One cannot quell the seas of their tides: For non have the Power.
The ocean, still? A feeble dream no doubt.
Manifested in the mind of a Man gone Mad!
mistaken thyself, for a God
Strive for divinity But achieve?… You cannot.
to find Divinity raised from Humanity. A sin no doubt.
Yet who among us shouldn’t wish to stop the seas?
For my dreams are scaled to which you cannot understand.
After you died, there wasn’t anything left to bury, not that we could even get it out. It has been quite a while since that day.
I had to burn your face into my mind.
I was determined not to let your memory die, but It was not your face, beheld by a smile, that I remembered.
My mind only lets me see you at the end.
But I try nonetheless.
“Think of his smile.” I said to myself.
I see the scorched ruin of his face, covered in dirt, burnt and lifeless.
“No! Think of his voice.”
I hear the searing screeches of pain ringing through the air as the sharpnel magles your skin: Ripping; tearing; hacking through your flesh.
“Think of his eyes.”
I see your glowing blue eyes, rich with immobile panic. My body scrambling desperately to reach you, My eyes lock with yours, unable to let go of those beautiful blue eyes.
“Think of his hair.”
I feel the blood dripping down the strands, staining what once was vibrant. Oozing red from a crack in the skull.
̈ ̈Think of his hands! ̈
I feel his shaking hands clinging to my arms. Trying in vain to cling to any life left in his dying body.
̈ ̈Think of nothing!
I can’t think of anything because you were not nothing. I see it every day. One moment you were there with me; my best friend. The next you were a charred corpse.
I can’t remember what he was before he was nothing! All I can see is your face, scorched, ruined lifeless!
Think about your early school days
That simple request probably conjures up images of phonograms and small desks filled with small kids
Those hallways that seemed so big
Brightly coloured walls dotted with drawings and those stupid red apples
But overall I assume you look back at those days fondly
I was a pretty average kid
A bit on the energetic side and very social
My mouth was always moving but my mind was moving even faster
My imagination seemed like an escape
And escape from what you might ask
When I was in grade 2 we were tasked with drawing an image of Inuit culture
And explain what everything was and what it was used for
I was quite proud of it
I had done everything I was asked too
But when all the kids in front of me put their papers in the teachers hand and it was my turn, she took a look at it;
She didn’t put it in the pile with the other kids but instead put the page in between the index and thumb of both hands and tore it right down the middle and said
“Start again”
She said I didn’t put enough information and spent too much time on the drawing aspect
It was at that exact moment that I began to feel out of place
And the teachers agreed
Every year at parent teacher interviews my mom would get the same comments like:
“Pierce is a great kid but has trouble focusing in class”
“Pierce is a very smart kid but is always distracting his fellow classmates”
“Pierce brings a smile to my day but he can’t seem to complete homework.
Have you had him tested for ADHD? He might need medication.”
They were trying to drug a child
But why?
School is more like a factory than a place to learn
They take the raw material of children and shape them into a product
obedient docile to do what we are told
We are taught that free thinking is bad so just follow the textbook and that finding another solution is a waste of time
We are trained to live our lives by a set schedule of bells that tell us:
When to move
When to eat
When to talk
And if a child isn’t quite fitting the mold how they want,
Then they press the mold harder and harder,
Take away their lunches,
Make them do extra work
And when that still doesn’t work they give up
“There must be something wrong with the kid”
“He is just lazy”
“We have to put him on meds”
Did you ever take the time to think that maybe I’m not the problem
That maybe your system is:
Flawed
Outdated
Broken
I managed to get this far off my charm
Wooing the teachers to take it easier on me
But what about those kids that didn’t have that
What about them
They are left behind,
Forgotten,
They will amount to nothing because you deemed them as nothing
Well i’m sorry that I don’t fit your mold
But that’s not who I am
And no amount of medication or therapy is going to change that
The system may call me a failure
But im proud
I like who I am flaws and all
I am proud to say
School didn’t change me
The system may call me a failure
But I am proud
Because I may be a failure
But at least i’m still me
The hooves trot with haste along the stones to my safety
Under the heavenly rays of sun my armor glints
The gold and silver stretching from my neck to my toes with no interruption
but the streaks of red splattered across my chest and painting my hands
I, the holy messenger, have completed my act of justice and the godless have been slain
Through Me the Lord hath enacted his will and I humbly accept the job of enacting it
Yet my heart if pulled back to those I have cut from this world
Their guilt on my mind
Their blood on my hands
As the sureness of my righteous act fades away
The heavens shut their doors on me
The valley in bathed in darkness
I am sure now
I have made a mistake and
The eternal father has forsaken me for it
I slow my steed and dismount
Drop to my metal knees and raise my bloodied hands
Clasp together my palms full of sin
“Have I sinned my Lord? Have I wronged your will? I have served you wholeheartedly for all my life. Was it wrong for me to baptize the sins of the unworthy in blood and fear? Please, give me a sign. A sign that I am still a man of divine duty!”
Silence
The steal clad man awaits the answer of his master
The illusion remains as the skies clear
Now reassured of his own cause
He climbs back on his mount
But not before he clasped his hands
Unholy hands forevermore
His underside is cold from the water on the ground
His hands are rough and purple from his years of life on the street. Around him, cars rush and people idly pass him by. His worn blue bomber provides just enough insulation to get him through the chill of the night. His unshaven beard and tired eyes point towards the grey cement on which he sits.
Another man exits the building across from him; out through the clear glass doors. As his clean dress shoes go from intricately laid tiles to the rough concrete sidewalk and then the black tar of the road, and the sleek black suit is exposed to the frigid air of the outside, a look of discomfort etches itself on his chiseled face. He makes eye contact with the dark figure across from him and the grip on his briefcase tightens. He looks away and tries to ignore the man in the blue jacket.
As the man in suit draws ever closer, the man on the ground produces a cup and utters
“Any spare change?”
The man in the suit knowing full well he has a wallet stuffed with change simply walks by, disappearing around another office building, without a second thought. Ignoring him as if he were another piece of trash strewn about the downtown streets.
The man in the jacket looks up at the beautifully designed building that the other man had just left. A tear trickled down his face, trying to resist the cool night air’s temptation to freeze solid right there on his face.
Every day men and women passed him by on their way to work in this monumental construction, so beautiful it belonged in a museum. In contrast to its surrounding of uninspired concrete cubes with just enough light that you could see the dull coloring of gray and brown But this building was magnificent. with it’s Castilian inspired glass window patterns covering every inch of its face. Its spiraling floor design lifting it high into the clouds above any other building in the city. This night, it glowed like a beacon from heaven, that could lead you into the skies, once shining so bright you could see it from miles away.
Why would anyone pay attention to him, if they would look at that instead? But every design that they admire every day, every detail that they take in of this building flowed from the mind of this broken uncleanly man sitting at its base.
Although his body has fallen from the look of grace he once had, his mind has stayed sharp. He forces gaze from his work of art and forces his watery eyes shut. As he does his mind flashes back and he remembers everything. Every detail of every design: The Hexagonal granite tiles supported by a steel underfloor, lining every one of the 90 floors. Very floor rotated slightly from the last, offset by 4 degrees giving it a full rotation at the top level; and the entire design encased in a layer of class that twirled around with the floors, like a snakes scales forming to the folds of the flesh underneath. Books of blueprints flooded his mind. The man remembered when it had been completed and the pride he felt as he looked upon his greatest creation. He sat upon everything he had ever wanted. It was only months later; he was sitting in his bosses office as his stomach curdled.
“…We’re having financial problems….nothing personal…were going to have to let you go…”
“I wish you luck in your job hunt.”
He looked everywhere, applying at every architectural design firm in the city, but to no end. Another day, another resume, another rejection.
As his bank account dwindle as his hair got longer. First, he lost his phone, then his car, and finally his home. Unable to pay the bills, the bank took everything from him, and still no job. He couldn’t afford razors, so he grew a beard. Suits didn’t keep him warm, so he traded his professional clothes for anything that would keep him warm. His wallet was stolen but that doesn’t matter when you have no money.
He lost everything, everything but his creation. His final work. His building. They would not let him in, so there he sat outside admiring it as best he could from outside. He dreamed of the days when he wore a suit and held a briefcase. When people talked to him instead of pretending he wasn’t there
He dreamed of when he was
Somebody.
Life is a constant war
Every insult is like an attack
Every argument is like a battle
Every fight is like a siege
But like a great wall
I will remain
The wall stands
To protect that which lays inside
Protect me from war
Protect from things that wish to harm me
That is its job
When war comes to me
When those who hate send out their armies
In hopes to break my barriers
If the bricks begin to crack
And the wall begins to wither
I have no choice but to protect
I must divert energy to the wall
I must thwart off my enemies
I must keep my defense alive
But in doing so
I must sacrifice my sanity
I will win
I would rather fortify my walls
Then feed my psyche
As I ignore the starving of my mind
The fields of my conscious will dry up
The forests of my memories will be cut down to fuel factories
Factories that spew taint the water
So that the river of my imagination runs red with industrial hate
Slowly
my mind will die
But it is better to kill yourself
Then to be killed by another
Explanation: This is a poem about the inner-workings of the mind. Many people become very hostile when anyone shows any signs of aggression, and I was once like that. I would become both verbally hostile and sometimes even physically hostile when people showed even minor criticism I found; however, that this behavior left me feeling sad and depressed, even though I had won the argument. I was inspired by the great Jade Bartlett when I read her poem, Doll Face. In that she used a doll house that was used and abused to represent how people treated her. I realized that I could use metaphorical objects to represent human behaviors and thoughts. I don’t really know why my mind went to the Great Wall of China, but it did. I then used the idea of a defensive wall to represent how human can build their own sort of defenses against other people. Our defenses are used to keep negativity from getting into our thoughts. But when someone becomes over defensive it can cause just as much, if not more, mental damage then whatever you where defending from. That is where I believe those feeling of depression and loneliness came from. I have since changed my ways but this poem exists as a reminder to me about a time when I was filled with hate.
If I could burn it all and start anew I would
Almost none deserve this gift of life in this world they have been given
If I could take it all down and start again I would
But everyone thinks this right… that they could do it all so much better
Sometimes I think it would be better to just take myself out of this world…that things would just miraculously be fixed if we weren’t here
You think that it will allow you to escape the pain of this world
But this isn’t true
If we simply discard this life it will not quell the unrest in the world
We will not feel happiness or pain or anything because nothing is nothing and nothing but nothing
But who cares right because nothing has got to be better than the pain of this life…right?
Then we remember back to the good times when we felt all the the radiant joyful amazing memories of your life and then you think to yourself…
I could do it all better
You think that if you could take it all down and start anew… things would be better
You believe that you could take out all the pain and all the suffering from the world and be left with just the radiant joyful amazing experiences… but what could you change
Nothing would truly change
The places and the names and the labels and everything else would change
Everything except the one thing you were trying to escape because the pain will never go away no matter how strenuously you try.
But no matter what world you are in… you will always need the pain because…
Without pain
Joy is nothing.
Explanation: I wrote this a very long time ago. I believe during my ELA 10 class with Ms Jusseaume. We where about three days int our poetry unit and I was being a classic gebronnie, not doing what I was supposed to. The rest of the class had been given an assignment to work on some other kind of poem. But I took the entire class and for some reason wrote out this extremely depressing poem. I don’t particularly know why though, as I remember being in a good mood. But either way this was the result of me being completely off task.
(verse 1)
My legs are shaking from the weight I carry
And I don’t know how long they’ll last
My head is throbbing and my brain is full
Like a bomb that’s ready to blow
(chorus)
I run
From the secrets that I keep and the lies I tell
I walk each day with the weight of my fabricated world
And each time I try and get out
I get caught in the web of my own self-deception
Cause I’m afraid
Afraid of what they think of me
Cause i’m afraid
To have my falsehoods revealed
So in spite of the pain I will keep it all inside ignore the cracks in my brain
And the shaking of my legs
Cause no matter how hard I try
I’m eternally caught in the web of my own self-deception
(verse 2)
My chest is concaving
Crushed by the fiction of my past
I can’t go a day without my skins pulled back
To think of the lies that that fall to my earth like snow
(chorus)
I run
From the secrets that I keep and the lies I tell
I walk each day with the weight of my fabricated world
And each time I try and get out
I get caught in the web of my own self-deception
Cause I’m afraid
Afraid of what they think of me
Cause i’m afraid
To have my falsehoods revealed
So in spite of the pain I will keep it all inside ignore the cracks in my brain
And the shaking of my legs
Cause no matter how hard I try
I’m eternally caught in the web of my own self-deception
Explanation:
This is a piece that i am very proud of. I put a lot of emotions into it an it was one of the first pieces that I truly opened up and let the world see who I am as a person and as a writer. Some time ago i was writing a journal. The day before that I had been caught in a pretty bad lie. The people who exposed me where two people I consider parents. Through a lot of reflection on my past I figured out that I have a problem with lying. I will lie my way out of any situation, even if it is not necessary. The next day I was very torn up and spent the entire class ignoring what was going on and wrote this long drawn out mess of a page. About three weeks later I was trying to write a song but was having trouble coming up with themes and topics. So I pulled out my journal and flipped to the page. Because it was such a mess I highlighted fragments and words until i had enough. Then i strung them all together into a song. That is how this song was born.
I was running as fast as I could, lockers rushing by as Daniel and I sprinted down the halls of our middle school. Next thing I know, I am laying outside the Spanish room on the cold tile floor. The bright florescent lights beating down on my limp body as frantic teachers crowded over me. All I remember being able to think through my pounding headache and ringing ears was, “Well that fucking hurt.”
Daniel was a friend that I had met that year. He was a little Asian boy who was fairly shy but always had a smile on his face. When it came to serious situations he would get awkward.
In eighth grade, I was a very accident prone kid. I was in and out of the hospital seemingly once a week for different injuries. My parents joked that I was a baby giraffe who’s arms and legs were too long. According to them, I had no concept of how to maneuver my lanky limbs. They teased me that the nurses at the hospital knew me by name. I was there for every kind of injury. I sprained my ankle, splinted a bone and ripped open my elbow and had to get stitches, just to name a few. I was there far too often.
I was just coming off of a recent wrist sprain, getting ready to go to Spanish class when the bell rang. Panic. I locked eyes with Daniel. His face was blush. We were late… again.
In middle school being late was a big deal and the bell had already gone so we grabbed our stuff and ran as fast as we could across the school. Classes had started so the halls were clear of students. We came whipping around the corner to the Spanish room at full speed and the door was in sight. We could hear our classmates from just down the hall. In the rush to the door, I ignored the metal door frame in the middle of the hall.
I feel my foot suddenly stop, blocked by the solid metal post just to my left. My foot slides, wrapping around the pole. My body keeps going until my leg is pulled to its limit, and begins to violently pull my body around. I am still moving fast and yet everything moves slow. My momentum pulls me away from the pole yet I am held there by my foot, still hooked on the pole. Finally, I untangle it but my body is already too far. I begin stumbling backward like a truck on black ice. I am doomed to crash. It is only a matter of time. I try to plant my left foot, only just being freed, but it is too late. I feel my body being whipped down towards the cold tiles on the ground. And then suddenly…black.
The following is a second-hand account of events: Daniel, being shy and awkward, walks into the Spanish room. Class had already started, the students were sitting down listening to the teacher, Mr. Butterfield. Daniel walks in and looks at the teacher and starts laughing awkwardly before saying, “I think Pierce hit his head.” and nothing else. Everyone laughed assuming he was joking, even Mr. Butterfield. Daniel, not knowing what to do also laughed and continued laughing as he said: “Yeah, he is unconscious on the floor.” Shocked Mr. Butterfield remarks, “Wait are you serious?”. He then rushed into the hall to find me completely sprawled out on the floor.
I woke up surrounded by teachers, all discussing what to do. My head was pounding and there was an intense high pitch ringing in my ears. They picked me up slowly and held me as I stumbled down the hallway to the office. My mom picked me up and off to the hospital we went. While I was sitting in the hospital bed all I remember thinking was, “Well here I am again… stupid baby giraffe legs”. Long story short I had a major concussion and had to wear a neck brace for two weeks.
After I had gotten the neck brace off I went back to my life. These days I have grown into my limbs and am not quite as accident prone as I was back then. I learned to slow down and not risk my safety, no matter how dire the circumstances. That day I didn’t realize that and ended up pretty badly hurt. I’m lucky Daniel was there because if he hadn’t been I would have simply been unconscious in the hallway for god knows how long. To this day I have not gotten another injury to this scale, and I don’t plan to soon.
