Category: 2019-20 Submissions

Life is whimsical,
Life is rocky,
Life is amazing,
Life is challenging,
Life is a present…
so don’t waste it.

The Beach

A peaceful place,
Where the fresh ocean breeze hits the rocky sand,
Where the beautiful, blue waves hit your hand,
Where the steamy sand
Soothes your soft skin,
Where you can escape from your thoughts,
And you can see,
What others cannot see,
Where you can feel,
What others cannot feel.
When you can be
Who you want to be,
Where you can think of things
Other people cannot think.
The Beach.

Rise
One appointment.
She was one appointment away from pushing her passion to astonishing levels.
One dancer.
One dream.
One diagnosis.
One heart broken.

They started with a surgery,
Closely followed by crutches and P.T.
But the thing that broke her,
Pushed her into mind-numbing despair,
Were the words.
Condemning her,
Taunting her.
“You can’t dance.”
“Can’t run.”
“Can’t jump.”
Small words but they were enough to send her world spinning,
Spinning like her once flawless pirouettes.
Another surgery.
Another crippling blow to her body and heart.
Despair choked her,
Strangled her like an anaconda.
But we are all made of stardust,
And our souls are forged in steel.
We are strong enough to be resilient.
Strong enough to be pushed down and stand back up.
Strong enough to survive.
Because we are not victims,
And one challenge is not the end.
With one dream broken, another is formed.
A new light seeping into her splintered heart,
Filling the cracks with a new goal, a new promise:
To rise.
Rise from the pain and the words,
The one that almost broke her.
Rise from her final curtsy at curtain’s call.
Rise when they tell her she can’t
But every bone in her body knows that she can.
When they treat her as weaker,
But the truth is, she has never felt stronger.
So she does all she can do:
She rises.

Desperately, the dove raises its wings,
Using its last remaining strength to sing
A mournful swan song before it is laid to rest,
Enchanting all the creatures of the forest.

There is a beautiful individuality in the light of a life,
But there is nothing but carnage in the gleam of a knife.

A hunter trapping game in a nearby wood,
Listened to the ballad, and well he understood,
The message encoded within the dove song,
We are all children of our Mother Earth, and we all belong.

The hunter cremated the dove so it could fly again,
Little did the hunter know that the dove still remained.
This time in a form among alphas of the food chain,
Still hesitant to devour flesh and cause an ounce of pain.

The hunter sang the dove song in a time where peace was rare,
He saw armies would war needlessly over a golden chair.

He lived his life simply and told others the tale,
The ballad of the mourning dove he would so softly wail.
With the creatures of the forest singing to that tune,
And one particular wolf howling it to the full moon.

Night

Night oh night do you give me a fright
Night oh night let there be light
Night oh night why so dark
Night oh night have a goodnight

Night oh night look it’s the sun
The sun has risen and you have fallen
Night oh night oh night I have no more fright
Night oh night I will see you when there is no light

It is peaceful, though an imperfect imitation,
The ocean rises as if by design or invitation.
Ascending to heights that tower over the life below,
In the depths they prepare, for somehow, they know.
The mainland knows it as well, this solemn routine,
Familiar with this nurturer and destroyer, for little lies between.
Just some ramshackle sea walls built for combat,
Not meant for this cataclysm, not built for this impact.
Hear the howling anguish of the waves, see the devastation wreaked,
Touch the weary hands of a survivor, taste the hopeless, bitter bleak,
Scrambling for shelter, but no true solace can be found,
The coastline utterly transformed into a burial ground.
Scattering the ashes of those lost to the ocean’s might,
Survivors locating a safe place to sleep in the coal black night,
All will return to balance, though threatened by what gives them life,
Sacred in that it provides protection and causes conflict, terror, and strife.
Harmony and discord colliding in a ceaseless whirlpool,
Deciding who lives and dies, however apathetically cruel,
Haunted and enchanted by your picturesque spell,
Luring those to become trapped on your endless carousel.

Marching Band

Now we could all go into a debate about
Whether marching band is a sport or not
But we’re not
Because everyone in marching band knows it’s a sport
And those who aren’t don’t get a say in it
Simply because they have no clue how hard we work
But enough about that

Marching band is …
Everyone breathing together
Knowing what everyone will do
Being completely in sync with one another

It praying the flags don’t hit you
Hoping the judge won’t be near you
At the one spot you always miss
Being forced to deal with stress
Whether yours or someone else’s

In marching band …
We are a single unit
We must all be in time
No one out of step
Keep with the tempo
Learn to hate the continuous clicks
Of a device sent to torture us

In marching band we learn …
To fear when the directors make music changes
Or worse …. Our dot positions
That water and sunscreen are gods
Especially in the Texas sun
That even if there’s a bee on you … don’t move

In marching band we force ourselves …
To wake up early and stay up late practicing
Two weeks before school starts
To not give up even when nothing is going right
To deal with the props no matter how much we despise them
Awake after hour long bus rides so we can perform our best

For the people in marching band …
We are all one big family
If someone messes up we’ll all do it again
We help each other get ready for competitions
we provide for each other when we forget something
Even if we don’t win, we’ll keep pushing to do better
Those eight minutes can be the best or the worst moments in our life
We know we left everything on the field

In our family …
We will stand by each other
You will have support for everything
We understand that large problems aren’t the only ones
We will help each other with everything no matter how small

Marching band is many things
But most of all
It’s the feeling of everyone’s desire to succeed
It doesn’t matter where you come from

In marching band
We succeed as a family

Lost in a high castle above the shacks,
Dreaming of a plain life you want so badly back,
Tightly grasping your power, paranoia spreading,
The sun is approaching, the sun you are dreading.

Where is the beauty of youth uncorrupted?
Where is the warmth that went uninterrupted?
Where is the integrity, distaste for traitors?
Stolen by a creeping, crawling invader.

Stalking the chambers of your labyrinth mind,
Creating an image to send you blind
With guilt and terror and pain you inflicted,
The monstrosity of your worst self depicted.

Blurry-gazed, traces of your slumber evident,
Beginning to realize impact is greater than intent.

Moms are the best
They can fly like the wind,
And their hair smells like
Roses and plums
They’re the special ones

Dreams
The thought gleams
An unknown story every night
All while you are snuggled up tight
A vacation from real life
Every night
Except tonight
My mind won’t take flight
It won’t let me escape
So while everybody else gets to dream
I’m more awake than I seem
Stuck in a cruel thing we all face every day
Reality…
At least I can fantasize about dreaming
And leaving my thoughts gleaming