The Backstabbing Mortal by Andrea B.

She will never die
She sabotages hopes and dreams
And is highly volatile

She has a plastic face
With a fake smile plastered on it
She will be smug as she lies to your face

She continues digging herself deeper
Deeper into the dirt
She will need a larger shovel dig herself out this time

If you are moronic enough to trust her
She will obliterate you completely
With her nefarious heart

She looks like an angel
With her sandy hair and halo to match
But it's time for her to take off the crown of light

And show you the devil that lurks underneath
This seemingly beautiful girl
Explodes into the demon

You don’t want to get absorbed into her black heart
Stay as far away as you can
Because she will turn you cold

As cold, dark and dusty as her non-existent soul
You will stay there for eternity
And there is no way out

So stay away
Stay far away because she is like a magnet
Pulling people close

And never letting go
It's why she was designed
To trust, crush, kill and destroy.

No Title Desired by Otto R.

I can't look away,
The luscious blue of your eyes sparkles and shimmers my very core
Each freckle is like a star so far out of my grasp,
I’m blinded by the shine of the heavenly whiteness of your teeth,
The baby-like touch of your skin,
It's a joyful chill to feel your presence
Your hair, wavy and smooth, like riding down a slide of Egyptian silk,
Soft and full,
Imagining how so warm it must be when I bury my face into the nothingness
Then just as soon as I glimpse the great beauty of this creation,
My very dream and hope is shattered into dust.

An Untitled Piece by Nate R.

As I took my seat in Geometry, it was announced that we would learn of our quiz results. Thirteen 100's. That made me somewhat hopeful, as my last quiz was a 100. Four F's? My heart skipped a beat. As the quiz glided ever so elegantly from the teacher's hand onto my desk, I caught a glimpse of a capital letter 'F' on the paper, written in red pen. I must be seeing things, I thought to myself. As I held up my quiz, it became clear that I was not hallucinating. There it was, a red capital 'F' with a 44%. Some girl next to me suffered the same exact fate, I noticed. F. Failure. I stared blankly at the white parchment for a moment, and then proceeded to fold it into a paper plane. I held that miserable white parchment in between my index finger and thumb. And then, a deft flick of my wrist, and I set it free. The plane, of course, wasn't the only one set free. My oh-so-humble teacher then proceeded to liberate me from his cursed, hellfire laden prison that was known as a "classroom." At once, I picked up my few belongings and bid my teacher a silent adieu before I made off into the shadows that would eventually lead me to righteousness. Farewell, prison, and farewell, jailer. I am no longer bound to your chains of injustice and malevolence, for now I am a free man!

City by Hannah G.

Walking down the sidewalk into the busy city, the buildings towering on each side of me. The car fumes mix in with the fresh air. People everywhere, crammed into little sports cars or walking to work, some running, fearing that they are late. The traffic on the streets, the honking of horns, and the shouting of voices. Sirens going off periodically, signaling a fire, a crash, or something bad that has happened. Walking to the tall building, through the sliding glass doors, I slip into the elevator as the doors shut. The soft elevator music plays in the background as the box filled with people shoots up quickly, making ears pop. It stops as quickly as it started. The silent doors open, revealing a large room with glass windows, binoculars, and other people. Walking towards the window, I look out at the view in front of me. Feeling like a giant, I watch the miniature people below.

Hitting Rock Bottom by Madison B.

The rock bottom of an ocean
Is where you will find the soul
Of a young girl
In fact a beautiful 13 year old

There her body rests
In a terrible spot
Crushed between two sharp rocks
Pain rushing through her body
Red tears flow out of her arms
While fish swim by looking confused

Alone she lies there
The death was a tragedy
She fell into a hole
Out of which she was unable to climb
No one to help her
There she stayed

Tears wouldn't get her out
So she hit the bottom of the ocean
Drowned in her pity
Unable to reach the surface

Life is a struggle for the child
Her face never holds a smile
No sunshine in her world
Simple black and white

So now at rock bottom
There she lies forever
Love lost
Hope gone
Friendship hidden
Alone forever
Drowning in pity

Night by Allison C.

In the night
Strange things can happen
If you don't pay attention
Your life could change forever
For night does have a way
Of messing with your mind
Bringing out all your fear
The longer you stay in its reign
For strange things do tend to happen
In the night

Anger by Otto R.

Anger is my worst enemy in this world of ours. I easily get angry over stupid things. It has driven me to a point where I don't feel like talking to friends. It is eating away at the very center of the way I feel. I don't understand where this anger comes from. The only thing I can think that it comes from is my parents' anger. The anger I hold is just unbearable. Too much for me to contain. I just want to violently rip things apart tearing and shredding, down to pits and pieces, screaming and hollering at the top of my lungs, shattering the perception of my very soul. One thing I know I draw my anger from is feeling I accomplished something. Like I did something that no one has done yet. I feel delighted, and happy. Then I see some other average person did what I had. My whole feeling of doing something is gone. Broken. Into the millions of pieces that can never be picked up. Gone. Forever. It leaves me internally scared and angry. For eternity. Always.

Mama by Kaitlin B.

Mama, Mama I can’t find you. Always whenever you come to see me, you tell me these people aren’t my mom’s; they are just people and that I need to respect them, these people. But they aren’t my mother, you are, you tell me that you will come back soon. How soon is soon? Mama, where do you go? Where are you? These people, Mama, they're mean, haggy and old, no one really cares about me. Do you even care, Mama?

I remember Mommy; she is young and pretty, with dark hair and pretty green eyes. The picture, the only picture of my mama is the one that I have saved in my head. My only memory. Mama, she was the kindest lady you’d ever met, she had a wonderful personality that Mama did. These ladies that were my foster moms never had anything on Mama, sleeping in the tiny attic of the rickety old house, just like that stupid old wrinkly lady. Lovely pretty Mama who doesn’t know me. Who never comes to visit me. Who never cares about me. Who will never ever love me.  My mama won’t.

Even after all this time Mama doesn’t love me. I thought that maybe someday she would remember me and come to save me. But no, Mama leaves me all alone. I have never had any people who have ever loved or  cared about me. Nor will any other people will look at me with loving eyes or caring eyes and not even sympathetic eyes. Eyes of nothingness. 

Disposable Heroes by Visaya P.

We all have heroes in our lives
As we look upon them we see the torch being passed
One to another
And so when once the hero of the day has passed on his dreams, wishes and legacy, the hero is disposed of.
The hero marches to the front of the line and gets ready for the death of all his processions.
The heroes say their last words then crumble to the ground
And the process repeats.
But usually after the mourning and the funeral of the hero. They're off to find a new hero, a hero of the day,
One that shall see hope and prosperity and the road of his life has been laid down in front of him.

Depression by Otto R.

The very cold and bitter feeling of depression is a nasty thing. People get depressed because they are either lonel, or just had a bad life. Usually it's someone dealing with death, or family murder, or sights they cannot un-see. Despair is the worst emotional feeling you can have.  It's a chilling place and state of mind where your internal organs are just black clumps of coal, and all you want to do is fall into the spiraling black-hole to end all of your misery. In Hemingway's story, "A Clean, Well Lighted Place," the old man portrayed this type of despair very well.

Imagine what this old man was going through. He attempted to end his own life. A permanent solution to a temporary situation. Depression is something you can control. It’s a choice whether or not you are depressed. You may sit around at first and then end up spending your nights at a café drinking. The solution is to get out and do something and just let yourself live. If the old man had attempted to make conversation with the waiters, the older waiter and the old man could have conversed with similar outlooks and he could have gone home with a more positive attitude and a successful acquaintance.

Depression is a never-ending hallway; it reaches its hands out to grab your soul into its realm for eternity. At that moment you have to decide which route to take. Either let the cold wrinkly hands take you so you can spend your days cooped up clutching a bottle or crying. The other route? Endless possibilities to push the cold hands back from whence they came.

Eclipse by Sam K.

As the light is stricken from our eyes
           as if a cloth were hung from our eyes
     we bring forth melancholy.
As though a limb were torn from our body
      we surmise that we are solitary.
We stay with this emotion
till the vivid light restores the paradisiacal emotions
as we realize that we can’t live without the sun's almighty brightness.

Untitled by Madison B

The temptation to sin looks so beautiful,
Evil was formed gorgeous,
To draw the weak towards it,
But step back and take a look

Evil causes harm to those we love,
Why lie to someone we care for,
When the truth doesn't hurt as much in the end

We don't think about the results of our decisions,
Why would you cheat?
If you have the most perfect thing in front of you

The easy answer is it is so tempting,
To take the easy way out of things,
Sin looks like a delicious piece of cake,
But what the human eye does not see is the poison that lies inside

With every step we take,
And every move you make,
It is a two way street,
Evil fights good,
The glory goes the one who hurts you

Devil vs God,
We are rooting for the good guy,
But falling into the bad guy's trap