Category: Junior Literary

I was looking around for new inspiration to write and  I fell into the trash category of our blogs. I am using the titles from each of these “trash”/ unfinished pieces to make a poem, so you might see one of your titles being used!

(no title)

mid day thoughts

rumbling through my one track mind in

colors like the sunset

its kind of painful to bear behind eyelids

but I take the heat anyway

defending the brilliance in the way one

hides beneath orange streetlamps at midnight

in the downpour of rain

just waiting

waiting

 

something I have noticed lately

within the realm of my usual

existential crises

is the lack of the teenage cliché

people keep talking about

boy meets girl, they make out

they breakup

but people usually forget the 3 am secrets they share

before the rumor, the ruin

the running

 

carousel horses have caught hold of my head

and they spin faster than my

seven -year-old self remembers;

concrete nightmares, out of hand

and stuck tight as the noises

in the spaces between hotel walls

 

colors

colors, too many

too far an expanse to imagine

without getting too creative

floating ’round in ideas ever- changing

and losing grip of reality

 

I have been building unity in this

oppression of myself

it’s healthier this way, I suppose

when the brain loses hold

all bets are off

birthdays have the feel of business meetings

and the color blue ceases to exist

 

I go back to the orange streetlamps on the corners

looking dimmer than before, but still

reminding me of the sun

I go back to the places that have burned

me into the dark, warm

earth and smile

I close my eyes and think about it some more.

 

Somethings beeping. Its been doing that for a while now, ever since we came into the room. When I sit up it’s not as loud, but when I slouch, which I usually do, it seems to perk up. I don’t find it particularly annoying. I just realized that its there, and every once in a while, I’ll forget about it, and realize a couple minutes later that it never left. Just silently beeping, keeping time or announcing a future shut down of some electronic device. I don’t know, but I find that weird. That it just goes on and on, and that I can just forget about it. How can it leave my mind so quickly even though it never left, my mind chooses to pretend it’s not there but it is. Just as a dog can be running around at your feet. even if it’s a big dog, eventually your mind will ignore the fact that its there and so when you try to get up and step on its tail. You’ll apologize a million times but the dog probably won’t care. It’ll lick its tail and go back to bed, no sleep really lost. But you’ll think about that for the entire day, wondering, how you could forget they were there, what part of you shut it off. That perceptive part that sees things and notices them. Then you’ll run into a counter, a counter that’s been there since you were small, that same counter you see every day, but instead of avoiding it like you were subconsciously trained to, you run into it that day. Hold your stomach, curse under your breathe, but in a way, the pain will be a reminder that it is there. And in a couple of weeks or maybe a month you’ll forget about it again, and repeat the same process. We never quite learn to not forget the things we just sometimes know and sometimes we don’t. The beeping has been there longer for a week I know this, I have heard it but I couldn’t recall that until I start writing this. What else have I forgotten, what else will I do and realize maybe too late, maybe right on time that I need to be more aware. Aware of my surroundings my dogs tail, that counter tops edge, that beeping.  The beeping that never seems to have an end. Never truly had a beginning. Just there, and I guess I should just accept that and forget it was even there to begin with.

When I look into a mirror, I do not see me. I see two extreme versions of myself. One is an African American girl- her hair is a kinky curly Afro crown upon her head, her eyes a deep dark, coffee brown. The other is a Caucasian girl- her hair pin straight and a fiery red, her eyes a grassy green.

These versions of myself are forever arguing. Always fighting for control.

It is difficult being both the slave and the slave master. Hard being both the oppressor and the oppressed. How do I make the most out of being biracial when half of me is fighting the other?

And I don’t think my parents even realize that they birthed a Civil War.

My body is the war zone. You can see dead slaves in my eyes and hear their cries for freedom in my heartbeat. You can feel the beatings given by slave owners in my hands and can taste the privilege on my lips.

But you wouldn’t notice the war. Only the red curls and the patches of freckles. You dream of having mixed children of your own- not because you love someone of another race but because mixed kids look aesthetically pleasing.

You spend all your time “hearting” images of mixed babies on Instagram and mix and matching features from all the races as to create the “perfect” mixed child.

It was you who created this war. You who asked me, “What are you?” You who told me, “You should have been born white.” You who said, “You act more black than white.”

You will deny your affiliation with the war. Because of course, you “don’t see race.” And you “aren’t racist.”

I never said you were. But the fact is- you formed a box around my race. Told me I have to act a certain way. Said that if I happened to enjoy basketball that must be the black side of me. Said that if I drank Starbucks then I’m more white.

I am so tired of the war- of my identity crisis.

Because whether or not you notice it, I am human.

Guys, so like, have any of you all ever tried to make yourselves sad? Or you know, experienced an unidentifiable emotion and just categorized it as sadness? Is it just me, because I feel like it’s not!! I can’t be the only one. I like to label things and give them life so not knowing what i’m feeling automatically makes me think it’s sadness.

 

I can often find myself in a state of melancholy and I don’t know why. It’s so very infuriating and all I want to do is know why! I’m like this:

with literally no explanation. And then there I am listening to sad songs such as:

Among many other mellow or relaxed songs.

And movies!! The options are so vast. All the Victorian and Eighteenth Century Dramas and romances and the ones about trials and tribulations and people living through turmoil with no foreseeable end.

https://agoodmovietowatch.com/tallulah-2016/

https://agoodmovietowatch.com/mommy-2014/

https://agoodmovietowatch.com/detachment-2012/

There are so many ways to make yourself sad!! To get into the mood and makes these emotions real.  It’s extremely easy to let these emotions manifest as well. To let them take control and be a part of you, your reality.

But then you experience this overwhelming happiness, elation, something close to euphoria.

I’m so tired of writing pretty poetry, even though it flows naturally from me, words dancing from my fingertips to the page… But words don’t dance.  And I’m tired of pretending that they do.

Pretty doesn’t mean anything.  Pretty is the bow that you put in your hair, a small nothing of decoration.  And pretty words are the things people put on Instagram pages so that others think that they’re deep.  I don’t want my words to be pretty; I want them to mean something.  I want them to punch you in the stomach and give you cold sweats in the morning as they haunt you.  I want them to give you nightmares like they do me.  I, myself, don’t want to be pretty;  I want to mean something.

And when I die, I want to be remembered for something other than being pretty or having pretty words.  I want to be ugly in the casket, not dressed up even a bit.  I want to be decaying and rotting, and have them look upon me.  They’ll call it an ugly sight.  Maybe I’ll give them a smile.

Actually, I don’t know what I want.  I don’t know what I’m doing.  I don’t know who I am.  I don’t know anything, except that I’m scared.

I can’t particularly name anything that I’m scared of.  I just know that I do daring things, and it doesn’t faze me, but somehow I’m shivering in fear all of the time.

I don’t know what I want.  Actually, I want to be alone for a month.  I want to wander into nothing towns with a bunch of nobodies.  Then I wanna go to the landmarks, and even though most call them booming cities, I’ll think of them the same as the nothing towns.  I want to sleep for eight days of that, a mini-coma.

I’m tired of this place.  I want to leave.  And that includes Diamondhead and Brookhaven, two compound word nightmares.

I feel as if perhaps, even though I’ve spent my entire life trying to outrun it, my only home is mediocrity, for that is where I rest my head every night.

I’m tired, and I’m apathetic, and I’m tired, and I’m angry, and I’m scared, and I’m so scared.  That’s it.  There’s no real pretty way to put it.  I’m just angry and scared.  And I don’t have to explain myself to you.

There is something magical about my literary classroom. Something about the giant windows, the dark wooden floors, the red mushroom lamp. There is something about the way the beige walls and the Scholastic Art & Writing Awards  posters stare back at you. There is something about the endless sounds of typing and creaks in the floorboards that puts a writer’s soul to rest.

There is something awful in the way coffee smells in the afternoon and how eyes burn form staring at a bright computer screen for hours on end. Something about how your fingers begin to cramp from typing. Something about the way your shoulders slouch under the weight of an impending deadline.  There is something about the panic of having only today to finish an assignment that puts a writer’s soul to rest.

There is something infuriating about the untended bookshelf that is collapsing under the weight of books stacked miles high and the leaky Keurig that keeps so many awake. Something about the conflicting opinions that makes your head begin to ache. Something about the criticism that makes you roll your eyes. There is something about the computer shutting down before you can save your work that puts a writer’s soul to rest.

There is something about my literary classroom. Something magical. Something infuriating. Something awful.

Something that puts my soul to rest.

I wake up one morning earlier than I usually would.  The sun has not even fully risen.  I lie awake in bed trying to persuade my unconscious mind into succumbing to sleep once again, but it eventually wins out and forces me out of my bed.  I get dressed and make my way downstairs.  I make a bowl of cereal and start to eat it in silence.  After a few bites, I decide to turn on the TV.  I walk into the living room to get the remote, but I am surprised by what I find sitting next to it on the couch.  I find a corpse sitting there looking as if he is just relaxing.  I stand still staring at it, not knowing who the body belonged to or what I was supposed to do about it.  I eventually decide that I should call 911 and tell them that I’ve found a dead body sitting on my couch which they immediately question, but I have no answers for them.  I finish the phone call and proceed to do the same with my cereal.  After doing so, ambulances and police cars pull up with sirens blaring.  I open the door to let them in.  The paramedics confirm that the body is in fact a dead one though I felt pretty confident in my personal assessment of the body’s state of being.  The police officers questioned me, but I had as many solid answers as I did minutes earlier on the phone.  They eventually put the body in an ambulance which I found ironic and drove him away.  As they drive away, I go back into my bedroom, brush my teeth as well as my hair, and just finish preparing to leave in general.  I look down at my watch and realize that it’s time for me to leave.  I go to head out the door, but realize that I don’t have my car keys.  I check the kitchen counter, my beside table, and just about everywhere else that I’d think they could be.  I look over my living room and see my key chain poking up between two couch cushions.  I grab them, but as I do so, I smell something awful.  I hold my breath, and get outside.  I sigh to myself and hope that getting my couch cleaned won’t be too expensive.  I then get in my car and drive to work.

modern man // arcade fire

we were stuck.

we all were.

we’d gotten ourselves caught up in the suburban life, allowing ourselves to succumb to the fate of growing up in a small town and never getting out of it.

or worse: getting out and finding ourselves crawling back home.

but i always wanted to get out. i always wanted to run away from the community that never truly made me feel welcome.

and i knew i could. i knew that one day i would drive past the welcome signs and never once look back. i knew that my life wouldn’t stagnate in the town i never really belonged in.

so they ask, “who do you want to be?” “what do you want to be?”

and i reply, “i want to be a writer.”

“pick something more realistic,” they demand. they wanted a change, something practical.

so i give it to them.

“i want to be a teacher.” “i want to be a doctor.” “i want to be a hematologist.” “i want to be a pediatric surgeon.”

sure, the dreams i told them i had were still things i was interested in, but they weren’t passionate. and i think dreams have to be passionate for them to become anything at all.

i let them change what dreams came out of my mouth, but they could never change the dreams the grew from my brain like wildflowers.

i kept my dreams to myself and watched as they left their own dreams behind. i watched as they assimilated to never leaving the state to go to college, and never leaving the county to start a family. i watched people bloom and wither away into caricatures of the american south.

i saw people open their mouths when asked what they want to be when they grow up only to close them again, returning to the question with something thought more appropriate by the adults who had their dreams shattered by suburbia. they’d let suburbia cloud their ambitions and hopes, and they were trying to make us kids do the same.

but i wasn’t going to let them turn me into another suburban machine. i wasn’t going to let them make me be something i didn’t feel. they weren’t going to poison the wildflowers that grew in my brain.

after all, it was those very wildflowers, that very determination to be what i wanted to be when i grew up, that brought me here.

I’m just going to do this off of the top of my head because I think it’s better that way.  We edit too much, and we censor ourselves.   There is something raw to listening to someone ramble; you get to know their true thoughts off of the top of their head.

I’m always afraid that the thoughts off of the top of my head aren’t good enough.  I don’t know enough weird facts.  I know a lot about sharks, though.  I’m scared of the ocean, and I’m scared of sharks especially.  That doesn’t mean that I’m not going to get into a shark cage if I ever get the chance, though.  I live for the thrill.

Someone once told me that I had lived too much in too short of a time.  I was bored because I was an adrenaline junkie.  I don’t know whether or not that’s true; I just do whatever makes me happy.  I follow my heart no matter what.

I often get really bored with life.  I need constant change, and I thrive on it.

I don’t like to share things about myself.  The things that you know are not in my comfort zone of things to tell people.  I suppose that’s why, sometimes, I overindulge.  I like to be out of my comfort zone.  Being comfortable makes me uncomfortable in a way–not in the heart pounding way that I want, but rather in a way that makes me want to tear my hair out.

I suppose that’s why I wait to do blogs until the last moment.  I don’t follow directions that well because in a way, that makes me vulnerable in a way that I do not ever want to be again.  I used to follow every direction every uttered to me.

I don’t know where I’m going with this.  I don’t know where I’m going in life.  The truth is that I’m lost, and I’m just rambling because it’s 8:21 PM on Wednesday night.

I’m lost in life right now.  The thing that scares me the most is that I don’t know what my passion is anymore.  Writing has lost a lot of its zeal now that I’m forced to do it.  I’m terrified that one day, the appeal will slip from me or bubble and boil into something as dreadful as work.  I used to play a lot of instruments, but that just doesn’t bring me the same feeling it used to.  Besides, I always feel like I’m missing out on life if I’m not doing something adventurous.

I just want passion, and I’ve followed my heart so recklessly for so long that I think I’ve done a lot of what I wanted to do.  It really upsets me sometimes.  Sometimes I’m afraid that people love me for my quirks and for the things that I do instead of the things I say.  It’s weird, I know.

I’m weird in a lot of ways.  Anyways, that is all.  Have a nice day.

https://www.pinterest.com/pin/190417890478034496/

Link above shows picture inspiring the poem:

Apartment Mentality

Four tiny walls

tiny kitchen

tiny molded toilet and overdue rent

angel white tapestry

separating scenes of the city and sounds of

lost people remembering again

blue speckled pots and pans and spoons

falling from countertop to living room

floor, the door concrete and

warped in the dark when speakers below blow

brilliant red chords with no room to reach out

so they reach up instead

dirty socks line the doorway, Chinese takeout

the last excuse to leave the room

a dove perch on the open balcony, as far as the

eye can see

nothing but little people doing little things

smalls as dust mites or spider bites

scrambling like eggs in a frying pan across the expanse of

big city spread out beneath

each person looking up and biting off small

chunks of their own sky, that is,

within 1000 square feet of carpet.