Have you no manners!
You deem yourself a knight
Only to falter with no might
Held within, thy foolish dancers
Aflame is the castle, aflame is my heart
Thy imprudent ways hinder pride to relinquish
No warriors are they for my force depart
And came my salvage, a fierce English
Anew centuries commence, ages from tarnished years
Yet again body envelops fear
Left are remnants, I presume eradication
Coming in view, clarification
The endeavor forever engraved in my mind
To be intertwined in a bind
A motionless unrest
Paired with the eyes of the blessed
Present toil of the past
Mirrors of what once was, to glass
Fade in obscurity, no escape
Collapsed ruins now, close its drape
Through window is no different
What was, is remained lucid
Leads encasement to useless
The illiterate or unenlightened grow whole to museless
I was inspired to write my poem "The World Blazes Conflict" because I am fascinated by history repeating itself. Stories that include a theme of the past mirroring the present call out to me because no matter how much a civilization advances, humans will constantly be at war with either themselves or others. Before my writing process I knew what overall theme I wanted. Therefore, the poem being an ekphrastic type, I looked for art pieces that demonstrated destruction, ruins, and war and “The Abduction of Rebecca” by Eugène Delacroix stood out to me. The scene is based on the novel Ivanhoe in which Rebecca, a Jewish healer, is kidnapped by the knight Brian de-Bois Guilbert during a great escape of two royal families and is later taken to trial. Once I picked the art piece “The Abduction of Rebecca”, I embodied myself as the character. This included her feelings, thoughts, hopes, and how this conflict affected her. I decided to do a rhyming poem so I used a dictionary website to help inspire my next word choice by relating the rhyming words to the events in my poem. I used rhyming words, metaphors, imagery, irony, and foreshadowing throughout the poem. I structured my poem by stanzas 1-2 following the conflict which Rebecca faced to a shift in stanza 3 which follows a different period of time, the present. This shift is significant because it reveals to the reader that war is a continuation of human nature. In my writing, I explore the main theme of history repeating itself. To give background information about myself, as a 10th grader I am challenged to accept things many people my age wouldn't, which only pushes me to think further, growing my love for literature.