Poems

Falling Flowers

When I was little I was told
that flowers fall from sunlight,
and when sun kissed my skin
freckles blossomed over me.

When I was young a teacher clarified
that flowers grow from dirt
and try to grow tall,
and I knew it was to touch the sky.


When I was an adult I saw
that the world wasn’t as full of flowers
as it should be.
And that I was partly to blame.


When I grew old I was told
flowers were what were given to the dead.
I wondered, was it because flowers
could make death something beautiful?

The strength of this piece was that it weaved a strong theme through out the poem, with the flower symbolizing hope. The weakness is in the diction I use to symbolize the narrator growing up and how people treat the narrator. The challange of the piece was to capture what hope is thought different points in peoples lives, and as only a teenager with no life experience I can only speculate. As a writer, I was proud that I was able to weave the theme throughout the whole piece instead of sticking the theme in at the end. The obstacle I overcame in this piece was the first and second stanza, I feel that they are both fairly accurate, these two stanzas are also the ones I find most striking.  

Eye Light

Your lungs breathe 
in the galaxy 
and your chest fills 
with the universe, 
and when you speak
your words glide like 
shooting stars over the night sky, 
and your heart 
pumps stardust through your veins, 
and the light in your eyes
reflects in mine.

But the sky blackens 
in your eyes
when the stars burn out,
you look through me and
I didn't see you flicker 
out. But I know there is 
life after death, because last night 
I looked at the sky 
while you slept and I still
saw the stars.

The strength of this piece is the story and the flow, it is a light poem with a heavy theme of love and loss. The weakness of this piece is in the second stanza, where I can't decide if I want to start off to sentences with "but". I like this piece because it is very vivid and I like the idea of stars, because light travels at slow speeds, so the star you see in the sky could have died a million years ago but we still see it. I also like this poem because originally they were two separate poems but I liked they way the both flowed together and I feel that together they had a deeper meaning.

Muladhara

Keep me weighted down,

lead toes for my ruby red head.

Helium pulls me up so

fill my lungs,

slow me down like starlight

and awaken my eyes.

Sink down into earth,

let my roots grow deep as the sky,

take me down into darkness.

The strength of this poem is that it reads very poetically, which could also be the weakness because it is quite confusing if you don't understand Muladhara. Muladhara is the first chakra, a Buddhist idea, muladhar is the base chakra, it is your roots. What was challenging about this piece was that I wanted to do the chakra justice and stay true to it, I have great respect for it, but it was difficult to put it into words. I tried to use a lot of imagery to explain Muladhara and I feel that it worked very well for this piece. Out of all the eight chakras this was the poem I wrote that I was most proud of.
If You Would Like...

I wish you knew

the world would move for you.

If you wanted

the ground would shake and

mountains would fall

or rise, darling it is whatever  

you want.

And the sky could fall,

the stars go out, the planets implode, but

if you would like,

a star

could be born,

the sky could always be

just beyond your fingertips, and

another planet would come into this universe,

what would you like?

I could stop the ocean

in its sway, but if you wanted

the shore to

kiss your feet

wherever you walked, then

it would be done for you

And if you wanted

only moonlight,

never would you need

to shade your eyes,

The sun, if you only wanted it,

would always warm your skin.

If you would like it

I could leave, you

would never see my face

again, I would never

pain you to look

into my eyes, I would never

touch your skin,

you would never

have to hear my voice

But if you would like

I could stay,

as long as you like,

and you could see me

whenever you like

We could stare into each others eyes

as much as you would like

and we could sit, arms grazing, skin yearning for the other,

and I could whisper to you

what it is

that I like.

You.

If you would like.

The strength of this poem was that it played with the ideas of love and how love drives people, I wanted to capture that when we are in love we could do anything at the snap of our lover's finger and the consequences wouldn't matter. I feel that the weakness of this poem is it's ending, I am not sure what it is but it does not flow with the rest of the poem's rhythm. I tried to use the stanzas to separate the positive from the negative, to show the shift of the narrator as he/she tries to head their lover to see what they want.