your vision, your voice
Racing Home
Grabbing it with wood, deep blood red
Curving to make the most beautiful sound there will ever be
At least to me
Sound is stronger than a lion
Fiercer than a cheetah
Hidden in a forest
Where no one hears its cries to be heard
But I heard its cries to be played
Strings flow like water under my fingers
Bow hitting the strings each making a different pitch
Getting louder and softer
Nothing can stop this focus and joy
Until
Music
Stops…
Gorzycki Middle School
7
El Paso is hot and dry like a
desert.
But in this desert, is my grandpa’s
store
filled with decorative pinatas and delicious food.
And right next to this desert is the farm
where my dad grew up.
In El Paso, there are boxes left in the parking lots,
and buildings that touch the sky.
There are house that are as colorful as the
rainbow.
El Paso is my family’s home,
and my second home.
Gorzycki Middle School
7
My mom baked a pie,
It’s very pretty.
And everyone’s eyes,
Are looking quite greedy.
A circle of boats
Made out of crust
And of course, filling!
That is a must.
At the end of the day,
All traces are gone.
While children are “singing”,
A Christmas song.
Walsh Middle School
6
Summer Time,
Summer Time.
The sun shines all day,
The moon shines all night.
Summer Time vacation time
Eat. Swim. Play. Repeat
All summer long.
Sit down relax, even grown ups need a break.
Kids get sugar rush and bounce, bounce, bounce.
Eat. Swim. Play. Repeat
All summer long.
Kids swing on trees,
While parents get tan.
To wish and wait from day to day,
For summer to come makes kids happy and
play.
Even summer comes to an end,
Then you go to school again.
Summer Time,
Summer Time, it should never end
Walsh Middle School
6
Every day I go to sleep,
Just to wake up again,
With all my problems,
Like pushing a boulder uphill,
Just to have it fall down again,
And despise Life.
Every day I go to sleep,
To wake up,
See all my friends,
Have all my joys,
Have some fun,
And enjoy Life.
Life is a tree,
And only happy people see the fruit,
So always see the glass half Full,
Even when it’s empty.
Gorzycki Middle School
7
Dogs are so nice, so happy, so kind,
With their heavy love your heart they signed.
With their legs they run so perfectly fast,
That they are hovering above the grass,
For dogs are cheetahs because they have surpassed,
The speed of sound just soaring and soaring,
As the wind reached out roaring and roaring,
But the dogs fast were as fast as lightning,
So they didn’t even find it a little bit frightening.
After awhile the dogs slowed down,
The wind and clouds kept the frown.
Gorzycki Middle School
7
Childhood is happy, safe, and true,
No care in the world about school or work,
You live in your own imaginary world,
Where anything can happen and anything is possible,
Nothing to worry besides which toy you’ll play with,
And nothing to fear except the monster under your bed,
But when the real world hits you in the face with a bat,
You change in a way that you don’t have to,
Your dreamlike world is stuffed in the back of your thoughts,
Begging to come out,
But
T
R
A
M
P
L
E
D by everything else,
Step into a world where nothing is tragic,
Where all that you see is fun and magic.
Gorzycki
7
KICK the ball
PASS the ball
DRIBBLE the ball
Those AREN’T THE ONLY THINGS YOU DO
at all
It’s the passion
The dedication
Sound of the ball is like alliteration
Boom, thud, ding
Play the game
It’s in your name
None of the games will ever be the same
Always different
Always changing
Sounds of crowds clanging
CHANGE
The plays
It’s not a maze
It’s just a game
Just be yourself
And play the game
Gorzycki Middle School
7
When I first saw the sun, it was
Blocked by a policeman’s steely gaze.
Right then and there,
My destiny was realized for me.
I stumbled on tiny paws through the first weeks, nudged by
Gentle, calloused hands
Toward my training.
Those calloused hands led me
To great joy and great confusion.
While they fed me treats, they also
Pushed me through strange tunnels
And made me run across
Never-ending lawns of new, green grass that smelled like freedom,
but were interrupted by fences.
What was the goal?
The obstacles got more intense, more rigorous, more frightening,
But those hands led me through them,
Repeating steps with bottomless
Patience
Until I got it right. I was a smart one,
He said. A good boy.
I was taught
to withstand the BANG of a gunshot,
The writhing of strange men,
The taste of blood in my mouth.
I was taught to protect my friend at all costs.
I would die for him.
His hands smelled like
The contraption at his side,
The awful, loud thing that
I had to get used to. He also smelled like a child, of baby powder and
Cereal.
The tiny one
Was often unpredictable, either
Screaming,
Pulling my ears,
Or burbling the same nonsense my friend did, an odd language of malformed syllables and long phrases, all nonsense.
Whatever the tiny thing did, though,
My friend always held it in his arms and
In his heart.
The tiny one smelled an awful lot like him.
His shirts were often heavy with the scent of ash.
The female inhaled fire,
Flicking gray flakes into the wind.
I smelled his displeasure at the smoke,
But there was love beneath it,
Fire beneath the the ash.
I saw their embraces, relished
The gentle scratches she gave me
Around my ears, the bacon she
Snuck me. She was my second star
In the sky, always next to my friend and the tiny one.
I would do anything to make them shine.
He became my partner,
Working with me, feeding me, teaching me, and loving me
Unconditionally.
Even when I did something wrong,
He would always forgive me.
His metallic hands and burning shirts
Would run up against me as he
Took me into his arms. Bursts of happiness, haphazard and
Sensational,
Exploded in my head, and I would
Wriggle with joy.
I was his, and he was mine.
We were warriors, fighting together
And understanding one another.
As I grew, he grew.
Soon, we were riding around at top speed, chasing people
Who wanted to hurt my others.
I would run then down,
bring them to the ground before
They could hurt anyone.
Now, though…
I didn’t know where he was.
I hadn’t seen him since the last
Dark alleyway, the last gunshot.
I hadn’t seen him for a while.
I remembered chasing someone,
Yelling, so much yelling,
And my friend falling to the ground.
I smelled blood.
It smelled an awful lot like him.
He fell,
And I ran to lick his face.
He made such terrible noises.
I smelled awful, deep pain.
I frantically licked his face,
Trying to take it away.
It worked when he was sad.
Would it work now?
He stopped groaning, just long enough to laugh, to pet me.
Eyes sparkling, he hugged me close.
He went still, and the pain was gone.
I greeted his friends
With a wagging tail,
For he was okay. He was asleep.
For some reason, they too began to make unsettling noises,
Crying out in some broken emotion.
Why were they sad?
He was asleep.
I haven’t seen him since,
Now, I’m in a dry field.
The female smells awful,
Like she has a hole full of festering fruit in her chest. The fire in her is Toxic.
The tiny one is as confused as me.
Why are we in a field full of old stones and dry bones, surrounded by my friend’s friends?
I start to shift with anticipation, growing restless. Is he coming to meet us?
The air is thick with rot.
Crystalline droplets fall down
The female’s chin, and she is shaking.
She sees something, and she crumples to her knees.
The tiny one doesn’t understand,
So he too begins to cry. What is wrong with his mother? I am worried, for the rot inside her grows.
Before I can get to her,
I smell him. I jerk up, sniffing the wind.
He’s finally here!
I dash toward the smell, ignoring
The cries of the female,
And run toward him.
There he is!
There are men carrying a box,
Large men with weeping hearts.
Why is he in a box?
He is okay, right? He is a warrior,
Just like me.
His gentle hands raised me to be strong like him.
His love guided me to adulthood.
I need him. He is my life, my heart.
Why is he in a box?
Rouse High School
11
Thank you
For everything you have done
For me
For all of us
Thank you for making all the sacrifices
It didn’t matter what came through our way
S
P
Through U
And D
O
W
N
S
You helped pull us through
I was like the little boy on the boat
And she was hard at work pulling the boat
Back to shore
So I genuinely want to say
Thank you, mom
Goryzcki Middle School
7