Poetry

A Want A Will A Love to Write 

by: Sawyer Harvey

A want a will a love to write a lovely sight a goodly night

For upon this night all will perish all will be lost in a mind covered in frost

Hid behind barriers of frost rot and mold forever hiding what was never lost nor told

A disease a blight without a cure in most muddled of thought

Going in spirals all through the rot what is what is not run from what cannot be fought

Strengthen your mind or fall through the stairs to who knows where

But who can strengthen a strand that rips at the slightest of force how is that fair

They give you sweet nothing to keep it away and locked at bay

But it’s here to stay you can’t push it away push away what you say

Why your hate your fear and your lies but most of all your own thoughts

Forever unknowing and yet knowing all picking and plying till all tumbles down

And when all shall fall you will go down through the stair and down so far down

Till one can see not but the ground where nothing is to be found

So stand once more find that door a shelter from the murky gray

A shelter that builds a stair up high to pull bricks one at a time

Till not can be found but a skeleton bound

To the murky gray that will always waylay

The hope in your mind through all this time so far from sublime

Yet look back and it was far worse further back in your time

Maybe each time you build a tower its bones grow stronger

And every time you fall your bones grow ever stronger

And perhaps that murky angry gray will one day burst out with a twinge of color

A hope now found so hold and cling close so you may rise far far above

And let the sweet nothing build up a floor in a sky far above

But always know what lurks below for it may rise up to you if held down too long

And that fall is long and not so forgiving so remember to strengthen the floor

And never forget what lurks below respect it and never let it grow close

For that has been done once before when you stood in a tower

A tower built of fear and misery one that pulls itself apart brick by brick

Just as you did full of regret at the top of that tower lost without power

But now you stand high above so now live your life knowing of  fear

But also knowing that you can rise above that fear if you find hope and hold on

For on some bright day may that hope let you run from all your fears

To live happier and stronger though all the good day and the bad

May you see all of your greatest years without clinging so close to fear

Best Friend

by: Shriya Sane

Everyone needs that someone

that knows you more than themselves

show you how strong you are yourselves

keep the friendship to their heart,

but in reality, at the end all friendships are meant to shatter apart

Friendships have a meaning, if they are meant to last

quickly going deep can be too very fast

If you know what you are doing, great!

Or else it can be painful mistake.

Some just use you for assistance, some just check patience

Others talk like they are forced, just use others as a source

But some I believe are out there, that see you 

as buddy, friend, and most importantly they

have care for you!

Their care, automatically subsides all other mistakes

When separated, is hard to take

'Cause they are too special, wonder where you find them?

Know them like fairies, but don't really find them.

They are one in a thousand

The one moon among thousands of stars

The one sun among hundreds of clouds

One Magic among all miracles

The one reason of happiness of your life.

Falling In

by: Asher Motes

Don't you realize our bodies could fall apart at any second?

I am terrified, your body could fall apart at any second.

Those are, you got some nice shoulders;

I'd like to put my hands around them.

-Will Toledo, Bodys

I want to make up a scenario to hug you; breathe in your body wash and deodorant. I’ll add it to the things I love, the list of things I can taste in bed; pretending you're at my back or curled in my chest, under the blue and white chevron crocheted masterpiece my great-grandmother made. Smelling of you and her house before they renovated. It still holds a delicate emptiness from after she died. 

(Her own bed, her own mother’s blanket spread over her feet)

(Just a week ago, she had fallen out chasing her dead husband)

It still has the memories of peanut blossoms and spice cookies.

(The ones I cried over when I couldn't get the icing right)

(even after we had made it together)

(There are parts of me you never knew)

I'm scared there's something you'll never see, a box that stays behind a lie in the wall.

(The dog wouldn't calm down, he didn't mean to kick it)

(Sometimes in November the light from the bathroom window lands just so)

(And you can see the outline of the spackle and mesh)

You keep sending songs that make me fall in love all over again. There's a warmth to the dips and dives of the synths; comfort in the droning bass.

(I would do anything for him to hold me)

The song staggers. Feels like falling down stairs. Feels like the sunrise through the window.

(I wish it would cast on your face)

(You're at home. I’m driving past)

Sometimes when I pass by your neighborhood I hang my head out the window like a mad dog. I yell out that I love you or pull the steering wheel onto your street, spurred on by a song built in the singer’s car, 

something about shoulders,

something about dancing,

something about falling apart.

Or giving in, crawling over your fence,

hiding out in your old playset,

pretending to be a part of your memories.

(Pretending to be something I’m not)

Extending our timeline back to before we could've ever known each other.

Before we became what we needed.

Every atom and space in between lining up just so,

so we might hold each other while the world sighs in relief,

Now, we can fall apart.

Broken people living there lives like glass shards ground underfoot

Crushed to be spread and crushed more

Only a matter of time before they cut someone

Crushed so many times a shard is bound to be sharp

No one ever wants to pick up glass

For fear it might be be sharp

So they leave it for another

And another leaves glass for another

What could once be seen through with clarity

Is broken beaten and smudged

Like so many people

Till at long last they are but sand

Waiting day in day out

For a storm and a chance to be stuck by lightning

To become sea glass sought out by others

One in a million a faint of a chance

To be picked up and pocketed held and admired

Till finally a trinket lost and forgot

Falling again to become once more part of the rough

Like so many people 

Grasp of Iron

by: Sawyer Harvey

A trap a lie 

a life to die 

Flee and run 

Don’t fight for fun 

Yet no longer can you run so turn and fight

 fight for life a lie it is not to cry for all is nigh 

And as thy cannot fly thou is trapped wings clipped never to take flight

And so in thy mind take a flight fly along in craze for your end may be nigh 

So scrape and ply so hard thy nails never lose their orange a tinge of time 

Lost just as your mind in its wraps no wall to scrape to denote lights pass 

Nor light to see to notice things grown in time heard not seen a grime 

A thing built of time seeing in shadow or quick spurts of red not a torch but a head

So wait in line behind you lines watching your line fall in a line lost yet trapped 

So thy will stay forevermore lost in thy head gaining craze lonely with mind of dead

Full to the brim yet stuck building pressure behind nine bars of six walls 

Trapped in place three by three with nay good in thy mind but fading halls

And even those tinged by that incessant orange bled through thy time 

A product of iron like the hand with which you held all in line 

And the very bars that hold you nine by nine three by three for all your time

Thy hath no escape nor hope to hold nor strength to run all thy can do is sit and pine

So with no hope and a fallen line there is not to pine to but those bars nine by nine 

A cube in which you sit three by three lost of hope last of a line 

Fallen now yet to be forgot by all thy held in iron killed in iron lost for iron 

Thy desire now hold thy tight as is its task a cube bars nine by nine three by three 

Six walls of thy greed left to rust never to let thy free

So sit and watch a golden age a tinge of orange you so despise held back by lies

That now stand rusted just as the cage thy sit in festering in lies

Bars nine by nine to let thy see

Three by three wide to hold back thy tide

And six walls never to break never to let loose thy rage thy craze 

So thy may never claim our halls built upon the ashes of yours

For here comes our golden age a tinge of orange held in thy nails and thy craze

An age of fire a light to behold and warmth to be kept never in haze

Far from thy cage of iron and it’s creeping cold where thy hands have lost their grasp

A grasp of iron never beholden to gold

In Focus

by: B. Petry

A dark room

Slivers of light through the blinds

Years and years and years

Some days are brighter than others

Someone pokes their fingers through the blinds

But the days run together

And I know things are breaking

I can hear them shatter when they hit the floor

I feel the shards hit me

But it’s all so dark

And I can’t see anything.

One day,

Light.

And, oh, it's all in focus now

A lamp has finally been switched on

I can see the source of the fractures

I know it’s not my fault

I know so much more now

I can finally see

Fix the broken parts

I can begin to clean up the messes

Things will never be as they were.

They will be better.

Kashmiri Pandits

by: Ariya Fotedar Tikoo

January 19th, 2023

Where do we go

When the lands of our brethren 

Are salted with the tears of their blood

Where must we go

After the gongs of malice echo in what they call

The palace of the divine

Ralive, 

Tsaliv,

Ya galive

They cried

In other words,

Surrender your spirit 

Your faith

The story of your ancestors

Your burning light guiding you through a veil of midnight

Surrender your dignity

The very freedom your forefathers died for

Surrender 

Bend your spine into a bow of cowardice 

Surrender it all

Or leave behind every person you’ve loved,

Watch your sons slaughtered before you, your daughters traded and tossed like cattle, 

Leave them behind, drown their screams out into the back of your mind

Watch them engulfed in this land turned to flames

Leave behind this land, your land, the land of mountains of rivers of pines of sweet apple trees, the land of sorrow and beauty, just leave it all behind,

Leave your home

And never return

Or perish 

Perish

Fighting if you can, for your honor, for your family, your land, for what you hold sacred

But few are lucky enough

To die a death of honor

Most are those who cannot afford to leave

And they are squashed like cockroaches on a windowsill

For no one mourns the perishing

Of a few little cockroaches, 

Now do they?

Where do we go

Once the light can no longer touch us

We have fled to escape the folds of shadows closing in

We have loved, we have feared, and we have lost

And all for what?

To fuel the righteousness, the superiority, and the craving for blood

That men need to live

But perhaps we have not lost all

They stripped everything from us

Our sisters, brothers, lovers

Our beloved home, the ones our grandfathers built where their bare hands and minds, 

But that’s exactly what they can never take away

Our minds

Our hands

And our spine

All willing to work

To bleed

To reclaim our life and our souls 

Why?

Because cockroaches,

Will always, always, 

Rise from the dead

You can squash us, kill us, beat us, rape us 

All you like

We will always rise again

And our children will be taught the same,

For rising again

Is something that is in the simple nature

Of the Kashmiri Pandits.

Poison Garden

by: V Bebault

Why oh why

Must my garden be poisonous?

When others are pretty and green?

Poisonous is pretty

But the only one who thinks that

Seems to be me

Why must mine have stinging nettles?

When theirs have luscious bushes and fruitful trees?

Why must mine have poison oak and poison ivy?

When they have daisies with cute little leaves?

Others have cherry blossoms the bloom at the end of gloomy winters

Standing at the heart of my garden is an apple tree

And you might say “that doesn’t look poisonous to me”

Everything is poisonous in my garden

Including that apple tree

Standing on Shifting Ground

by: Ariya Tikoo

I suppose this is a part of me that is unchangeable, ingrained

It’s unwinding elements of my being 

This challenges, entices me

Unlocks realms of my imagination 

This is a key

And It just clicks 

Right in place

But it ain’t that simple darlings

This key 

Is something that has to be put under the spotlight

And scrutinized by all

By every man with the blinding illusion of power

By every woman I once held close to my chest 

By every stranger I meet

They greet me with curved lips, gleaming teeth

But who knows of the disguised disgust their eyes may hold?

Even by those who claim to understand

They may twist me into an idea of who they think I ought to be

And maybe they’re right for doing so

Everyone makes it seem so easy

So brave, so simple, 

They seem to have absolute control and confidence 

That the opinions of others will not sway them

They hold their ground

Meanwhile, the ground beneath my feet seems to constantly be shifting 

Threatening to make me fall

I’m afraid

I know, I feel, what my future holds

I could achieve the heights I wish

But all the while with this string tied to my heart 

Constantly trying to tug me down

And when the time comes?

I will have to make a decision

I don’t know what the right decision is, if such thing as a right decision

Even exists

But more than that, 

I don’t know if I have the spine to make any decision at all

I don't know if I will be able to be stand by their side

While they stand by mine

Work in Progress

by: Kaelyn Hvidsten

A quilt is stretching over my head.

A melting pot of fabric

stolen moments stitched together

by the twine of time that barely holds

How long until I suffocate beneath its folds?

How long until the ripples cease until the branches

brittle and riddled with senescence

snap?

Only when I pause

and listen to my mind crying and the seconds dying

and the leaves the snow

the raindrops tumbling do the words

grains of hourglass sand

trickle over my tongue

Settling in my throat the words are familiar

I’ve hoarded others’ thoughts and changed the label

changed the price The words are a patchwork of store-bought cloth

I am a patchwork

How can I follow The Road Not Taken

when every road is trampled by the already-trodden?

Valley of Love and Loss

by: Sawyer Harvey

A fox a fly a walk to die a bell does toll for all who stroll cross this knoll

A grave a crime a place of gravity and cost of life to strive heavenward 

A sacrifice of blood to be bold a crime not of the minds gold But the hearts 

A dark a day not to walk away to forge apart for they did not 

A heart with heart a blood with blood a blooded knoll of hearts intertwined 

Lost together a frost of their time forever lost two feet apart 

Two years they stand both blade in hand lost in land one in cold 

The other in warmth with a heart lost of it empty of one

For the loss of another forced ones hand beholden a heart 

Forced far apart by crime nay committed by one lost in blaze bound to oak

Lighter than water sentenced far from home never to return to one’s abode

A mother dear held above by thy daughter held as an idol given ideology 

But loss of an idol held higher than lord in sadness thy hand found blade

And blade found heart and then dug deeper and back found land 

And head found grass and breathed its last

And years did pass and so grew grass a blood valley did grow a mound at its center

A valleys heart fed by one’s heart lifeblood a way to flourish 

And a man walked by heart to cold eyes too dry to bring up the courage just to cry

Held in right hand a wilted bouquet in left a sword 

One for mourning of a corpse yet to find the other for revenge in case of crime

Through grizzled veneer a aura of loss and time lost of hope 

A mourning day a year and a half since love was lost a day full of meaning 

A day where one found a field of the other and a flower held in favor

An inviting mound on which to sit and contemplate a life of twisted fate 

An end found upon thy left a field twice blooded flowers of loss and love 

chrysanthemum and rose one of grief the other truest joy hearts intertwined 

Blood to be fuel for the roses bloom chrysanthemum flourish marks of a grave

A lost graveyard of two covered of earth lost to time grown of loss 

An irony held between two two feet of earth hilt to blade 

Now held a place of rest a wonder to behold a flower of grief a bloom of love

Odd the names withhold their legend a girl of chrysanthemum a boy of rose

One wrought of grief and the other love to hold grief one needs both

For without love one feels no grief 

And yet One with grief knows

That they once held love