Category: 2022-23 Submissions

It’s time for bed, the moon wakes up.
The stars arise,
Drowning out the cries
Of the night animals.
It’s time for bed I shut my eyes
But darkness does not come.
Instead I find myself staring at the ceiling and wondering, hoping,
That darkness will find my eyes.
It’s time for bed I shut my eyes,
this time it comes.
Engulfs me in a blanket full of stars, and soon, the darkness,
it finds my eyes.

Music is beautiful
The obscure patterns of numbers can convey emotions
Anything is possible
These sequences of pure frequencies are the keys to life
Thousands of years of evolution have created hearing
Our ears were built to hear danger
But now we live without the constant fear of death
Now we can’t live without music

The man from the sewer
was only 4 feet tall
maybe even a fewer.
By the time he was 28
only 70 pounds was his weight.
People wondered why he grew so slight
I think it was a lack of sunlight.

The man from the sewer
looked like a pile of garbage
especially to an outside viewer.
His clothes were mostly torn
and smelled of week-old corn.
Some question what led him down this path
I think his mother never gave him a proper bath.

Achilles smiled when he was shot
He smiled, picturing Paris, atop the walls of Troy
That young prince
Smiling with great pride, the bow firm in his grasp
He had killed the greatest of the greeks

Everyone who fought beside Achilles
Said he was made for battle
Seeing his spear spin in the air
With such great speed
His armor, carried so many deaths, so many souls
Yet it weighed nothing on his shoulders
His feet, quick in their movements
Some divine dance, a performance even Apollo could not match
He was only a boy, focused, clear cut with his movements
Too naïve to notice
That the set was a battlefield

I watch and watch the game download
A brand new world will soon unfurl
The software starts, let’s hit the road

We learn to grow in our school walls
From all the sounds the fill the halls
Our teachers voice gave us choice
And for that we rejoice

All the hours spent here
Means our time is near
Things still unclear

We’ll be on our own some day
With only the lessons we once swore away
But it’s time to make way

This new generation
Is now going to rule the nation
Because of our education
And that deserves a standing ovation

Give me a once upon a time
Give me a small house in a village
Give me a princess calling my name.

Give me a once upon a time
Give me a forbidden romance so I can prove rules wrong
Give me a poison apple so I can prove I’m not afraid of death

Give me a once upon a time
Give me the perfect ending
Standing on that castle balcony
With a crown on my head, overlooking my kingdom

Give me a once upon a time
Give me that flutter of hope in a naive character’s heart
So I too can enjoy the comfort of knowing
That I was destined for more.

I don’t know what it is
Maybe how at 7:00 the sun bends over the horizon
Or the smell of dew-drenched dirt that comes with it
Maybe it’s looking at the sky
And not seeing anything
But knowing there is something out there greater than me
Greater than all of us

Or perhaps it’s the melted strawberry ice cream
Sizzling on the hot Texas concrete
It never stood a chance against the baking ground
Burned soles and red undertones surround
Beat faces that resemble stove tops
Dripping like a nimbostratus with a forecast of rain

Or possibly the contrary
Cold wind that stings like fever
Sandpaper skin and shiny eyes
Coal and carrots and sticks stuck in some snow
Slipping on frozen grass and laughing about it
Despite your wet pockets and torn seams

It might be the way bluebonnets blanket fields
Like weeds in season
Or how lightning reaches out
Like a hand from the heavens
It could be the fire in the sky
Or butterfly gardens
Maybe the citrus evergreen ripe with abundance
Or how Phusis can always find a way to restore Herself

I don’t know what it is
But suddenly
I want to wake up to the 7:00 a.m.
I want my belly to ache with the fullness life offers
I want to consume it
All of it
Big mouthfuls that leave my lips sticky and raw
I want to get fat off happiness
And then lose it chasing birds
But most importantly
I want to
live.

You await me, night after night
Deep in a dream
So much so that you are actually here
First, I hear the clawing
Relentlessly at the ceiling and walls
the scurrying of feet all around
You are everywhere, but nowhere
You are all around me filling all my senses
But I can’t find you
I can smell your stench
Rotting animals, and old lunch meat
Can I see it, your arachnid body
Stiff limbs, crunching with each movement
Your body, halts, and shakes
Unnatural, not human
You disappear
Returning into the darkness, gone
You fade away, into the void
Then boom
Out from the shadows you grab me
You latch on with your unyielding claws
Pulling yanking, clawing and teething
Chomping and feasting
Staring up at me with your hungry eyes
You fill me with agony
but I can’t Yell
Can’t scream for help
I feel all, everything
Every fiber, every ligament, every bone
Flesh to flesh
Pulled apart, ripped clean
Shoved into your jaws
Unyielding you feast until there is nothing but my eyes
As you take one last look into my soul
Your body transforms
But not into some hideous creature
Or some disturbing being
No
But my own face
This is the last thing I see
Before you rip out my eyes
And leave me in darkness
Once again.

Cold

Wind

Dust

The storm was a rush

It dips

into a creek

which turns and tips into a river

Grasping on to things as though lint

Thus, the dust is vigilant-

Shakes me, but now

the weather, quite contagious

It’s chilly like ice, my hands glued to cold ground

And

cold glued to my hands

I turn up my ear because I hear

Laughter, but it’s not, instead it’s

Snow crashing down like vases

and I,

just on the ground;

never get back up

But when the wind sprints past me

It turns coldness into outrage

Because that’s that voice inside

of me, ever so enraged

It’s cold right now, winter

But as the ice glued to my hands seeps

down and melts

“It’s summer”, says the voice in my head

It’s the voice that says “get over it”

But lends a hand laid out to me

It’s the same voice inside of me

That laughs with me while watching

Gilmore Girls

The voice that tells me it’s okay

That warns me,

“stay away”

Even before something happens

It’s the voice that keeps me going

It’s the voice that I’ve been knowing

for so long

Without it, I wouldn’t be me, I’d be

someone else

in their intricacy…