Scholastic Art and Writing 2014 Silver Key Winner
July 31st, 2013
You wake up every morning
henna eyes lined in pitch lashes
the color of forewarning
Your sanity has been torn away, a swirl of ashes
caught in a satirical wave of
crashing flame
You say every day is the same
in this hell-hole you have grown up in.
Within you
are hollow
a violin whose strings have been snapped
Your hands are wrapped in
ink-stained mittens of scarred skin
and you are smitten with the way
words can be strung together to make an oral melody.
Midnight has become your best friend
because it draws you in
with whispered of pen scratching against paper.
And you labor over your
master pieces for they are written
with your soul and
your haunting incubi.
You say goodbye to washed out lies
when you lift your pen and watch as it
bleeds ink against
virgin paper.
The rhymes of other times hold you in with
rhythm and
the spoken language of
oral poetry.
You wish your words were as good as the
greats and you hate that you'll never be
one of them.
Your words are the blossoms on growing stems
and you pick them
cupping them against your beating breast,
your chest and lungs
rise and fall with he flowing language of other tongues
as you watch the world swim by.
There are stories and poetry
etched into the skin of the living as they
pass by,
their heads in the skin and miles away.
Words are your drugs
and honey, you're an addict.
Your mind is your supplier and
your pen your needle
and you've been craving your dope
since the moment you were written out of the womb.
Words and poetry hold your hands and
tuck you in while they
collect in clouds and roil in your
shadowed room.
They are gone too soon
but you always seem to find more.
Your life is tattooed to text-blocked paper
each metaphor a prayer
each simile a hymn
and literature is your church.
The discourses in your head
seem to swell and leak against your bed
and you fall asleep to verse
Your are caught in reverse
as you traverse the centuries of
written dialect
and your grasp on to words
like falling notes from an ancient piano.
The melodies carry you to sanity
and then, finally,
you can breathe easily.
You wake up every morning
henna eyes lined in pitch lashes
the color of forewarning
Your sanity has been torn away, a swirl of ashes
caught in a satirical wave of
crashing flame
You say every day is the same
in this hell-hole you have grown up in.
Within you
are hollow
a violin whose strings have been snapped
Your hands are wrapped in
ink-stained mittens of scarred skin
and you are smitten with the way
words can be strung together to make an oral melody.
Midnight has become your best friend
because it draws you in
with whispered of pen scratching against paper.
And you labor over your
master pieces for they are written
with your soul and
your haunting incubi.
You say goodbye to washed out lies
when you lift your pen and watch as it
bleeds ink against
virgin paper.
The rhymes of other times hold you in with
rhythm and
the spoken language of
oral poetry.
You wish your words were as good as the
greats and you hate that you'll never be
one of them.
Your words are the blossoms on growing stems
and you pick them
cupping them against your beating breast,
your chest and lungs
rise and fall with he flowing language of other tongues
as you watch the world swim by.
There are stories and poetry
etched into the skin of the living as they
pass by,
their heads in the skin and miles away.
Words are your drugs
and honey, you're an addict.
Your mind is your supplier and
your pen your needle
and you've been craving your dope
since the moment you were written out of the womb.
Words and poetry hold your hands and
tuck you in while they
collect in clouds and roil in your
shadowed room.
They are gone too soon
but you always seem to find more.
Your life is tattooed to text-blocked paper
each metaphor a prayer
each simile a hymn
and literature is your church.
The discourses in your head
seem to swell and leak against your bed
and you fall asleep to verse
Your are caught in reverse
as you traverse the centuries of
written dialect
and your grasp on to words
like falling notes from an ancient piano.
The melodies carry you to sanity
and then, finally,
you can breathe easily.