Young Writers’ Archive – The Fourth Edition

Save the Orangutans

These orange furry creatures are near the end of their tether

They can’t control what’s happening like we can’t change the weather

Swinging on the trees they pack their bags of sorrow

A sombre future awaits them they hope it is not tomorrow

All we have to do is give them a hand

So they can elatedly thank us and stand

Very few orangutans’ remain in the wild

Anyone can help even if you’re a child

Orangutans’ are unique in their own way

Why do we put them in so much dismay?

What will happen in the future is unknown

If we can help them they won’t be alone

Who wouldn’t want to see these magical beasts?

We would like to see them increase

© Shaheryar Chishty, Age 10

 

Come back

I only got to know you more now

But it’s not fair because you are going

Let’s take it back and replay the times we had together

Walking with you in the good weather

I’m feeling sparks in my heart

That was the signal for us to start

So it began

Me and you were going places

I had never felt these lovely phases

I was with you so I was relaxed

Day and night we would talk and I would feel attached

Suddenly we came apart

Which was the last thing I wanted

Leaves me in a seat back

looking at the photos I can never leave alone

It makes me cry and people ask me what’s happened

And all I say is help me mend

So I’m asking come back

Come back now

Come back tomorrow

Stay forever with me

Because when I’m gone I want you to be the last thing I see

Was it right for me to be quite?

But I’ll tell you now I feel like to riot

You can probably see I can’t smile and for you to come back is going to take a while

Time is going by and I don’t want to waste it

All I need is my life to be lit

So I’m asking come back

Come back now

Come back tomorrow stay forever with me

Because when I’m gone I want you to be the last thing I see

All I want is to be back together

Like before because it was better

© Shumile Chishty, Age 14

 

 

To Be Made Of Art

No one wants to be art,

Art is creation,
Creating stuff,
Sometimes,
Insanely beautiful,
Other, insanely awful.
Destruction
Is a form of creation,
Destroying ourselves,
Ripping ourselves apart,
Kill ourselves
To become
Immortal

© Rufio Black, Age 16

 

 

 

 The Light

As darkness falls, the lights beam down, on everything around.

No one is out, but they are about, smiling down upon us.

The wind whispers in our ears on the cold night, they guide us through the filthy streets, they are the only light.

Home welcomes us back in, all warm and cosy. What a horrible night that was.

The sun rises at dawn, the village comes alive. If it wasn’t for the light that night, we wouldn’t have survived.

© Coral Thomas, Age 12

 

 

 

Sunset Silhouettes

We were walking under sunset silhouettes,

And the colors that danced with the clouds – They rushed like Polaroid images in my mind.

And I lost my head in a daze of memories, As the same brick steps fell under our feet.
It seemed not too long ago, you and me,

Three years passed and nothing changed, You took your photographs and I wondered;

How will these vivid images in my mind, Or when, will they all fade and diminish?
And I sit here by the benches, watching, As the orange sky slowly faded into dark,

The colors swiftly fading yet slowly dying. The night is closing in, and so does time,

As deadlines and farewells all drew near.
And as we took our one last photograph, Under the sunset silhouettes, I’ll remember.

Under the same orange skies, we met, And soon we’ll all bid each other farewell, Until we see each other again.

© Philip M. Jamilla, Age 16

 

 

Lets get outside

 

Everyone is outside

 

Bugs are outside

 

Everything is outside.

 

© Maanya Gadeela, Age 3

 

 

 

 The Appropriate Response

The opera had been wonderful. The recent images of the immense pageantry and

immaculate music still lingered on his sensory peripherals. He had seen Ludwig’s “Fidelio”

many times and yet, he always seemed to forget the magnitude of the musical plane on which it

existed. He considered Mozart to be the king of the opera and he held this position in his mind

because Mozart had the best quantity to quality ratio. That is to say he wrote a very high number

of operas and they all satisfied, at least to a certain extent. However, every time he attended a

performance of the one and only…continue reading.

© Garland Wells, Age 18

 

 

Palladio’s Vitrum

Through the Palladian window,

one can watch her spread butter on wheat toast

then carefully sprinkle cinnamon sugar across it

evenly,

releasing granules from between smooth fingers

her hija’s breakfast favorite.

At Saturday markets,

she stands over the fryer

folding meats, onion, and vegetables

into corn masa.

 

Carefully folding contents,

then dripping the white tri corner hats

an inevitable browning of oil

into starchy veins.

Her thick lips tell

the readiness of

cilantro and bean creations,

Curling up when dissatisfied

Pursing at 180 degrees when contented.

Her sister in law, the one who believes in the God of the Sun,

braids her niece’s hair and watches the kids

who jump from hula hoop to hula hoop

carefully staying within those plastic circles.

Yesterday she bought her daughter

some neon-colored fish at Petco

trademarked, with little “R’s” in circles next to their names,

patented life.

Today she feels as though

those fish with scales of rainbow

were swimming through her veins

and pooling in her stomach.

Luminescent creatures provoking internal excitement.

 

She had fallen in love again for the first time in a while,

but this time,

with life.

She works now with her brother, five years her senior.

He explains to customers how they buy the ground corn

at the Food Lion on Route 250.

He forgets to add that they go on Sundays

after church

and often see dying onions between

sidewalks and parking stops,

soon rotten,

already forgotten.

 

He forgets to add that her husband left her last year

and how she used to pick him up from his construction site

where he built homes, piece by piece, for others.

Every day she’d pass the sign,

“lava las llantas”

with a smiley face smudged in dust by someone’s square thumb.

Every day she’d pick up her husband

who’d smile only at their daughter

whose hair ties of plastic ponies

held her dark strands of gel streaked hair.

And then one day her husband stopped eating

the dish she made for him,

sautéed peas with artichoke hearts

and little bits of pink ham

at the center of his plate.

Still,

one can watch her spread butter on wheat toast

then carefully sprinkle cinnamon sugar across it

evenly,

releasing granules from between smooth fingers,

her hija’s breakfast favorite.

© Olivia Vande Woude, Age 17

 

 

Midsummer

I saw life passing before my eyes

From the passenger seat of my father’s car

Saw it in the children running barefoot

Over crumbling sidewalks

Saw it in yellow curtains and little talks

 

Saw it in the coffee shop

And saw it in a bar

Saw it in peanut-butter spoons

And an empty jam jar.

Saw it in the houses, with their sleep-shuttered eyes

Saw it in a waving flag and a dozen fireflies

Saw it in a suited man

Drinking coffee and waiting for a train

Saw it in a dusty, square garden

Waiting for a fall of rain.

I measured out my life in the ticking of a clock

In the times static hissed on the radio

In the blaring of the TV

In the crashing of the sea

As millions of cars went passing by

On long weekends, the Fourth of July.

I sat back in terror

Hands folded over my ribs

And wondered into the window glass

Whether that would be my life

A parade of coffee cups and spoons

A gaggle of children, giggling over cartoons

A year’s worth of ironing, all stacked up in a bin

A millions veins and stretch marks, stretching over my skin

A million years spent waiting, and praying to the sky

A lifetime’s worth of pennies, collecting in a tin

Wrinkles creasing around my eyes, and gathering up my cheeks

 

Calendars with the days crossed out, gathering up the weeks

 

And I wondered why I hadn’t been born better

And why it was happening all so fast

And why I felt I was standing over a chasm

With the wind blowing and rushing past

And I wondered up into the skies

Where my stair-case to the stars had got to

When my dreams had vanished into the blue

When all my hopes had passed me by.

But then I looked over at my father

As his hands steadily turned round the wheel

Even as Time turned him round

And I listened then to the haunting sound

Of the birds in the twilight.

And that sound made me recall a thousand days

A thousand summer skies, a thousand summer rays

A thousand sunrises, in the parade of coffee cups

A thousand tiny suns, in the jars of fireflies

A thousand flowers, blooming in the garden square

A thousand dandelion dreams, barely there

And I find that I am smiling now

That it will be ok somehow

Even though we are both growing older

And the night is growing bolder, infringing upon the car

And the road is stretching far-

(For though he will come to die

And a thousand days later, so will I

In my heart, those thousand days will glow;

And though unsung we both will go

And few will weep and few will know

Our ashes will still smolder, our smoke will still rise

Up past the stars like a thousand eyes

Up into the cathedral skies.)

© Aurora Lewis, Age 17

 

 

 

She

She has gardens in her throat and when she breathes in Autumn the

words swirl, billowing around her like shifting smoke.

With each rise and fall of her eyelids, she grows. She is wild and water

and freedom and the sun through the clouds on a Winter’s day. The ice

doesn’t make her fall she just glides more elegantly.

The wind calls her name and the birds sing her song and the flowers

bloom her beauty. Trapped behind enameled gates.

Just like Persephone you will want to walk her garden to taste her fruit,

but if you do no mortal has ever returned because she is more than

woman:

She has split the world open and painted herself in its colours. She has

stripped back the centuries and held the first atom between her fingers

and asked, “Why?”

Even the greatest philosophers have waited at the edge of her garden to

catch a single leaf and call it beauty. Then catalogue it in dusty tomes

in uniform piles but she will never be contained.

She is like an oasis in a desert and you are a dying man in need of a drink.

 

© Megan Cowzer, Age 14

 

 

This is Growing Up

Escape

I run,

past the Tudor houses

past the wooden bench

dried leaves rich in green

past the lake

past the willow tree

faster,

alongside the cyclists lane

up the hill

I look back, stretch my eyes to see the horizon

a million miles away

little am I traveling; I am not running at all,

I can’t escape my thoughts of you

they’re running in me.

© Rahela Khatun, Age 17

 

 

 

Ball Of Flames

One pair, two pair, a dozen. A few more.

Weight of eyes grow heavier.

Why does she walk in a flock of flames?

Lifeless face, lonely eyes, dry skin, untouched wounds

she was chewed not wooed

evidence of a volcanic eruptions perished

not even the fumes left, no sympathy.

Scorching heat torturing, temperature rising

blood pressure decreasing

burning and brewing

leaving not even skeletons to turn into ashes.

Matches in batches, coals in rolls

both in her hands; feeling at home.

Ignited.

No eyes on you now soft little child.

Her eyes and ears walked to the depths of oceans

and mountains to see or hear a familiar voice.

None at her savior.

Panic, nerves, pressure.

The whole world coated in petrol

none to turn to, none to speak to

she swallowed the matches along with the coal

a harmonious world; forever she burns

merciless Earth.

Words, thoughts rolled into bullets

resting in the depths of her fractured mind.

Scared soul seeking solace

a whole army against her

none appreciation did she receive

harsh snipers struck at the back

for being a ball of

flame.

© Rahela Khatun, Age 17

 

 

© Marlowe Whittenberg, Age 7

 

 

A Remedied World

You question how the world, a single sole entity, can become “better”
I say, the question is how we can make it wetter
Lack of flow, bringing of drought
World ceasing to revolve, lasting with its faults

Once warm puffy clouds dissipating, evaporating, seeming to be gone
Rain storms with it, once thundering and quarrelsome
A rainbow’s variegation shattering into pure colorless glass
Limitless sky; disappearing; rendering itself quite rash…

Then add diseases amplifying the embrace of death, of lasting light’s kiss
Pain, scars, rashes, depression, drugs, suicide, a lack of pure bliss
Without which the world would be on an all time high
Passing along, singing its song; now of dreariness, gloaming, and demise

Littering past, human fallacy scattered to the heavens
Where white clad angels can remedy, shape, mend, and recondition
Soulless beings past reprobation, extricated by holy saints
Odd, mediocre, disquieting creatures acquire places of deserved rank
Bias eliminated, nonexistent, and consequentially extinct

Lies, such as knives, stabbing through people’s minds, who are just wishing to be heard
A voice to all, a representation, a desire for truth and authenticity through the individual word

Helping hand within aiding hand, embracing; clutching; relying
Four chambered hearts connected by more than just arteries and veins
Looks and beauty disregarded, individuals regarded by genuineness and what the inside contains

A revival of creation, fabrication, construction, and development; a demolition decrease
A contemporary Renaissance; exemplifying morals, relevant issues, and (of course) world peace

How such a power could be improved, however, is beyond me
As a human being, I believe there to be only one “bona fide” method to appease
The world must band together and weather the many incoming storms
As an entity, no individual can stand alone

Lasting, falling, producing, and shaping
Our world is a wondrous realm of rights, liberty, and personal conscientiousness in the making

While this sphere shall advance within time, one statement remains true
In regard to our planet, all must pitch in and pledge time in order to make it harmonious, healthy, and breathtakingly beautiful

So to our glorious, all encompassing world, or mundo, ashkharh, mondo, orbis, sekai, shìjiè, segye, wereld, welt, kósmo and monde

                   ~I have faith in you~

© Danielle Mikaelian, Age 16

 

 

Using My Spine As A Toothpick

using my spine as a toothpick
us in shambles, when I realize his true identity
he sits in the dark, daunting, the slope of his nose furrowed by a thread of dental floss mooring him to the ground
we sit asunder, and I swear to what he left, no more.

yesteryears, using my spine as a bow
fiddling together, writing love notes
laughter bouncing off bathroom walls,
Sunday’s dreams shimmying down the drain
we will have a cottage in the countryside, maybe move to Ireland
and sleep with the green, move in with the moss
stuffing cheese in each other’s mouths until we die, found lying in love and lactose

using my spine as a coat hanger
he hangs me out to dry
I sit sopping against our couch with a face full of sodium and oil
my couch, but his legs still strive to calculate its surface area
and i am waiting to surface, from the bathtub, the laminate
all the glossy limbos

using her spine as a clothing iron
I smooth out the wrinkles, send her off to school with her sack lunch and pigtails
I watch her walk ahead of me
she has her father’s legs
he’ll be running for the rest of his life,
and She’ll surely catch up, stomping down his spine with valor
and snap him like a toothpick

© Hanna Andrews, Age 15

 

 

MEDUSA

looking at her turns you to stone.

she is the ruby clutched between your teeth,

the ghost creeping through your belly with a fist full of

you will love her as long as you live

and this is why you will not give her up.

he will love her as well as she left you.

when he looks at her, he will turn into gold- not stone, not

gold like you used to be in her eyes.

 

© Taylor Browne, Age 16

 

 

 

Young

Beneath the spring evening sky of crimson watercolour red

My bike clicks down to the sidewalk’s end

‘Til I reach the top of the pavement hill’s head.

 

There I stop and peak down, down

Where little voices shrill behind their sand castle towns.

My tiger bike bounce, dips and drowns,

Under the timeless sea of imagination.

 

I leave my sleeping bike under its green blanket and yellow pillow dandelions

And wander to the sand box’s edge

I am now a survivor in the desert lands

And scurry to the metal oasis.

 

Then, I climb to the playground’s top

Where my crown is the racing clouds.

The metal slides, tire ladder, and swing sets did bow

To my throne on the big yellow slide.

 

I stand and grip the plastic bar

And crawl into my yellow caved slide

Dip

Down

Drown under the timeless sea of imagination.

© Bonnie Liu, Age 15

 

 

 

 

The Dandelion

The dandelion mother swept

On the breeze of the wish.

Her white hair gleamed

With laughter and bliss.

She was a snowflake in the summer sky.

 

But her daughter leapt

From the dusty brown road

Bloomed of golden sun

A weed but unknown.

She feared the ground – her home.

The dandelion mother dreamed of other lands

Green as her own and kissed by the sun

Her flight was forever high.

 

But the daughter hid from other plants

Her yellow bright hair may catch the eye

Of large shadow hands

Who may pull her from her brown womb.

She feared of things unknown.

© Bonnie Liu, Age 15

 

 

 

© Maanya Gadeela, Age 3

 

 

 

 

 

 

Unknown Sufferers

It comes down to
These very moments
When you
shiver and squirm
And your demons learn to
Love your angels.

It boils down to this
As your daily terrors
become the subject of
Reject poems,
That haunt you but somehow
Help you sleep.

Soon you’ll feel
Your feet sprout roots
Growing deep to
hug the fossils
Of age old skeletons
Inside yew coffins.

You know that
Every cloud has a
silver lining
With cyanide inside
Waiting to suffocate you
In your darkest times.

But, your mind
will grow strong
While you drag your
Feet,  leaving a breadcrumb
trail to find your way
back to the past you always knew.

Recovery won’t be swift
Unknown sufferer
But believe me, one day
You will tear the colours off
rainbows and blow them
Onto the darkness of your life.

© Harry Coleman, Age 16

 

 

Some Say

 

Some say love is a cold winter lake

All it gives is tears and heartbreak

But others say it is fire,burning and bright

Love puts the day in our heart’s night

 

© Deena Goodrunning, Age 14

 

 

 

Spring

When people are having showers

And the blossoms bloom on the flowers
And the breeze is warm

When the birds squawk

It can sometimes rain

And splash on the window, the rain

These are some of the things

That make me think of Spring

 © Monica Clemens, Age 7

 

 

 

Frost

Frost.
Forgotten.
Overlooked.
No one has enough time for frost.

No time to pause and admire
Each fragile crystal feather-light crowning every inch of the world around us.
You can find a universe in one inch of frost.
We are often blind to the glistening cloak
Accompanied by misty breath and a low winter sun.
It remains undetected.
That seems to be the way of the modern world.
The beautiful things are often missed, lost in the blur of life.

Take a minute,

A second,

A breath
To find frost once again.
Discover nature’s eternal beauties.
For when your mortal life has ended,
It will be frost that decorates your grave on a winter morning.

 

© Chloe Peel, Age 17

 

 

 

Be yourself

Money changes everyone

If you’re ‘rich’ you’re a ‘snob’

If you’re ‘poor’, you’re a ‘peasant’

Society can’t be pleased

No matter how hard you try it won’t work

Be yourself

Beauty doesn’t get you very far

If you’re ‘pretty’ then you’re ‘fake’

If you’re not ‘pretty’ then you’re ‘ugly’

Society can’t be pleased

No matter how hard you try it won’t work

Be yourself

Money can’t buy happiness

Beauty won’t get you friends

Just stay the way you are and

You’ll be famous in the end

© Leotie  Clairmont, Age 11

 

 

 

Asleep

its dark and i dream

I’m without worries or cares

I am just being

 

© Deena Goodrunning, Age 14

 

 

 

 

Waterfall

My roar puts others to shame,

a deafening cacophony of natural birth.

My surface glitters and pours,

a wind chime come to life,

with a more threatening noise.

My colour shifts in any light,

behold – it is a beautiful sight.

An array of random colours brought to life,

as a rainbow I could be mistaken,

but only as the most powerful one in the world.

My end hides no pot of gold,

just an untimely death –

for those who wish to penetrate my walls.

A knight in shining armor would not survive my wrath,

as I am a castle – only accessible from above.

My sides are slippery,

wet beyond belief.

Rocky ledges,

supporting my weight.

I am a waterfall,

and this is how I fall.

© Georgia Alicja Radka  Age 12

 

 

 

Shattered like ice

shattered like ice and

  broken like bread my heart has

     cracked because of grief

© Deena Goodrunning, Age 14

 

 

A Life

Give me education;
I demand the right to power,

you will give me rights,
and sleep-full nights
a soft pillow to lean on
a door out of poverty
give me hearts to inspire
a place to perspire from the traumas
I know for sure I can lure
the attention of future doctors,
teachers and aid workers
For education is not just knowledge
it is a weapon;
to freedom,
to life.

© Rahela Khatun, Age 17

 

 

On the day I was born I was given a scale,On the day I was born I was gifted two weighing pails,
Because on the one hand:
A woman should be pretty, funny and sweet, caring and loving and gentle and neat.
A woman shouldn’t be too loud or too abrasive, women should be smiling and laughing in all the right places.
But, on the other hand:
Who wants a woman too quiet, a woman too sweet? Women have to be entertaining or they’re just plain weak.
Women should be able to take a joke or five, and take all sorts of criticism about how they live their lives.
It’s a balance beam we walk, with no end in sight:
To the left you have insults like doormat and slut, and bitch and bossy to the right.

If you wobble the slightest bit, there’s accusing fingers in your face: stupid, stupid women who just can’t stay in their place.
You have to be needy but not too much, you have to be desperate (but not too desperate) for someone else’s love,

you have to be waiting but not for too long, if you’re taller than a man it’s not right to have high heels on.

You have to be strong but not too strong, you have to smart but not smarter than him, you have to have curves but you’ve got to be thin.
If a man is assertive, he’s a boss, but I’m a bitch? If I wear what I want, I’ll be blamed if I end up dead in a ditch?
I’ve been squeezed and prodded into this box for so long, I’m still trying to unlearn what I was taught was right and wrong.
I wear makeup for myself to make me ever stronger, I wear high heels because I like them, not because men like my legs longer.

I believe in fate and faith and truth, I believe in honesty and conscience and I believe in you.
When people begin acting like feminism is a dirty word, you know they’re the kind of people who think that boys are better than girls:
Don’t tell me to be ladylike or that boys will be boys, teach your sons that women are not objects or toys.
Show me all your promises and repeat to me each one:
Tell me how you equally love your daughters and your sons,
Tell me of equal pay and equal punishment and the same rights throughout,
Don’t let your promises run through your fingers like water in a drought.
If you want to barter off your daughters, barter off your sons too,
Dress baby boys in pink and baby girls in blue,
Destroy the words dyke and feminazi and slut,
Don’t forget all the blood that’s been spilled in the name of equality, don’t forget the true meaning of the word ‘sorority’.
Remember they did this to us, and your mothers and your fathers, but before you start lynching, think of who you’re chasing after:
They is the woman who didn’t know any better,
They is the man who was taught by her to the letter,
They is homophobia and transphobia and misogyny and racism,
Classism, prejudice and ableism,
They is you,
And perhaps once they was me, too.

© Emily Escott, Age 15