Category: 2022-23 Submissions

Every night
We would pray in your home
I knew not about God
But I knew the sounds leaving your throat
And I would utter them in accordance

Now the pews, the altars
The stained glass, the hymns
I drink it all in
For they are all about you
Never about God

I was the bearer of the ring upon your finger
And in tears
The blessing they received
Was in the palm of my hand
The hand you held when you lead the prayer

You’re weak now, weaker than I could know
Yet you push through
Your thorns will cut my skin
But my skin will heal
And my love will be all that remains

Her silhouette is dimly lit
By a weak bulb that dangles
From the pale kitchen ceiling

A scrap of steel wool is clutched in one hand
Whilst the other strangles a rusted iron pan
Her apron is soiled and soaked
Her steaming rubber gloves cling hot and close

She pumps with a fury
From its old plastic crock
The watered-down soap
Onto the food-spattered wok

There, in the shallow tin sink
Lies a mug, a cutting board, a spoon or two
She disentangles the mass of forks interlink’d
With mechanical movements; as one well used to

Her children are silent in their beds
She looks out the window, oppressive in its night-black
There is a pounding, a swelling in her head
She shuttles more dishes onto the dripping plastic rack

In her mind, she reviews and replays
The happenings and trials
Of her working day-to-day
Phone calls, letters, marking files.

This was not all she had once known –
She used to always be with book in hand;
Anna Karenina, Madame Bovary, Middlemarch
A modern Becky Sharp in rigorous self-command

She too had once had aspirations
Ambitions to rise from her lowly stool
Clever schemes and sagacious machinations
But alack – the world was subtly sly and cruel.

This was how she was thus bound
With hands constrained to the kitchen sink
Her dreams; they slowly drowned –
And her hand remained chained to its silver ring.

Where the birds fly south for the winter,
Where the stones and paths erode,
Where the sun meets the peak of the mountains,
That’s where you’ll find That Old Road.

Tucked away within the winding fields,
Moving along with the river’s flow,
A long path stretches for an endless time,
That’s the road I’ve come to know.

It lies hidden within the rocky mountains,
Its life is written with grooves and cracks,
Its paint faded and rubbed off with the test of time,
Only a small sign marks the end of the track.
The sign reads: “You are home,” in weathered paint.
A sentiment to the weary traveler
Who has blindly followed all this way.
Then the road will end and so will your journey,
There at the edge is where you will stay.

So perhaps it is best to avoid the path,
Unless you truly wish to know.
Often the journey is not as it seems
Following That Old Road.

The busy streets filled with cheer
Deep breathes, not a fear
Take a step, unlock the door
Dark sky with waves ashore
The feeling of unreality, it makes me feel fake
Take time for the value
No mistakes

Flying sheeps, counting stars
I want to stay forever where you can’t get scars
Peace and closure, feeling free
Close the door, use the key
Step out into the world where people feel pain
If only dreams were real where there are no complaints

Children’s hands,
graceful and gentle as falling leaves,
brittle and easily broken,
blessed be.

The lady across the street,
she seems to be content gazing at a screen.
Unfocused, unalert to what goes on unseen.
For a voice calls, it is rough indeed.

Come by my side child, I am no foe.
I’m a friend of your parents, we parted years ago.
I’ve found a dog over there, you know this place well.
Guide me toward its owners, I promise I won’t tell.

Sparkled sneakers squeal with each step,
If anyone had heard the last words he said,
well,
no one would question why the girl is dead.

You’re a good little girl.
A porcelain hand, an arrogant smile,
and the girl was gone.
No one noticed for a while.

music , music drowns out the real world, music lets u feel what you want , what you would want the real world to be.
Blasting at full volume till all you feel is the vibration from the rhythm.
Every different song changing your mood,
every artist feels the music they make, something I couldn’t be without is music, music wouldn’t leave you, wouldn’t make you cry un till you can’t breathe. Just drown the things that would do that, without caring, no worry for ur feelings.
Just watch the real world, look at ur life, is it as good as you want, what you imagined when you were younger? Maybe it is but I know I wouldn’t be here today if I didn’t have music. Because we all sometimes need to just stop, and be in our own world.

You know when it starts to snow
but all you want to see is a
S
N
O
W
F
L
A
K
E
F
A
L
L
from the sky and land on the ground
And it just makes just a nice shape with all the other snowflakes.

The sun is glaring down upon me
The birds squeak squak and squeal
The other people chatter so loud
Then I submerge myself into the deep

Everything and everyone is silent
Excpt for the slow beat of my heart
The water cradles me in its arms
And slowly rocks me back and forth
Like a mother does with its child

Then I return to the surface
And it shatters the peace I was in
The beautiful feeling I had just felt
Slowly fades away and leve without a trace

Still, water dripping
The sound, a warm embrace
The sun gleaming and shining
Not a shame, nor disgrace

On this Sunday morning

The sun and horizon aligning
Such a beautiful sight,
Something I struggle defining
To see such a thing take flight

On this Sunday morning

A smell lingers in the air
Is it peach? Or maybe lime?
I can’t explain a smell so fair
I think of it as sublime

On this Sunday morning

My heart is an ocean, one once teeming with life;
With clownfish and bluefin,
With spinner dolphins and striped,
With humpbacks and belugas,
My heart is an ocean that once bubbled with life from all corners of the world.

During its days as a young ocean, a mere shining sea,
It was stormy.
With splintering lightning, raging waves, violent winds,
the animals would scatter.
Pelting raining tears,
Deadly riptides of dread,
The crack, crack, cracking of stoney rage;
They would disrupt my sea,
For moments,
Blips.

And although a downpour of sorrow was common,
There was the occasional sunshine of joy,
Parting the clouds and gently brushing the backs of rising mammals.
Rainbows of excitement would arch around the surface,
And life would bloom like the new stocks of seaweed upon the decorated seafloor.

But I was used to sudden rain showers,
Clouding the sun
Or,
Once in a blue moon,
Accompanying it,
With the great waves cresting and falling in tune.
Tides toil,
And winds spin with my grief,
Grief over a loss I couldn’t comprehend.

I didn’t want it,
A burden I couldn’t shake,
A sinking ship no one could save,
A lost diver no one could find.

My heart is an ocean, and it’s broken.
Toxins sink into in, dumped by people without a care for my creatures:
“You’re too sensitive,”
“Fat,”
“Ugly,”
“Stupid,”
“Quiet,”
“Weak,”
“You’ll never amount to anything,”
“You’re a failure; a freak.”

Plastic bags of words and oil barrels full of pain
Stretch and stretch across my waters.
Pollution beyond what my little hands and my oblivious loved ones could clean out in a lifetime,
They infect my once beautiful heart.
What was once an ocean of emotions,
Good and bad,
Now is a sea of sorrow,
Sunlight all but forgotten.

The tar has killed all my sweet animals,
My wonderful hopes and dreams.
What was left were nightmares:
With lionfish and snaggletooth,
With tiger sharks and bull,
With Sea Nettle jellyfish and Australian box,
My heart is an ocean, and it’s become a warzone.

The violence would break the surface of my heart often,
Bursts of rage from blood-stained waters,
Biting sharks and unlucky touches,
Venom sprawled in this sea.
Jellyfish entangle,
Sting after sting and tearing into each other with no regard,
The damages blankets the waters.

Battleships,
Torpedoes,
Bloodshed,
War.
I fight I didn’t start,
Didn’t want,
Was infiltrating my heart.

I didn’t want it.

My heart is an ocean,
One full of struggle,
So I cover it.
I cover it in algae,
Hoping to suffocate my dreams and nightmares,
My hopes and my disappointments.
I encase my ocean in a shell,
A mask none shall see behind.
I become a fake,
To avoid being a failure.

They try to fight,
To breach the top and show the truth,
But I refused.
When my hopes try to live again and fight the nightmares,
When my nightmares try to conquer my hopes,
I tell them all,
“No. Go back.
Go back to the depths of my heart,
To bottom of this shrinking sea,
And never come back.”

Because the world will never accept them,
Never understand the loving dolphins,
Nor the enraged tiger sharks.
They’d only see the outside,
A thin layer of lies that none will look past.
And I no longer saw the point in trying to get them to see more.

With my drowned hopes and nightmares,
I wanted to quiet the skies,
Quiet them with ignorance,
For even I could not get rid of the sky;
At least,
Not completely.

My heart is an ocean,
One that longer changed.
It was one of falsehood,
Of solitude,
And an overcoat of emptiness.
My heart was deeper than anyone could’ve known,
And no one will know.

Even as hail raged across the sky,
Fires spark the oil-algae mixes,
Carcasses of my creatures floating within the mask,
I would smile.
I would laugh.
I would tease.
But not a sliver of sunlight would be seen,
Only hurricanes.

The algae began to layer as I aged,
To the point where my animals couldn’t even hear the ever-pouring weather.
Years went by in a staggered status,
No direction in mind;
Nothing.

Until:
“Why are you like this?”
Simple words,
Simple questions,
Simples answers…
Or were they?
I could no longer dig down into the depths of my heart,
The mask was too thick.
Impenetrable,
By my friends,
My family,
Or even me.

But I told anyway.
Words matching with emotions from a far off shore,
Creating more miles between the two the longer it goes.
And once it was over,
I let my heart cry,
Alone with no shoulder to lean on,
Because my heart was ocean to be seen by no one.

I laid my fascade on thicker after that,
Playing a role in a film no one knew was being shot.
Every action,
Precise,
Calculated,
And absolutely,
Completely,
Fake.

When I showed rage to the outside world,
My heart would be cloudy.
To others,
I was quick to anger.
To me,
I was down in a spiraling whirlpool of something.
What it was,
I didn’t know,
But my distance from my ocean,
Made it indescribable.
I only knew,
It wasn’t what I showed.

But I wanted no part in it,
That sinking sensation that plagued me.
It was a burden,
An anchoring attachment that was drowning me,
And maybe even everybody around me.
It was a pain beyond that of the greatest injury,
An invisible stonefish barb digging into my soul.
My heart is an ocean,
One in great peril.

Words would get to my ocean at times,
No matter how hard I try to block it.
And at times,
The animals would come,
Breaching the surface after so long.
With them came the rain,
The sobs,
The sensitive nature I wanted to stuff,
The unnecessary feelings.

My heart is an ocean,
And it’s building towards destruction.
With battleships above,
Torpedoes tearing through,
And bodies upon bodies,
Both animals and humans alike,
Litter the ocean floor.

Conflict rips through my ecosystem,
Breaking me and my oceanic heart.
And,
For once,
The outside reflected my heart;
I’d snapped,
After years of pretending,
Being someone else,
For the sake of myself.

I hide away after the break,
An enormous wave of water swelling in my heart.
Blame,
Guilt,
Horror.
“Was it my fault?”

Stares pierce me,
Sharp sea glass ripping through with each.
They gawk at my rainfall,
Puzzle at my tides,
And judge my marine life with their bullets.
My heart is an ocean,
And it’s dying.

I look down on it,
Broken and battered,
Caught in a war that others may have started,
But I continued.
I continued living in those times,
On ignoring the so-called “weakness”,
And letting the past drag me down to the deepest of trenches.

So I peer down at the algae,
Combing over the mask,
And dig for what is beyond.
My animals wanted freedom,
To see the sun,
To see my feelings that I’d shoved down.

I couldn’t live like this,
One buried in emptiness and lies.
Sealing everything away,
Letting it die in the depths,
Does nothing.

Piece by piece,
I remove the algea,
Smashed away the pain,
Replaced the harm with those of love.
My heart is an ocean,
And it’s finally begin to heal.

New life coming in,
Battleships sailing away,
Coexistence becomes possible,
For my dreams and nightmares no longer war,
And my ocean is no longer forcefully still.

My heart is an ocean,
One that tells my story,
A story of pain,
And healing;
Of despair,
And hope;
Of nightmares,
And dreams.

My heart is an ocean,
And it’s not one to be hidden,
But to be shown.