Category: 2021-22 Submissions

Her silence was as red as the blood on her hands,
& her words were miles from day and night
Her eyes held pieces of the sky,
but we never saw her in the dark.

She told us to reach for the stars
when we couldn’t see them,
as if we’d pry the eyes from her head
when they were suffocating black
with only the star shaped holes in the sky
To let us breathe.

She fed us white lies
that tasted like syrup
Until we tried to speak,
and then the candied words
Turned bitter in our throats

Gave us promises of home,
So she could paint herself gray
and make us believe she was golden
While she played her game
Of locked doors
and locked mouths.

She didn’t get that we
Could never reach the stars
without getting burned,
Could never find home
because home was never real for us,
& could never stop running
because we were always going to be chased.

We
were
never
going
to
make
it.

consciousness dances the line between imagination and reality
like the water lilies from Monet,
it feels like immortality.

honey glazed abstract mortality
and left in the wind to sway,
consciousness dances the line between imagination and reality.

face your neutrality,
and you’re showing up washed in the bay.
it feels like immortality.

overstay their hospitality
and you’re stuck walking in march after may.
consciousness dances the line between imagination and reality.

breaking confidentiality,
isn’t that cliche
it feels like immortality.

fall from normality
into lavender sky turned blue gray
consciousness dances the line between imagination and reality,
it feels like immortality.

sliding down spirals of kaleidoscope daydreams is
a twisting unsolvable riddle,
the solution dangling on your finger tips,
the word dancing on your lips,
stuck just out of reach.

twisting shapes and rhyming colors.

you’re in an abstract state of mind,
standing far from reality,
stepping back from the cyclone of existence,
slipping through mindframes and ideals.

sliding down spirals of kaleidoscope daydreams,

swimming on tumultuous waves of
yellows and greens and reds and blues and
your mind is out the window, no thoughts to escape from,
everything gone except for the tv static in your brain.

a sketch,
with charcoal and cardboard
dusty figures
smudged edges
and chalk outlines.

browns and blacks,
silvers and whites.

a landscape,
with watercolor and paper
elegant streaks
soft scores and
bright colors.

reds and yellows,
blues and greens.

a portrait,
with acrylic paint and canvas
twisted shapes
sharp lines and
splattered colors.

orange and pinks,
purples and golds.

Football the hits the sounds the plays
The gridiron is my happy place
Sometimes I go there to get away
From the stresses of a normal day
The games comes and we pull away
And coach says,”way to play”

Little girl holding her mother’s hand,
Together they watch the clouds go past.
Young and free without her life planned,
Yet still within her mother’s grasp.

Little girl smiles and her soul sings.
An atmosphere of love that lingers.
A pure soul of youth she brings.
Yet her innocence slips between their fingers.

Little girl grows as the years go by.
Her spirit cries from the pain of her bleeding heart.
The loss of her mother standing by her side,
But they shared nothing in common which kept them apart.

Little girl isn’t little anymore,
Has learned to cope with being alone.
Still tries to remember the times before.
Her truth forced her to leave home.