5th Annual Poetry Festival (2010) High School Submissions

Die Tanzen

by Hannah Harris

The dancer bends down and ties her shoes,
Her hair is pulled back tightly.
She is ready,
So she starts, softly.

Her long arms are spread like angels wings
And like an angel, she will fly.
She is gentle, a breeze in the woods, that sings.
So she moves, lightly.

Her body is sturdy and yet she ripples like a wave,
She is not afraid to show her love
Like a true heroine.
So she stands, firmly. 

Her heart lies wounded and her body sore.
She will surely die in this storm.
She is being pulled away; she is just folklore,
And so, she dies, gracefully.


Life's Great Sorrow
by Jamie Pettinger from Ferndale High School

Life’s grief begins with Nature’s pleasing bloom,
Death’s sweet kiss is their reason to exist,
Throwing off color to brighten the gloom,
Then vanished before we know what we’ve missed.

 

The bird songs of spring, the rustle of fall,
The joyous sounds of nature fill our ears
For but a moment ‘for we hear death’s call,
To silence the remainder of our years.

 

The delicate rose of a baby’s hand,
Becomes the cold hard rock of a gravestone,
Time slips through our fingers like grains of sand,
Leaving us as nothing but ash and bone.

 

Though Nature’s beauty is fragile, vanished
‘For we can fully take in its pleasure,
We know it is something that must be cherished,
Before it’s gone from our grasp forever.

 

 

The Other Side

by Britagne Johnson from Ferndale High School

 

The grass is greener on the Other Side
The sky is always blue
The birds sing their springtime songs
The trees always glisten with dew

 

On the Other Side life is thriving
And everything is happy
On the Other Side everyday is a joyous day
And time is spent with family.

 

As I watch the children of the Other Side play
With smiles, jovial laughter, and rosy cheeks
I wonder why my world can’t be a place of such life
A place where joy and love is for the weak.

divorce.
by Kristie Leath from Ferndale High School

a clear, bright sky; infrequent tiny wisps
are alien in this tranquil world of peace.
the sun foresees the gray day as it dips
down to the earth. the mountains are a crease.

white, overnight, becomes a monster gray.
drops fling themselves to moistened ground, and wind
is raging like a tortured mind at play.
origins scattered, still some say they’ve sinned.

a new dawn breaks, seemingly glistening
with dew of troubles past. there are the trees
whose branches broken, bruised. few birds take wing,
the sky is grayed. and so the sky will be.

time’s arid dirges echo stillness loud.
a blanket, holed, protects the thoughts allowed.


Forever
by Oksana Hanson from Ferndale High School

The humble rain has many lives lasting
The wild spells have wizards ever-lasting

And there you will always be . . .
The young reminisce in moments of past
The artists will sing the lyrics they’ve cast

And There you will always be . . .
the spring will come and summer will follow
The rotting trees of forest will hollow
But you choose to be There in a forever without me


SILENT SCREAMS
by Mary Kahle from Ferndale High School

I curl up tight and try to hide
The raging fears that lurk inside
Whispering each weak part of me
My childish insecurity.

The mask has slipped; I'm losing face
I'm on my way to a fall from grace
I've gone too far and burst the seamsThe world can hear my silent screams.

The restless urge to please my peers
Is easing out those locked up fears
So much pain for me to be
The perfect girl they want to see.

But soon all the damage starts to show
Blatant signs of a depressed low
My soul's thrown out for all to see
Wailing to the world a wordless plea.

I've let go, life is lived on code red
Now I've changed, they just want me dead
The black sheep's always rejected
Left alone,cold and neglected.

Better rewind and take it back
Cross my fingers that the walls won't crack
Pray I will break only in bad dreamsLet the Sandman
hear my silent screams.


Spinning Out of My Mind
by Ashlee Creech from Ferndale High School

Arms spread out wide
As though I died
Spinning in the air
Without any care
As a young girl
I loved to whirl

I know not my
True heart’s weak cry.
My mind is spinning,
My mind is pinning,
Me to the ground
I feel quit bound

With no real thoughts
My mind had been bought
By the evil soul
At my mind he does pull,
Spinning me out of control,
Throwing me into a dark hole

Hitting, Hurting, Harming
Becoming less than charming
My true will is lost
At an expensive cost.
I hurt the ones I care for
I am dark to the core.


And Whether Pigs Have Wings
by Kaylyn Christensen from Ferndale High School

Mother Earth had summer long underway
When we met on the bluest of blue sky days
I and the girl with a book in her hands
Titled Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland

She marveled at my branches and leaves and roots,
And settled beneath me, I her roof,
Her back against my trunk I watched her discover
The spontaneity and ventures between each of the covers.

Sitting under a taut, blue canvas my branches extending
From midmorning till dusk she’d spend under my leaves
Her pale shoulders unscorched by harsh glinting rays
And her dress settling into the lush grass each day.

She thrilled in the tales of white rabbits and clocks
Through her lucid movements I watched her thoughts.
I observed her eagerness and excitement over things
Written to harvest her emotions with ease.

Her eyes clear and bright as the grass beneath her
Shifting over letters, over pages they’d flicker.
You’d never suspect such a mind in a girl dressed
By her mother’s hand, thickly starched and deeply pressed. 

The arguments playing in her language as plain
As the words she read of a frantic rabbit running late.
While she leaned against me I felt her sink in
I saw her eyes think, her smile sense, her mind open.

She escaped to me from stories and papers and news,
The chaotic clamor that’s only good was to confuse.
I saw the dreary heart lift when she looked up and saw me
I rustled above her, and made a promise to stay green.

I saw her long for the silliness and trivialities of the text
In a wonderland where senselessness made the most of sense.
She saw no wrong in the controversy in remaining childish
In fact, she saw more wrong in keeping too serious.

Then the days began to come when she couldn’t keep her focus
For once I could not determine what her thought was.
Her eyes drifted from her pages, so to watch the sun move
She would smile giddily to herself in an almost intoxicated mood. 

She would fiddle with her collar, as I watched her eyes think
She would finger her dark curls and blow dandelions wishing.
She would look up to the sky with excitement to her bones
So much so that I could feel her ebbing pulse grow. 

Days would come when she couldn’t open her book at all,
Not to say that she couldn’t recite it through Alice’s fall.
No, the girl was too distracted by something on her mind 
But not of adventures that in her book she could find. 

Then the day came when she brought a book with no writing 
Hours she sat beneath me gazing up, only thinking.
Then all at once the words which she felt
Flowed from her pen in a long, wet welt. 

She wrote her own story, sillier indeed,
Than any arrangement of words she would ever read.
I read the contents of her soul to the edges of an abyss
Through pages and pages her fatigued pen whisked. 

She wrote of a boy, though too well I cannot read,
I picked up some words from her literary frenzy.
At last she collapsed exhausted and satisfied
And at once I knew I must see this boy’s eyes.

The next day I woke and waited impatiently,
Eager to meet this boy of which she wrote so passionately.
I tried to compose myself and settle down my leaves,
For if she had known of what I’d read, she may have been angry with me.

So I waited for her, my dearest friend, to bring him
Where I shaded and protected her, and where I never grafted
I waited while the sun rose and peaked in aligning harmony
And I waited when the sun fell and disappeared behind the city.

The thought occurred in my wooden thoughts that just maybe
She had chosen him over me.
So, sadly that night I closed my eyes
Wondering if ever on her again they would lie.

When I opened my eyes from unrestful sleep
Wonders of her I could not help but think.
Then imagine my excitement when at the usual time
I saw two bodies up my hill climb!

His eyes! Of yarns and tales they were spun!
To the deepest of oceans and truest of loves
His eyes meeting hers I felt the pulsating ring in the air
Of her pure childlike love met by his nonfictional character.
With difficulty she drew a breath caught in her chest,
He breathed relief of being certain at last.
They shifted to touch hands, but barely seemed to move
Their purity something no coveting seraph could disprove.

In all seriousness he spoke: ‘the time has come, to talk of many things,
‘Of shoes – and ships – and sealing wax, of cabbages – and kings.’
To this she replied to him, simply though beaming:
‘And why the sea is boiling hot, and whether pigs have wings.’

My days of summer dreams have long since been the past
I became once again secluded and outcast.
Summer has never again brought the girl who once read
Every day, unfailingly from Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland.
 
Though, today I am awakened early
The cool purpling sun is visible in the distance just barely
A too familiar solitary back on my textured trunk is rested
Though curiously donning all black, I know who it is

I recognize through her grayed hair and deeply lined face,
She smiles the same smile she did with him on that day.
Through tears she reminisces, and twists her left hand’s cold ring
She says to herself, but I suppose mostly to him: ‘pigs do have wings.’


Teddy Bear
by Emma Bennett from Ferndale High School
You are strong and fearless, a gentle boy
He looks up to you in unknown wonder
You crawl like a child; he thinks you’re his toy
When you go on your journey he wanders

“Off to work” he says, “you will be home soon”
He cries for the first few nights unknowing
Looks up every night, seeing the same moon
Whines and whines, love him but he’s annoying

Another one is born today, it’s sad
We went to see him, wish you could be there
He thinks and tries so hard, he becomes mad
He is big like the other, he has your hair

You are still my tough guy, my Teddy Bear
I pray every night for you, I am scared.


Escape
by Caitlin Mumm-Cupples from Winward High School

I wonder what it will be like when I'm gone?
When your serpent coils
Don't hold me tight
When I burst from beneath the weight of night
And rejoin the living?
Sipping your jasmine nectar
Will you find my remains
Scorched black by the sun
Rotted by rains?
Will you think your game is won
And begin anew
With your cold scaled sinew wrap around
Another so easily found?
As I burn away
In the blinding atmosphere of day


Blooming Summer
by Inna Pakhnyuk from Ferndale High School

You would think that summer should
be here, but it isn’t
You would think that it’s sunny
And warm outside but it’s raining.

The trees are all green and beautiful
Flowers are blooming, the grass is growing.
The air is fresh and clear in the mornings
the weather outside is still cold.

There are some days when the sun
Comes out of the clouds and shines with its powerful rays.
Some days are sunny and warm.
Still the summer hasn’t appeared yet.

It’s already June, but where is summer?
When is it going to visit us once again?
Usually every year by this time it’s summer
But not this year, where is it.

Summer is the time when school is on break.
It’s when whereever you look you see the beauty of the Earth.
You hear the birds singing their songs and
You see every kid with their smiles to their eyes
Playing in the water and on grass.