Category: 11th

In the dimness you whispered
Your young life away
Begging, “please don’t leave me here”
But how can I stay and still remain human?

[Your eyes
Milky, cloudy, blind
Could not see the light from dark.
It is better, then,
Or else you would have starved for color
The way you starved for food.

I see and so I feel
Is it hubris to think like this?
I call it truth; truth you do not know
Whose absence you feel
But cannot understand.]

The silence was your voice
Drifting, drifting, not all there
Drifting, drifting, disappeared.

---

LC Anderson High School

11

Cruel words spilling out from inside
It’s okay to scorch the air
It’s better than choking internally
Burning your lungs with every repressed inhale.
Suffocating in detail.

What do you want me to hear?
What can I even say?
Of course it hurts.
But share with me your pain.
I want to melt all of your edges
And reshape the disarray.

My hands are too stained to clean up any mess.
If you want a savior you’d best find someone else.
I will paint with the colors of our madness
And find meaning that outlasts our faltering breaths.

---

LC Anderson High School

11

I am early morning school days
And late nights under yellow lights.
I am paper with blue lines running free.
And the starless night breeze.
I am misty eyes gazing out at skylines
Through glass
I am a shattered drinking cup
Tipped, falling, falling, crack.
Find traces of me in dusty books.
Worn pages, rolling verses, softened by overuse.
I am the moment after a good joke
And the bad ones, too.
Awkward.

---

LC Anderson High School

11

One day I will be free of the emotions that rattle me.
I want to be more than what flows overhead
The little that resolute thinking does
Is not enough to turn tissues into tougher stuff.
Gratefulness and guilt intertwine in my mind.
Unexplainable tears and irrational fears at the slightest provocation.
Why do happiness and hardship both
Inspire sadness?

It is easier to hate myself than you, undeserving
Yet, mostly unspoken, my thoughts occasionally arrive at shadowed destinations
With both of us their passenger.
I’m sorry, I say, unmovingly
And recede into unintention, stagnant and assuming.

If only I could strengthen my will would those restless waters still?
Or would I again be out of control, windless, breathless
Away from home, my destination still unknown?

Time too late, just wait.
I will grit my teeth and bear my imagined, brittle, inward burdens
When did first world problems became too heavy to hold?
The more I cling to my own wellbeing, the more unwell I feel.
I’ll give myself away instead and see what returns
Not everything, for sure, but things better shared than owned.
A peace for us all.

---

LC Anderson High School

11

I see ruin, I see mars
I see no better lands afar
Broken bottles and tin cans
Are not found on streets but in grasping hands.
The blight whispers to the city’s sands.
Shifting channels and tides of change
We, alone, still remain.

---

LC Anderson High School

11

I am trying my hardest to become more than who I am.
I’m doing it for you. Please try to understand.
The metamorphosis you hate
Is the change that puts food on your plate.
And the words that settle like frost
so cold
Are the words that have held you
as you grow old.
The hands that are rough try to be gentle for you
But I’m sorry if the transition isn’t always so smooth.
I know that you’re young.
But I’m still young, too.
And the fear that you feel
Is fear we both share.
The nights that you hate spending
alone
Are the nights that I’m working
to give you a home
And a tomorrow
That will love you as much as I do.

---

LC Anderson High School

11

There was once a time

Where I resented those sun kissed memories

Ones where I sat under and azure sky

And let rose petals flood my vision

A place where tomorrow was reminiscent

Of a time before nothingness

And I was ignorant

To the woe

Of watching those roses

Wilt and fade

---

Weiss High School

11

Hey, there my buddy, friend, pal, friend, chum, pal, dawg, amigo, homeslice, bread slice, Dragonslayer, MLG player, my diddly darn dappy dawg.

I don’t mean to rudely crudely cut across you with this prewritten TED talk but I fail to find any other way to burn across this steaming hot message that you surely must see.

You see I must tell ya that I find that I feel
burning cold, freezing raw and dipped into the super ICE BUCKET CHALLENGE

when sitting next to a fire,

and I can’t stop it. This is mostly because I wanted to be a popular cool person I wanted to be coolio and stylish, fast-talking like the charismatic Youtubers!

My friend said talking to me is more tiring than drinking pure uncut Kool-Aid powdered bricks. People find that they would much rather fall Into bed than keep on “Talking” to me any longer.

Every talk feels more shallow than the last

My act continues to engulf me through each talk I give.

My positivity burns into them as an iron

and so they run.

---

James Bowie High School

11

Minnesota

Arrived on the 6th.
Our plane landed two hours South
A drive through miles of fields
With a scent so unmistakably green

On my way home:
To the family condo by the lake
Where sunlit days were spent poolside
And a citrus tinge of lemonade lingers

There’s more still,
The neighbors bring us treats,
Kathy and Jim,
Standing amongst the grass

Of the back patio
With their warm smiles and gleaming hospitality.
They say there’s such thing as Southern charm,
But from what I’ve seen it lives here.

Then we venture across the river
To a the state eastward
With a house of stone
Once inhabited by an architect

I’d studied in art history
His home,
designed by him
a mirage of low ceilings and stone

Days later, back to the condo
Again set out
To St. Olaf’s
Where I fell in love

With the stained glass of the cathedral
The ogival arches
And the tall, buildings
Reminiscent of a country across the pond.

Then there were, of course
The days spent on the green river
With the company of my family
Laughter and smiles from all.

My days there,
In a town, a state, of warm feelings.
All of it, a trip I can’t forget
I cannot wait to go back.

---

James Bowie High School

11

Droplets of rain keep falling, no matter how far I try to run.
The misty air grabs my throat, and I struggle to breathe.
I’m wiping my unseeing eyes,
failing to keep them dry.

But no matter who or what is in front of them,
my sight is no longer clear.
Fog has rolled in day after day,
and my thoughts are begging sight.

Ever since the storm rolled in,
no one bothers to stay.

My eyes are turning into tornadoes,
and it only gets more chaotic each day.
And the more the storm is ignored by others,
the more it will continue rage .

The thunder claps along to the song,
of my pessimistic heartbeat.
And each droplet against my shirt,
has me dancing around thoughts of isolation.

The only way to stop the rain,
is for someone else to hold my umbrella.

But why would someone want brave the storm,
just to provide me shelter?

---

James Bowie High School

11