Unbreakable by Antanisha Gillam
Trapped in a generation of social terrorization
Where thousands of hearts seek rehabilitation
The halls are filled with the sound of gossip popping like machine guns
And the immature destroy the naive- everyone’s favorite rerun
Who would have guessed teenagers were so temperamental?
Unable to distinguish the innocent from the detrimental
This is a generation of false love, and lost hope
But what else is there possibly to do but cope
Sadly this option may go unaware
There is a tendency to cause destruction without a single care
Some have seeked a permanent vacation
While the value of inner beauty lacks due to the obsession with decoration
Society grasps the minds’ of the young without freeing
Why does this generation place labels upon human beings?
But there is a way out of such misery
It is to create a new code of chivalry
Although slowly deteriorating on the inside
With a smile so misapplied
I compute strength from the hatred lingering in these hallways
For the time will come when I can truly say
This cruel generation has not broken me
And with the endurement of joy and love to survive
It is but hope that has kept me alive
Air, or the Lack Thereof by Madeline Waldhoff
i do not understand breathing
why something so essential
so necessary for our life
sometimes stops
why, upon seeing a glorious view
picturesque, striking:
a painting of a trillion colors
red and golden brown
green, yellow, magenta;
a boy, his jawline sharp
his eyes like burning coals
his hair so soft
(and i just want to touch it,
touch him);
a girl, her skin all pinks and browns and
lacking in nothing
her eyes like stars in the summer sky
her smile sunlight
(and she lets me touch it
but she does not let me worship her)
she keeps me at arm’s length
and my breath stops when she walks in the room
and i do not think she comprehends
i do not understand breathing
and why it is said to be so simple
“i’m good for one thing only,
and that is taking breath”
what if i am not?
what if my heart leaps in my chest
and the air catches in my lungs?
what if the mere sight of beauty is too much
and i fall to the ground
what then am i good for
if i cannot even draw in air?
i do not understand breathing
how my lungs move up and down
and each inhale
exhale, inhale
exhale
lets me push sound through my mouth
and thoughts through my brain
and words onto paper.
and if every lump in my throat
makes my head spin
and my chest hurt
why then is something
“as simple as taking breath”
i do not understand breathing
why am i yet incapable?
it’s something so innate
that even a child
an infant
rosy-cheeked,
fresh faced and fresh from the womb
lets out a screaming cry
when the doctors slap his buttox
(and who blames him?
whom who has experienced
the joys and evils of this mortal realm
and can yet say with certainty
“it is better to have left the safety
of my mother’s warm body”?
who can say, with a smile
and no hint of anger
no self-doubts
no denial
that something is
“as natural as breathing”
when people die every day
without air)
and others suffer an interior death
as they lose their breath yet again
another lovely face
another heart-wrenching poem
another breath-taking sight
why is breathing so essential for life
if everything around me takes my breath away?
i do not understand breathing.
Amalgam by Enrique Johnson
Beneath my feet I muddle the dirt between my toes
like the waves beat rocks within their seas,
I root into the earth and revel beneath it.
The breeze catches on my nose,
carrying with it the sultry lullaby of a memory,
and it erupts from the foreground into my vision,
that like glass I see it through.
I burn with the fire in my heart,
I melt with the ice on my skin,
I strengthen with the tungsten ore upon mine hands,
and I rise with the tide,
only to sink like lead to the bottom of the well,
and quake like the earth I know well enough to dwell ons
past.
Be one,
Be wholly,
entirely consumed with the fate of the world,
amalgamating into the palms of these hands
the rudimentary blood of the world,
burns its course and scars the mother that birthed it
from her core.
The wind cries out and dips on the wings of a swallow
becoming whole and one in its breadth and everlasting breath,
The rain tears up into the soil that consumes it,
they’re objective viewpoints now a calm same.
And I,
no,
we as one see the cycle of our earth as we all become one,
the earth in our bones,
the water in our veins,
the wind in our lungs,
the fire in our hearts,
we burn, we crash, we quake, we sunder,
like the atoms that came together forming the elements
that make us we know now 13.7 billion years ago.
All of this,
is just a faint memory of how the elements will shape us
in their hearthan wonderland,
as we,
I, see this cycle of burning,
this cycle of reform and reprise,
this cycle so subatomic going barely unnoticed,
but duly less than rarely seen.
Fire burn bright the hearth of the heart,
Wind blow south the fear of sovereignty’s will,
Water spring forth from eyes in the wake of beauty,
Stone harden the frames flesh will bare to hang from notwithstanding the particles of this world
till the next.
Be one,
Be wholly,
entirely consumed with the powerful gratuitous crackle and sundered
fire by the substances coursing through us,
allowing everlasting ever shining life and will,
the rudimentary blood of this earth is within us,
just as it is beyond the open breadth and orifice of visions
we wade through,
Dear amalgam of metal and air, fluid and stone,
carbon and sulfur,
this is what it means to be a being within this world of beautiful cruelty
sleeping in the arms of nature,
and we accept it sweet amalgam,
That we have to notice that we,
are gifted by the elements rudimentary, mental, and physical,
that we are gifted as human beings,
absolute predators with no enemies but the world herself along with her children that make her,
and those who lie in this world.
We all become one,
the amalgamation of everything
good and evil,
Beautiful and ugly,
13.7 billion years ago we are one as we are today,
we are made of the same elements of the stars and that we know
birthed by our mother,
the universe.