{"id":1083,"date":"2016-02-29T08:38:21","date_gmt":"2016-02-29T13:38:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.acpsk12.org\/labyrinth\/2014-2015\/?p=1083"},"modified":"2016-02-29T08:38:21","modified_gmt":"2016-02-29T13:38:21","slug":"elements-poetry","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.acpsk12.org\/labyrinth\/elements-poetry\/","title":{"rendered":"Elements Poetry"},"content":{"rendered":"

Unbreakable by Antanisha Gillam<\/strong><\/p>\n

Trapped in a generation of social terrorization
\nWhere thousands of hearts seek rehabilitation
\nThe halls are filled with the sound of gossip popping like machine guns
\nAnd the immature destroy the naive- everyone\u2019s favorite rerun
\nWho would have guessed teenagers were so temperamental?
\nUnable to distinguish the innocent from the detrimental
\nThis is a generation of false love, and lost hope
\nBut what else is there possibly to do but cope
\nSadly this option may go unaware
\nThere is a tendency to cause destruction without a single care
\nSome have seeked a permanent vacation
\nWhile the value of inner beauty lacks due to the obsession with decoration
\nSociety grasps the minds\u2019 of the young without freeing
\nWhy does this generation place labels upon human beings?
\nBut there is a way out of such misery
\nIt is to create a new code of chivalry
\nAlthough slowly deteriorating on the inside
\nWith a smile so misapplied
\nI compute strength from the hatred lingering in these hallways
\nFor the time will come when I can truly say
\nThis cruel generation has not broken me
\nAnd with the endurement of joy and love to survive
\nIt is but hope that has kept me alive<\/p>\n

Air, or the Lack Thereof by Madeline Waldhoff<\/strong><\/p>\n

i do not understand breathing
\nwhy something so essential
\nso necessary for our life
\nsometimes stops
\nwhy, upon seeing a glorious view
\npicturesque, striking:
\na painting of a trillion colors
\nred and golden brown
\ngreen, yellow, magenta;
\na boy, his jawline sharp
\nhis eyes like burning coals
\nhis hair so soft
\n(and i just want to touch it,
\ntouch him);
\na girl, her skin all pinks and browns and
\nlacking in nothing
\nher eyes like stars in the summer sky<\/p>\n

her smile sunlight
\n(and she lets me touch it
\nbut she does not let me worship her)
\nshe keeps me at arm\u2019s length
\nand my breath stops when she walks in the room
\nand i do not think she comprehends<\/p>\n

i do not understand breathing
\nand why it is said to be so simple
\n\u201ci\u2019m good for one thing only,
\nand that is taking breath\u201d
\nwhat if i am not?
\nwhat if my heart leaps in my chest
\nand the air catches in my lungs?
\nwhat if the mere sight of beauty is too much
\nand i fall to the ground
\nwhat then am i good for
\nif i cannot even draw in air?<\/p>\n

i do not understand breathing
\nhow my lungs move up and down
\nand each inhale
\nexhale, inhale
\nexhale
\nlets me push sound through my mouth
\nand thoughts through my brain
\nand words onto paper.
\nand if every lump in my throat
\nmakes my head spin
\nand my chest hurt
\nwhy then is something
\n\u201cas simple as taking breath\u201d<\/p>\n

i do not understand breathing
\nwhy am i yet incapable?
\nit\u2019s something so innate
\nthat even a child
\nan infant
\nrosy-cheeked,
\nfresh faced and fresh from the womb
\nlets out a screaming cry
\nwhen the doctors slap his buttox
\n(and who blames him?
\nwhom who has experienced
\nthe joys and evils of this mortal realm
\nand can yet say with certainty
\n\u201cit is better to have left the safety
\nof my mother\u2019s warm body\u201d?
\nwho can say, with a smile
\nand no hint of anger
\nno self-doubts
\nno denial
\nthat something is
\n\u201cas natural as breathing\u201d
\nwhen people die every day
\nwithout air)<\/p>\n

and others suffer an interior death
\nas they lose their breath yet again
\nanother lovely face
\nanother heart-wrenching poem
\nanother breath-taking sight
\nwhy is breathing so essential for life
\nif everything around me takes my breath away?
\ni do not understand breathing.<\/p>\n

Amalgam by Enrique Johnson<\/strong><\/p>\n

Beneath my feet I muddle the dirt between my toes
\nlike the waves beat rocks within their seas,
\nI root into the earth and revel beneath it.<\/p>\n

The breeze catches on my nose,
\ncarrying with it the sultry lullaby of a memory,
\nand it erupts from the foreground into my vision,
\nthat like glass I see it through.<\/p>\n

I burn with the fire in my heart,
\nI melt with the ice on my skin,
\nI strengthen with the tungsten ore upon mine hands,
\nand I rise with the tide,
\nonly to sink like lead to the bottom of the well,
\nand quake like the earth I know well enough to dwell ons
\npast.<\/p>\n

Be one,
\nBe wholly,
\nentirely consumed with the fate of the world,
\namalgamating into the palms of these hands
\nthe rudimentary blood of the world,
\nburns its course and scars the mother that birthed it
\nfrom her core.<\/p>\n

The wind cries out and dips on the wings of a swallow
\nbecoming whole and one in its breadth and everlasting breath,
\nThe rain tears up into the soil that consumes it,
\nthey\u2019re objective viewpoints now a calm same.<\/p>\n

And I,
\nno,
\nwe as one see the cycle of our earth as we all become one,
\nthe earth in our bones,
\nthe water in our veins,
\nthe wind in our lungs,
\nthe fire in our hearts,
\nwe burn, we crash, we quake, we sunder,
\nlike the atoms that came together forming the elements
\nthat make us we know now 13.7 billion years ago.
\nAll of this,
\nis just a faint memory of how the elements will shape us
\nin their hearthan wonderland,
\nas we,
\nI, see this cycle of burning,
\nthis cycle of reform and reprise,
\nthis cycle so subatomic going barely unnoticed,
\nbut duly less than rarely seen.<\/p>\n

Fire burn bright the hearth of the heart,
\nWind blow south the fear of sovereignty\u2019s will,
\nWater spring forth from eyes in the wake of beauty,
\nStone harden the frames flesh will bare to hang from notwithstanding the particles of this world
\ntill the next.<\/p>\n

Be one,
\nBe wholly,
\nentirely consumed with the powerful gratuitous crackle and sundered
\nfire by the substances coursing through us,
\nallowing everlasting ever shining life and will,
\nthe rudimentary blood of this earth is within us,
\njust as it is beyond the open breadth and orifice of visions
\nwe wade through,<\/p>\n

Dear amalgam of metal and air, fluid and stone,
\ncarbon and sulfur,
\nthis is what it means to be a being within this world of beautiful cruelty
\nsleeping in the arms of nature,
\nand we accept it sweet amalgam,
\nThat we have to notice that we,
\nare gifted by the elements rudimentary, mental, and physical,
\nthat we are gifted as human beings,
\nabsolute predators with no enemies but the world herself along with her children that make her,
\nand those who lie in this world.<\/p>\n

We all become one,
\nthe amalgamation of everything
\ngood and evil,
\nBeautiful and ugly,
\n13.7 billion years ago we are one as we are today,
\nwe are made of the same elements of the stars and that we know
\nbirthed by our mother,
\nthe universe.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Unbreakable by Antanisha Gillam Trapped in a generation of social terrorization Where thousands of hearts seek rehabilitation The halls are<\/p>\n

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