Imagine

Author: Mary Parker

It’s hard to imagine. 

To imagine a world where we don’t personify our sins.

Daily.
Weekly.

Monthly.

As long as time permits, really.

Didn’t you know?

We can’t really escape them,

It’s natural after all.

After all the silence,

the hurting,

the weeping,

the pain of what we’ve done.

You ask.

What’s one to do?

It surrounds us after all,

tempts us,

manifests itself onto us…

Daily. 

Weekly.

Monthly.

As long as time permits.

It’s greed,

Its envy,

It’s pride…

just to name a few.

But really now.

Are you still unsure,

Of what’s one to do?

White Heather

Author: Miller Hagler

He grows white heather out in verdant fields.

A shallow, promised threat in his vast yield,

while she grows white heather out in the badlands.

Strong withered roses raised with dry, bloodied hands.

No Childhood

Author: Jayla Williams

Be a child without a hood 

And never draw suspicion

Because you never want to have someone 

Make a “grounded” decision

It takes a village to raise a child

This very well may be true

But don’t be a child with a hood

Or the village won’t be raising you

Because if it’s just past dark

And you want to get skittles for your brother

A vigilante might get excited

And take you from your mother

Creative Writing Assignment

Author: Lily Elmore

I am not sure if I’m real anymore

I float through my life like a dream

The truth is so hard to say these days

Because the truth is not what it seems

Am I expressing anything anymore?

Trying too hard to create

My art’s for “art’s sake”

And I can’t catch a break

So I ride out the wave for hours

I know it’s a painting, not a puzzle,

But the pieces still feel wrongfully placed

I’ve been reading to learn for so very long

But I’m not sure I know how to read.

I’m starving but the fridge is empty

The fruits of my spirit consumed

I didn’t know when I left home

How dark was the darkness that loomed

And I’m doomed.

Or maybe just overdramatic.

But probably both.

Defrost

Author: Abigail Betts

It’s a warm, wet world.

My body is damp,

And my jacket chills

My skin.

Hands slip along

A leather wheel.

It feels just like

Sweaty palms

But fingers are

Cold to the lips.

Face feels heavy and wet.

Drips on the brow,

Like a cold sweat.

Rain drips from hair

To the neck.

I swear I hear the drops

Sizzle and steam

On skin.

Headlights flash by

In a foggy glass haze.

And there are tiny

Headlights

Strung above and along

Lit-strip malls,

Arranged into snowflakes,

And wreaths.

In the dark rain

On black ice, highways

Are Technicolor holidays

Like pink trees.

You pass lines of

Christmas trees

Left out in the rain.

Your pity and worry 

Seem so silly:

Trees are born in the freezing rain.

Syncopation

Author: Callipoe Pettis

Syncopation, S-S-Syncopation

We're Livin' in a Psycho Nation, Ps-Ps-Psycho Nation

They'll try and tell you what to think

While your mind is on the brink of more Beautiful Things

They tell you that it's wrong, but you feel right

Don't let their judging words keep you up at night

Just follow your Good Heart

And you'll start to see a Change

Most Change is for the better

    It ain'teasy I know

But Change is Pain and Pain is Growth

    Have Faith in where you'll go

Don't Change for anybody

    Make a Change for yourself

Be a Better you than yesterday

    Take your life off of the shelf

Go someplace you've never been before

Just open up your Heart and Give far More

Than you've ever gave

Stop trying to save yourself

You feel uncomfortable, you don't feel right

You're out of Rhyme and Time, don't fit in anyone's lines

You change your Mind

Every time they speak

Most Change is for the better

    It ain'teasy I know

But Change is Pain and Pain is Growth

    Have Faith in where you'll go

Don't Change for anybody

    Make a Change for yourself

Be a Better you than yesterday

    Share in your Happiness and Wealth

Syncopation, S-S-Syncopation

We're Livin' in a Psycho Nation, Ps-Ps-Psycho Nation

They'll try and tell you what to think

While your mind is on the brink of more Beautiful Things

Bloodwood

Author: Reed

Winding roots the sturdy shackles.

Family name a choking vine.

Father fixed far away.

Mother hovers, gentle sway.

Ancestry, authority.

Family, slavery.

Sister tree, shelter me,

still vale of my anxiety.

Leeching roots, damp and dirty,

Steals from us what keeps us sturdy,

and only through them filtered rancid

drinks the water withered branches

Spokes of seasons, wheel of time.

Drought and desert, flood and blizzard.

Fretting fruitless, fit and choke,

Grieving leaves fall from the oak.

Germinate, obliterate.

Generate, incarcerate.

Leeching saplings strangulate,

so only tall proliferate.

Protection with your leafy roof

From warm embrace of sunlight through,

And keep the sapling low to smother

In cold shadows of the mother.

Child of Ash

Author: Juanita Wooley

Like shadows I dance,

Flickering into black dust.

Leaving you ash footsteps. 

red rum and a shining carcass

Author: Jessica Brooks

There is no room 237 in Ramsay Hall.

I checked.

Several times, in fact. I guess each time, I was scared it would suddenly have appeared out of thin fucking air.

They say these hallways change at night.

They want to believe this place is enchanted, 

and though I would enjoy such a sanitized way of looking at this place,

I know better.

And though I live in one of the few rooms with a bathtub

in this hotel-turned-dormitory,

which puts me at risk for seduction by a creepy half-drowned spectre,

at least I’m someplace where you can’t reach me.

Not that you even want to reach me.

You with the Djarum Blacks you finally stopped smoking--

you were happy enough without me that you stopped smoking.

That knowledge alone was worse than any harsh words at the typewriter.

You with that face, those eyes that always looked half-empty or more,

the endless, endless consumption of alcohol, complete with snide words to the bartender.

With the ex far prettier and more talented that I can ever hope to be,

and the Advocaat and blood staining the hands that held my waist.

I don’t think it’s accurate to say

that you were Jack Torrance 

and that I was Wendy,

but the fact remains

that one of us got out in the end

and the other one didn’t.

The hard part is-- I can’t tell who is who.

One of us looks like a caricature, a Neanderthal

with eyelashes frozen over,

but the foil doesn’t stop long,

gathering the traumatized remnants of those two short months

and getting the fuck out of dodge.

One of us is descending the mountain,

safe from the elevator that threatens to drown its patrons in crimson.

But the other has had their brains bashed in, 

right the fuck in,

and I think it’s me that the Overlook Hotel has claimed for the last hundred years.

How is your Dad?

Author: Emerson Fremming

Voices would interrogate

       Then assign alienation leaving me,

        Hollow.

He is gone….

The Man.

The Teacher.

The leader.

What shreads were left were for your eyes

        Not Mine.

He is now a creature of basic needs

My dad died a long time ago,

         But as he clawed at the grave,

I slid into a deep

Dark

Blue

Cave

        You idiots, should have considered my side

Thought how was I?

That could have set the clocks forward.

I was nothing, trapped in an empty cage.

The middleman for today’s gossip.

Go ahead ask,

                  “How is your Dad?”

Wayward Starlight

Author: Elizabeth Shelnutt

My light and shining angel has gone again,

down to those darker depths.

In those depths light cannot penetrate,

it merely pools at the bottom.

I sit and wait at the other edge of oblivion;

I wait for my angel to return again.

With a smile warm as sunshine

and wings radiating with warmth,

this memory of my angel is all that keeps my patience.

Inside oblivion monsters crawl.

I can hear them screeching for fresh blood.

It’s why I can never follow my lovely angel.

I wait for the day those wings wrap around and warm my cold soul.

I will wait as oblivion is long for my angel to return.

“Colors”

Blue is the water its shades moved by the tides-

Clear and white are the icicles hanging above.

Red is the spice popping on your tongue,

Mixing with orange and yellow to be the heat of the sun.

Tan is the touch of a camel hide,

the grittiness of sand as the warm colors:

Red, orange, and yellow warmed it dark.

Black is the hottest void, sucking all light,

the sign that no life can survive there.

“Love is a Feeling”

There’s no way to start a sentence with you,

there’s much too much ground to cover.

Picking a starting place is impossible-

Do I begin with your voice?

Your little ticks and quirks?

The way you look at me I only wish I could?

Maybe I should start with the way you love me-

Through words chosen just for me,

Through kisses on places closed off to everyone else.

It’s indescribable how you make me feel,

I light up inside and out when you’re there.

Love, in this way, is the best feeling in the world,

Especially when I’m with you.

Lost in the Ocean

Author: Jessica Russell

You’re playing around

Acting out

The spotlight is on you 

The world is big

And your dreams are too

So what you gonna do?

You jump right in

Ready for a swim

And soon you’re lost in the ocean

You’re floundering now

The light is going out

So what you gonna do?

So what you gonna do?

You don’t call for help

You won’t reach out

You’re letting it drag you down

Why do you let it drag you down?

But you jumped right in 

Ready for a swim

Now you’re lost in the ocean

The current pulls you out

The waves are crashing in

You’re lost in the ocean

Are you drowning now? 

Please cry out!

Oh the waves abound

Why aren’t you reaching out?

You’re lost in the ocean

Caliban

Author: Abigail Betts

Aye, terror, scream.

Rage and dance with me.

Let the heaviness

Of your literate sky

Feed off our Tempest.

That fire keeps the beat

Of that wretched horizon.

Faerie drums sound out

And shock the heart.

Spin me out 

And in again

In Aerial frights.

I will not fight,

But let your smile strike

And dance with my shrieks.

Delight, violent heart

In the cold fingers

That grasp and scratch.

Come sway with me.

Prosper my dear,

And flood again this earth

That we alone survive

To bathe in the dark

That presses us near.