Month: January 2019

As much as I can say, life is not the truth.
It hinders not much more than a fearful light.
Are human sense invites you to a parley in a booth.
It is a devastating thing as once the Buddha fought in an airy kite.

The only safe Valley out of the mountain is by Nirvana love.
It’s rests deep in the mind and heart and is, only locked.
The final stage brings about it but you’re not alive from your rocked.
The delusion that fake life gives is not a dove.

Nirvana oh Nirvana brings craziness to the regular mind.
To the regular mind do not worry say no wants, to not bind.
Left and right you walk be the Buddha’s real.
As to free from life give meditation to the wheel.

Fantasizing the Northwest Passage is a precious Jewel to the mayor.
Slash back in infuriating distaste even more, hate in happening.
Taking the love that he gives and meditated as a prayer.
The soul inside of you is ready for a fruitful fruit ripening.

Now back to a moment a precise time and being.
It is illustrious that the delusion of Life appeals timely.
The sunshine of loving sweetness resides in your seeing,
The jewel brought up before is it Beauty for some blindley.

---

Walsh Middle school

6

The rain has come again
Extinguishing sunlights flame
A tapestry of grey memories paints the clouds
Maybe the sky is broken today
It held too much and suddenly it cracked and everything fell apart
Pouring from the sky, heavens discarded sins

The rain reminds you of your past
You don’t know why
Maybe it’s the color – grey
You mutter something along the lines of “what an ugly day”
Then turn your head in disgust
Retract into yourself
Pray for the sun
Close your blinds
Turn blind – maybe

I sit against the warm asphalt
The sun is still there , the heat is our reminder
Pools of mud and dislocated thoughts surround me
Stagnant brown oceans
I dip my toes into the water
Then my legs
Until I am up to my neck in puddles
Wading in the dirty thoughts
The ones others hide themselves from

I want the mud to stain my skin like paint
A reminder of the rain when it leaves and is erased by the sunlight
I want to swallow up heavens sins, tongue out towards the sky like a child
Gulping down the rain you avoid
I want to look into the destruction of water and see the life it brings
Feel the way it kisses against my skin
Thanking me for joining it
The rain and I, star crossed lovers

Pour onto me
As I wade in shallow puddles
Toes covered in dirt
Hands gripping at wet asphalt
Eyes trained towards the broken sky
I know you cannot forgive the rain for what it does
It’s a reminder of your loneliness
Approaching you in storms
Until it pours and spills and devours
Forcing you to hide indoors
You find memories to be such an ugly thing
The past you despise so much
I hope one day you’ll find the beauty in the storm, the rainbows or maybe even just the puddles.

---

Anderson High School

12

Some days I wish to dig my nails into my flesh
To shed my skin like a winter coat,
discard it for the warm rays of summer
Maybe be bones for awhile
Bask in the feeling of being empty, of being a ghost, a shell
But unfortunately, my body and I seem quite attached

So instead I’ll keep my body but remove my brain
Float it like a balloon above my head, half stuck-half free, never quite anything
Suspended in air, dizzyingly out of place
Going through the motions without emotion

Yet, in the end I find myself crawling back, body and mind nothing without one another yet in constant combat
I’ve been fighting a civil war with myself for 17 years
Who I am on the inside resenting the person on the outside
I stop to wonder if they’re even different people
I try not to wonder

Resent is a lot more palatable than vulnerability
So I’ve found myself resenting things that scare me
And oh how I am scared of myself

It’s easier to trim my body off like a split end
Not think about it until it grows back and breaks again
The cycle repeats, over and over until I can’t remember a time that I wasn’t snipping
Cutting off the unsightly bits
When did I decide it was so unsightly?
Who taught me to loosen ties with something so determined to love me that it continues to come back, despite my constant abuse?

My body and me
We’re quite attached
Although we’re not yet friends
But yet still I find myself staying, loving, longing for change, to improve
I see the love my body gives for me
Despite my efforts to cut it off
To sweep it under the rug, detach myself from it’s presence

It’s been a painful war between us
But my body is not a battle ground
It is a temple
A place of worship
A house that one day I hope will become
Home

---

Anderson High School

12

I swallow the hard lump in my throat
The one that brings tears to my eyes
As if I’m stomaching poison
Maybe I am- in a way
You’re so toxic after all

When I cry you decide that you’ve won
The silent battle of who-hurt-who
As if my tears of frustration are a trophy
A white flag I’m waving
A symbol of your superiority

But no one wins a war
Soldiers are lost never to return home
So is trust
And love follows soon after
A relationship shattered by a game
A relentless need to conquer
You lead a crusade of pointless arguments
You argue your way to hell and false riches

Bathe yourself in my destruction
Lather yourself in my tears
You’ve hurt me- congratulations
You fought a war against a peaceful nation
You stripped it of its gold
Slaughtered the citizens
If only you knew that the true value of the nation resides within the richness of soil
Or maybe- it’s ability to grow back despite conquest

Tear down and destroy, dear conquerer
Until your feet are weary and your soldiers are dead and you cannot remember why you were fighting
Does it even matter?
You’ve won.
And once you’ve set the small peaceful nation into flames
You bask in your earnings
Plastic covered in gold paper
A facade of glory
You weep into your winnings
Mourning your own loss

The small nation thrives again
The soil is rich and deep and lively enough to survive such vicious attacks
I am reborn, stronger than ever
Maybe it’s because the deepness of my roots

Dear conquerer, you’re conquest of rudeness was fruitless
I am not something you can destroy
I will kill you with my kindness
Confuse you with my empathy
Terrify you with my softness
Destroy you with my tears

---

Anderson High School

12

I want nothing more than to be home
And when I am home I want nothing more but to leave.

What is home?
Is it my coffin, or the walls or the feeling I get when I’m inside my walls,
I want it to be none of these things
I wish it to be the pace of breathe I take when I am as close to satisfaction as anyone ever gets
And I do not enjoy it when it goes on for too long
When I leave home,
I wish the pace of my breaths to change
I wish for everything to go according to plan
But my plan is flawed and predictable
like the way the sun never forgets to set.
I do not want to exist sometimes,
And I wish not to do and only to die
Why must i even try?

But how will any pace of breath matter to anyone?
And why must it ?
Because someone said it does?
And someone said we need to leave a mark on the world so
I drew a twelve inch line with chalk on the pavement of my neighbors house,
Revolutionary!
I am those you are to read about in voluminous 3000 page novels,
And you the same.

I do not know why all the world’s a stage and I do not know why we are all to play a different part,
I want to play all the parts and I want to play none

I want to be the curtains that drag and unveil
I want to be the stage that supports all the footsteps

What is truth?
Is it always good ?
And sweet like soft ice-cream

I hate to scramble such a pretty ideology
But most truths I have heard
Are like glass on a metal board.

I wished the world to tell me it’s secrets at this slumber party
How unfortunate she did not appear,
“She had to go to the dentist, dear”
If she had come this day, she would share her truths,
How unfortunate she could not appear.

I do not know anything,
except I will go home tomorrow although I do not know what it even is.

---

Stony Point High School

11

I see the rain so innocent yet dangerous fall to the ground covering it in puddles soon to cover highways. Translucent and fragile. Lighting shooting across the sky lighting it up for a split second. The clouds gray and gloomy pouring rain like a girl with a broken heart. The lights flashing on and off until they finally give out and leave its host in the dark. The sound thumping windows crashing to the ground so small but so many. Like a raging war of tiny pixies. The sound of thunder makes the ground shake and the rain roar. The sound of windshield wipers sliding across the windshield and cars racing through the water making splashes as they go. A child’s cry when the thunder strike. For the fear in their hearts makes the child shed tears.
The lukewarm drops fall onto my skin somehow it is light as a feather but when the thunder roars the rain stings like the feeling of a small electrical shock. The feeling of hope and fear. Fear that the rain could never stop that eventually we will go back to the beginning…only water. Yet hope that plants will flourish and animals will no longer die of thirst. The fear that maybe this is mother nature’s punishment for us. The bitter salty taste of the rain like tears. The smell of wet grass and nature making me fall deep into the thought of my childhood. So dangerous yet so beautiful.

---

Ridgeview Middle School/ Round Rock Opportunity Center.

7

Me llamo Andres,
Soy de dos mil tres.
Yo soy de mis padres.
De mi familia y Rusia.
Soy yo.

Pero todos me hablan
Que tú, no eres tú.
Eres un “Piscis”
Un pez del agua.

Ellos me dicen
Qué me gusta y qué no.
Me dan mis talentos
Y mi negatividad.
Me dan mi personalidad.

Pero
¿por
qué?
¿Por
qué?

No consiguieron nada
Pues todo lo que hicieron
Fue perder su tiempo
Para tratar de darme
Mi personalidad,

¡Qué, no entienden!
¡Qué ya tengo una personalidad
Y no necesito de una nueva!

——————————
Bellow is a direct translation of the poem above, to English.

My name is Andre,
I am from two thousand and three.
I am, from my parents.
Of my family and Russia.
I am myself.

But everyone else says
You are, not you.
You are a “Pisces”
A fish from the water.

They decide for me
What i like and don’t.
They give me my talents.
And my negatives.
They give me my personality.

But why?
Why?

They didn’t get anything right.
All they did
Was waste their time
To try to give me
My personality,

What they don’t understand,
Is that i already have a personality.
And i don’t need a new one!

---

James Bowie High School

10

Fall is red and orange
It tastes like pumpkin pie
It sounds like peoples teeth hitting together
because it’s so cold outside
It smells like pies being baked in the oven
It looks like piles of leaves everywhere
I feel like I am a blanket because of all the warm things I am wearing
The warm air from the fireplace hits you as you’re reading your favorite book
A smile comes across your face as you and your family cuddle under one big fluffy blanket
You laugh with the weirdest grin as you win at the family game night on Friday
And that’s when you smile and say “it’s finally fall”

---

Pearson Ranch Middle School

6

Unknowing in the time of Eden born,
Were the hearts of men in starlight blazing,
As fused on the fourth day first, solar born,
Bursted lights of God ever creating.

Effigy of He who formed the cosmos,
Burns flaming now in midst of night so dark,
Spinning stories to provoke the Telos,
Steadfast aim to ignite their own bright spark.

In whose image is created virtue?
If bright gleaming is the thing created,
When His silent love still doesn’t urge you,
To form new morality belated,

In homily, I call to reader thee!
Rest not while by God’s light you may still see.

---

Austin High School

11

Stand on your toes, ballerina;
You are small.
A quick craft of cheap plastic,
You’re not much at all.

Sing a song, ballerina,
Just sing along.
This is not what you were made for;
You are not that strong.

Spin around, ballerina,
Before it all locks.
Enjoy the monotonous motions
Within your box.

Stand up tall, ballerina;
Show them your worth.
As the bones in your back break,
Pretend it doesn’t hurt.

Painted plastic,
Painted glass.
Oh, broken ballerina,
Will you last?
Does the song go on too long,
Or does it fade far too fast?

What thoughts go through your mind
As you dance?
Does the music soothe you,
In your little wooden box?
Buried deep beneath the dirt,
Does it rot?

---

Garza Independence High School

12