For other’s faults he was blamed
The children never saw him to not be frightened
None of them had yet been enlightened
Of disabilities, pain, and suffering
Eyes of the children the mothers had been covering
Then that glorious day
The smallest child slowly wandered away
Steadily losing sight of his mother’s blouse
He walked cautiously toward the man’s house
He knocked on the door with his small fist
The man said to come in so he couldn’t resist
The little boy opened the door with a slight twist
Inside he saw the man and decided to talk
He asked if he wanted to go on a walk
The man explained his condition to the boy
Because of the boys kindness the question did not annoy
The man had a wheelchair to move around
He told the boy to walk while he rolled across the ground
The little boy found that alright so their deal was sound
They made their way to the home of the boy’s mother
All that was seen by everyone wasn’t the boy but the other
The neglected old man had been treated kindly
By the one would have been frightened they thought blindly
The mother of the little boy came running in tears
She hugged him while shedding all her fears
For she had hoped that someone would bring the man back for years
The sun was shining over the horizon that day
All were out enjoying its glorious display
The young, the old, the animals too
All together, they noticed, was no longer going to be new
By Sophia Taylor
A place of dreams coming to fruition
With desperate teens pursuing their mission.
Where the lights never sleep
And the people weep.
Because where the light cannot reach
Is where predators creep.
Seeking to beseech
Their target into deep
Poverty.
No matter how many castings you attend
You cannot befriend
A single director.
You’re alone with a horizon full of offices buildings
Full of people fulfilling their billings
Because their dreams are dried up and crusty.
Worn down and dusty.
Their parents can no longer goad them on
To wake up at the crack of dawn
To accomplish a dream far gone.
By Darby Hood
By Sophia Taylor
Does it hurt to die?
As much as it hurts to pry open
A jar of peanut butter. Your favorite.
Or perhaps your favorite was honey butter,
On a bed of rolls.
Does it hurt more now that you’ve left them behind?
Do you have guilt for taking the short-cut of life?
They think of you fondly, yet wish desperately that
They did more. They want your laughter that lit up the room.
Along with your sadness, and weeping, and blues-
Your wrinkles and grandchildren too.
But I never knew you, and because you’re gone
How can I tell a story that’s never being drawn?
Where you went, whatever it is, can’t reach the despair
Of your mother when she hangs your stocking, or bakes you a cake
On your birthday. They still celebrate.
Or maybe they don’t.
Maybe they push you out of their lives because they hurt. You hurt them.
With your one decision you left them like dirt. Ground, dirty, defenseless,
Useless. Unless they choose to plant a seed.
But you were the seed; given in to thorns and weeds.
Yet again I ask, does it hurt to die?
As much as it did when they made you cry.
When all you wanted was to roll up and sigh
A desperate goodbye.
I’ll miss you, whoever you are. I hurt for your family, for your children, for the star
That hangs in heaven mourning the loss of a beautiful creation
Whose story was never finished.
By Almeda Pitts
They called me where I should not follow.
But they were full and I was hollow.
Rolling, now, in light and bright,
Flailing left and fumbling right,
Confusion and calm meet.
My desperation fades as I descend from light and heat.
I’m no longer drawn, I no longer succumb.
My whole body, whole being, is numb.
Now that they’re nothing I know what they are.
Too late, I’ve already come too far.
My breaths are deep and filling.
The wavering seas are slowly stilling.
Water hits the bottom of my lungs.
I am thinking, internally singing, sinking, the song the sirens sung.
By Rebecca Huisman
I’m so grateful
For the things I’ve
Grown to love and
fear to lose
All the people
I softly cling
To and fear the
Brisk emptiness
Of pale death a
Snow gossamer
Tucking away
All the time
Friendship feels like
Fall when leaves drop
You say Goodbye
to leave without
Turning back so
Your tears can freeze
Into winter
Forever now
Till the budding
of new spring then
Intervades your
Cavernous heart
with Its warm-cold
Patches like shifting
Sunlight under
An oak tree
Thank you God for
The people I’m
Not ready to
Say goodbye
By Naya Green
By Sydney Downs
I don't remember much
Just the sound
The broken AC
The heavy breathing
And all, all the screaming
Where was I when I awoke?
Was I six feet under?
In a box of oak?
Yes I stopped seeing, breathing
But now I am here and I am screaming!
They took everything!
My sanity
My trust
And finally they took my life
You shut my up when I tried to speak
You did not talk with my
You talked about me
Talk to me, I´m begging!
I was begging
I was screaming
I was breathing
It's my turn to speak
So hear my voice
And hear my cry
You will not be the reason
That I give up and die
By David Marsh
Under the sweltering soul of Ebony Isle did stand the manor of Sir Lászlo Barna, a petty figure whose predicament lay upon a theft proffered by an English waif; her eyes undulating symmetrically under a blood moon, and the point at which Barna was to, for accounts of the perplexing nature of these rather jarring memories, dispel himself upon the rose garden that pierced the skin of a mellowing earth. There was a vehicle that at some point, the sky did set and blood and fluids closed his eyes yet springing off the sprightly shore did homes begin to scatter like ashes, a wise ‘how d’ya do?’ settling a pinch, a punch at an English bar, and his pretty movement will burn me till I face the greater fires of hill. (It is at this point that it must be noted that Barna, despite an array of mistresses and a wife he had assumed as optimal but twenty years back, was still completely void of understanding on the subject of human sexuality).
He had three daughters, each a beloved tooth in the mouth of a dragon, yet teeth are said to ripple like flight upon a cohing (couing? cawing?) momentum. Waves are a blank face for a game, dealt out like flies and pebbles (that is how they defined sand some many years back). I’d loved to be a murderer, a plague, a wave, and all of this was thought by thine mind upon twenty years of duration. We, no us - we the people, we the citizens of a manager’s manor, of the manger of the mountain, the many of the mulling and the mulling of the many - a book - charlotte downs [was the] end [of] fairness, [the] ghoul [of the] house, and 1 - 1 - 2 - 3 - 5 ways away from the center of the board is spun a circular object that will thus present the shadow of a merrily subtle being. She was dead. Time will move on.
“In the beginning” is a pertinent phrase to the end, time a phrase to space, Lászlo to the rose garden, and prayer to plowing (but death and money are to be separated until an observer may state otherwise of this meaning). It is a long stride of his manor that occupies his space, and at the beginning may he plow and turn to Lászlo. They’d picked an oak tree for this occasion, but processions were narrow and possessions too grand to defile the land as (such). I am unaware of your game, we of his stature, yet he shall fall through the stone in due time.
In due time. At the beginning of Animal the two escape, at the beginning of Phase they endure, and through a petroleum haze they would wish that they could have done neither of these things. Thus a realization of the waves that painted the manor of Lászlo Barna, his personage, the facade of his imagination and your bitter wisdom shall we dance and cry and swoon upon these crumbling balconies - it is our time until the end of the world, or the beginning, and upon a whale oil wishing well we shall seek that the flower garden shall stand until the turning of St. Francis.
By Riley Cook
“Boom!”, he accidently said. The giant, brown oak in his lush backyard set fire. He ran to get the hose. He ran back and put out the fire. Whew! He barely saved the giant oak. But, there was a giant hole next to the tree where he said boom. He did not know what to do.
Ziggy first said boom when he was 5 years old. He was in his normal public school talking about onomatopoeia words. The room he was in was destroyed by the fire and the blow, but no one was hurt. This is when he learned that he could blow stuff up. This one word for him had a lot of power.
After he put out the fire and covered up the giant hole with a tarp he heard his parents pull up the driveway. He ran up to his house and went in the back door. He saw his parents. He helped them bring in the groceries and get ready for dinner. When dinner was ready Ziggy sat at the table with his parents and with the big shaggy dog under the table. They ate and Ziggy never told his parents about the incident in the backyard.
Ziggy went to school the next day and hung out with his friends at lunch. A lot of people knew about Ziggy’s special power, and the only people that were not scared of him were his friends. Ziggy felt really nervous that his parents would find the hole in the backyard. Last time he said boom in the backyard was a year ago, and his parents got very mad at him. They made Ziggy fill the hole in the ground all by himself as a punishment. He was just experimenting to see if his power still worked. The reason why Ziggy said boom yesterday was because he got really mad and just wanted to say boom. Now he realized this was not a good choice.
When Ziggy got off the bus he saw his Mom waiting for him on the front porch of their house. It was at that moment that he knew… he was in big trouble. His Mom asked him all the normal questions about his day, and then she asked, “Did you say boom in the backyard yesterday?” Ziggy did not know what to do. Ziggy just asked his Mom, “Mom, why am I the only person who has to deal with the power of this one word. Why is it me? Why do I have to do something different? Why do I have this power?” Ziggy’s Mom could tell Ziggy was spiraling out of control. She replied with one word, “stop”. Ziggy stopped. “Ziggy”, Ziggy’s Mom said, “I have the power of one word too. I can say stop and people stop. I can say thanks and make someone's day. I can say sorry and repair a relationship. I have the power of one word too”. Ziggy looked at his Mom with a new understanding. Ziggy’s Mom continued, “everyone has the power of one word. This power can be used to restore”. Ziggy started to understand now. He was not the only one with the power of one word.
By Joanna Ward
