a collective poem written by
the creative writing class
Fireflies, the night’s eyes, a thousand sighs,
a book of lies, the truth inside, and dreamers.
We are young volcanoes, wild and covering
every floor in lava. We are the ones
who parent books—birth and raise them
in our spare time. We throw up our stories
onto paper pages. We are the ones who walk
into the park to find a corpse. We scare
children and abuse characters. We are the ones
who devour freedom in the form of red,
white, and berry Pop Tarts; a majestic eagle
circles above us. Our days consist of writing
to dead people, our mothers begging us to stop.
We are creative, bright beings. We paint
the pictures of words and the world changes.
We are ugly creatures with words in our brains.
We are the ones, the hot babes, who talk
to flowers at Shopko and contemplate
life in the eyes of petals. We are students,
learning to balance gnomes on our heads
and words on our tongues.
We practice: writing, napping, not
disturbing Gary. Matt Damon practice at 11:40.
Standing on chairs at 11:42. Screaming
into the void at 11:44. We are writers with
happy tears and Pop Tart frosting for ink.
We astound readers with our lampshade
metaphors. We are freedom, falling
from wings of eagles as feathers. We are
teenage playground enthusiasts, terrorizing
every child trying to swing.
We are lightning, fire and power.
We are gnomes and gnome
lovers. We are flowers.
Fireflies.