Soul Renaissance by Victoria Radke

The flame that lit a thousand fires

burned throughout the night

then came the solitary wind

and soon turned out the light

The bird that once laid down for eternal rest

suddenly began to fly

soaring free, so carelessly

into the vast, dark sky

The song that never had been sung

perchance began to sing,

its heavy tone of sorrow filled joy

left an eternal ring

The puzzle that was left unsolved

slowly came together

The pieces joined not by ones hand

..... only by a feather

The dream that never had never been dreamt

spread its wisdom far

it hid the pain miles away

concealed in a jar

The flame that lit a thousand fires

held on a little tighter

along came the prince of darkness and made it burn brighter.

~Ayesha khan

In the Making by Mezzo-Karito

Someday I’ll be a star.

I will shine so bright.

Everybody will play a part.

A true star will be honest,

true,

kindhearted, and real.

No corruption, no hatred.

I’ll change the way the world is.

Attitude by Mezzo-Karito

Sometimes you have to wish the impossible.

You tell yourself this is possible.

You smile and move forward.

It all matters about your attitude.

Positive.

                                                                     Set your mind to do anything!

A Fantasy by Mezzo-Karito

Gumdrops and rainbows

Is what we wish the world would be.

Lollipops and green fields.

Wake up! That not how the world is.

There are challenges, there is sadness.

But we do have a thing called dreams.

And this is how it all came to life.

The Ballad of Ruth and Boaz by 4JC

Water forever flows smooth and clear

It trickles and runs to all who hear

Oh the river bends, it blows, it shines

It twinkles and reflects the glistening signs

Those bodies, the lights ever dance and tell

The story of Ruth and Boaz, with ringing wedding bells

Ruth was alone in the dark of her life

Her people were lost and buried in strife

She clung to her mother, her faith, a hope

That someday her river would bend and blow

And praying so they would no longer mope

The heavens parted with angels singing, go

So Ruth traveled on, a light on her path

She stumbled upon a lush green lawn

fearful of a rich man’s greedy wrath

till out walked kindness, a shining pawn

Boaz was a wealthy man, yet just and kind

He cared for his servants, leaving no one behind

Ruth submit, serving Boaz with love

Her river had curved in the shape of a dove

Boaz looked upon his servant Ruth

He looked in her eyes and saw the truth

In that moment their love joined hand

And upon stairs of light they reached God’s land

Water forever flows smooth and clear

It trickles and runs to all who hear

Oh the river bends, it blows, it shines

It twinkles and reflects the glistening signs

The Epic of Mr. Onion by 4JC

I tell of an onion, once very proud

He loved singing about himself aloud

As he grew he learned one important fact

For everyone around him, it was happiness they lacked

One day, he found a maiden in tears

Why doth thou cry? What are thy fears?

And those words she uttered, he could never swallow

It’s because of you, because of you in tears I wallow

So it was on that fateful day he chose

He would bring joy, thus defeat his woes

Off he went door to door, trying to cheer people up

But where he went tears followed, enough to fill a cup

It was not till one day he came upon a door

A man was there with a smile and his mouth watering to the floor

The onion had succeeded and was invited in

Not knowing he would be made into a most delicious din

That day, the onion was victorious, well in a way

He had made someone happy though he had to pay

For in a boiling pot he was thrown to make a stew

He learned to make someone happy, and to do whatcha gotta do.

An Orphan’s Pilgrimage by 4JC

Listen my children

And you shall hear

Of an orphan child’s voyage

So do not fear

It started one morning, a usual day

When his thoughts and feelings began to fray

Growing tired of his way of life

Playing, waiting which now revealed strife

Finally one day in the blistering heat

A man came with something to eat

No, it was not cake, bread, juice or fruit

It was the talk of a kingdom and its perilous pursuit

Oh how this child’s dreams were seen

At once he set off, his senses keen

Thanking the man who gave this good news

And making for the city of gold and white hues

The poor orphan walked and walked

Exerting, trying, following the path

Strangers gathered, laughed and mocked

Whilst the boy went unaware of approaching wrath

Then up crept behind him

A very wicked man

Who delighted in his sudden whim

To harm the child, a hidden anger

Ferocity to fan

So harm the boy this man did

Though cry and beg he bid

Until he could make no other sound

For pain lasted unless he was found

And just when this wicked man would give the final blow

The man of shining cloth came commanding, “go!”

The wicked thug ran screaming in rage

Moving onto another victim of young age

In the shining man’s arms, the boy lay

Whilst the man gently said, “It will be ok.”

The child gazed at the stars till he was floating above

Twirling, dancing, in the kingdom’s golden blankets of love

Elegy of Our Grandmother by 4JC

A cold dark moon rises,

the clouds part revealing the stars.

We look up asking why

There is weeping, a tremendous sigh

Why have you gone

our grandmother

I remember her silver hair,

her submissive care,

with beautiful wrinkles.

Why did you go,

why did you pass.

our grandmother

Her fingers are cold,

her flesh is pale

And out rides the white sail

But we cannot follow

Our grandmother

Ode to Glasses by 4JC

Salutations, Glasses

Thy glint shines,

like a mirrored lake.

Upon summer’s wake

gently grasping my ears

Salutations, Glasses

A black arctic night,

silver letters twinkle light.

You clarify my sight,

the distant up close

Salutations, Glasses

You sit on my nose,

telling me where to go.

Thank you, my dear glasses

I’m glad tis thee I chose

Lost by Enyneme O.

“Mom, Dad! Where are you?!” I hollered in a shaky voice. I can hear the cries of my little sister, Lucy who was only two, behind me. I only wish I can take back what I did an hour ago. Before I can explain what that was, I need to show what happened two weeks ago.

“Can we please go to Disney World?” I asked in my little four year old voice. “NO! For the millionth time! NO!” My mom screamed in an annoyed voice. “I’m not going to stop until we go.” I responded. “Brad, can you stop complaining already, it’s getting annoying.” My older sister Sabrina told me in a displeased tone. I didn’t talk for the rest of the day.

The next week and half painfully dragged by. When I thought that my life would end from being boringness my mom brought all of us (my dad, my mom, my two sisters and me) into the living room. She then started to ramble on and on about how we’ve never gone on a vacation. Then suddenly out of the blue she said, “We’re going to Disney world.”

I’ve waited for those words my whole life (which wasn’t that long) and yet I wasn’t very enthusiastic about it. I kind of expected it to happen because frankly, we were all quite bored. After I realized I was actually going to Disney I remembered one problem, I’m afraid of flying.

Ever since I was old enough to actually think I was afraid of heights when I was around three I fell down the stairs. I actually kind of flew down the stairs because they are really, really steep. From that moment on, I was of afraid of heights.

When I found out we we’re driving to Florida instead, I was happier than when we found out we were going. But, another problem arose, the drive was a two day trip there. I wasn’t able to sleep at all the next three days. Finally, the day to drive to Disney arrived.

It turns out the drive wasn’t too bad actually. If I wasn’t sleeping or watching movies on the T.V. in our car, I was probably asking, when are we going get there, over and over. We only stopped a couple of times to eat, get gas, or go to the bathroom. Eventually, we finally got there.

This is taking a little while so I’m going to skip to the part where we arrived in Magic Kingdom (one of the four parks at Disney World). It was a rainy day which was actually good because almost no one was there. It was near the end of the day and we went on almost all the rides I can go on, but apparently something caught my eye. It was the treasure of toddlers and kids, candy.

Unfortunately, I ran towards the guy who was holding the candy, but that’s not all. I was wearing a toddler leash which was attached to my wrist, and my little sister was holding the leash so she got dragged along.

When I got to the spot where I saw the candy the guy who had it was gone and my family was gone. Okay, now that you’ve caught up I’ll continue with story. By then it was already dark and my sister had cried so much she’s made a river of tears. Just when you think its bad enough it began to rain.

When we started to walk around it got even worse, Lucy fell. She fell on her elbow and it was bleeding. This is when I had to take charge. I built up the courage to ask a random lady to help us. It didn’t seem like I took charge but it is pretty hard to talk to a stranger when you’re just four years old. The lady was nice enough to take us to the lost and found and I found my family waiting there. I said sorry for running off and they said that it was just a simple mistake. If you think about it, it all started with a simple mistake.

The End

Tickle Monster

I plopped the heavy tray down on the tables so hard the Panera sandwiches jumped. I began to turn around and then froze realizing what would be behind that flimsy divider. I could not stand it; I was not ready to see my grandfather anywhere besides his rocking chair in Michigan. I bolted, back through the kitchenette, past the storage closet, and to the parking lot. A cold breeze tussled the air and the generators blocked out any sound. I sank down the bricks to the ground and took a breath that came out as a half hiccup, my teeth brushing my bottom lip. The funeral director walked by and I panicked, not wanting to explain my situation. I had already heard to many pathetic condolences. He had probably seen this before and wisely ignored me. I struggled to my feet before any one else could come out. My eyes would remain abnormally puffy and red for the rest of the day.

I took another hiccup of a breath and stepped into the funeral parlor. I walked over to a tapestry and stared at it so intently you’d think I ‘d be counting the stitches. Finally, I tore my eyes away and focused them to the coffin at the end of the room. I walked over. When a person is out of things to say to the family they will often comment on how natural the person looks. Grandpa didn’t look natural. He was a mirror image of the way they’d done my grandpa Culver. A moth creased in a frown on a pasty white face. When my grandpa Culver had died I had tried to memorize that face but today I would not waste my memory that was not the face grandpa Reichal would wear in my memory. I wanted to reach down and pull his mouth into a smile as it always had been.

The announcement had come two days ago. I had come home, mind wandering, blabbering excitedly about school. It had seemed so strange that mom was leaning against the counter while I ate my snack; she was typically always caught up in something or another.

“Fiona,” Mom took a shuddering breath and I was immediately alert by my mom’s tone, “Grandpa, this morning…”

“No!” I thought.

Mom caught me in her arms and I cried numbly into her shoulder. Grandpa had always had Parkinson but to me that simply meant his 71/2 fingers (1/2 lost to the saw) vibrated slightly, but suddenly in the past year it had come to mean so much more. Last Christmas. My mom and aunt had worked so hard to replicate the Christmases they’d spent in Michigan as kids fearing for the worst. The worst? The thought had scared me then, pecking at me while I ignored it, pretending I’d never thought of it. The worst? Now it had slapped me to the ground.

I’m not sure how long we stayed in that position, the sink biting into my side, keeping me alert. Fifteen minutes and mom’s sweater was soaked. I starred hard at the Christmas gift I had made for mom back in preschool, a Popsicle stick snowflake with tiny pictures at each point. To a normal viewer the pictures would look like marker ink in a variety of colors having bled horizontally along the ridges of the wood. I saw an apple, a Ferris wheel, and mom and I in floats in Michigan. In my mind the floats came alive, the laughing, water lapping the side of the boat and Grandpa, whose smile is too wide to fit on his face, lifts me onto his lap in the captain’s seat. “Watch out for the yellow line,” is his only advice.

Grandpa was moved to a nursing home in the spring. Gwen began to fold paper cranes and we strung them in his window, but we never got to one thousand. If grandpa was responsive we could talk to him and drive him around town. But each time we said good-by we said it knowing it could be our last. The smell of his Benyol was over powering as I leaned over to give him a hug. He kissed my fingers for the last time. It was his eighty fifth birthday.

My uncle walked over to the coffin. A man I’d always seen as so strong had tears in his eyes as he leaned over to say goodbye to his father.

When the service begins my mom gets up to say something and she barely can she is crying. I walk up I try not to cry. Instead I share a memory in which I’m laughing in wheezing, gasping breaths as I did when I was five and the Tickle Monster (Grandpa) caught me. Grandpa was ready when Gwen or I got too close to his chair. He would reach out and snag us sending what ever we were holding flying into the air. But we never avoided that chair in fact; we went out of our way to strut past giggling our heads off. We were happy only when we were shrieking with laughter. I decide to remember Grandpa as the caring one who spent the night in the car when he found Gwen and I sleeping in a tent we’d built under his chair.

Angel

“Grandma look.”

She was sitting outside on the patio. Her little feet were tucked in close to her body and her tail was swishing back and forth.

“What Caitlin?” Grandma was in the kitchen cooking chili and pie.

“That Grandma, that,” I jabbed my finger at the glass of the sliding door.

Grandma set down her knife and walked over. She peered out the door and said,” Oh that’s Mrs. Nibs, the neighbor’s cat”

I pressed my face against the glass,” She’s pretty”

Grandma walked back out to the kitchen and began to slice open the pie,” yes she’s very pretty, Mary Lou has another one, Angel I think she’s called.”

I walked out to the kitchen and stuck my finger into the whip cream and popped it into my mouth. “Grandma can I pet her?”

“Sure Caitlin” Grandma walked out to the hallway and pulled my coat from the coat hanger in the closet and came back.

Once I was buttoned up, Grandma said, “Be back when you see Mom and Grandpa pull up from the gym.”

I nodded then ran to the hallway and pulled my boots on then I grabbed the door handle and ran out. My boots crunched in the snow as I ran along side the house. I skidded to a halt once I reached the patio.

Mrs. Nibs looked at me and mewed softly.

I walked up to her and slowly petted her on her head, and when she began to purr I scratched her behind he ears. I was petting her some more but tapping caught my attention and I stopped.

I looked over at the house but Grandma was busy with the chili.

Tap, tap, tap.

I looked over at the neighbor’s house and saw a lady standing at the sliding door. She was wearing a blue flowered nightgown with pink fuzzy slippers. She had gray curly hair that exploded everywhere.

It was Mary Lou!

She opened the sliding door and called out my name.

I knocked on our sliding door and when Grandma looked up from the chili, I pointed over to Mary Lou’s house. Grandma nodded and I ran over to Mary Lou’s house. I ran up her deck and knocked on her screen door. She set down her cup of tea on the island in the kitchen and pulled the door open.

“Come in, come in,” she said leading me to the living room. I took off my jacket and set it down on the armrest of her flower designed sofa.

“Would you like something? Maybe, hot chocolate or coffee?” she asked me once I sat down.

“Um, can I please have hot chocolate?”

“Sure, but you don’t like coffee?”

“I’m only seven”

“Oh” She nodded and smiled and walked out the room. She came back five minutes later and handed me a cup of hot chocolate and sat down in the single sofa in front of me.

“So, you like cats?”

” Yeah, I love them. Your cat’s really cute,” I sipped up a marshmallow in my glass and swallowed it. It burned on the way down.

“Really. Well, Mrs. Nibs is a sweetie. She loves everyone. I have another cat, too. Her names Angel but she only stays indoors because she and Mrs. Nibs don’t get along. That’s why I have to give her away, I can only keep one and I love Mrs. Nibs to death. I’m not going to be doing it for the money though, that just doesn’t seem right to the cat.”

“Oh. Do you now who will be taking her?” I took another drink of hot chocolate.

“Oh, no I have just decided to give her away on Sunday. But she’s a sweet cat once you get to know her, even sweeter than Mrs. Nibs. Would you like to pet her?”Mary Lou looked at me. “She might hiss at you but she won’t bite.”

“Sure.” I set my hot chocolate down on her doily covered TV table. Then I followed her into a bedroom. I walked quietly into the room and heard Mary Lou shut the door.

“She is underneath the bed.” It was a tiny whisper.

I slowly crouched down beside the bed on my knees and lifted up the sheets. It was like looking into an animals cave. It was all dark and I was barely able to deceiver anything for what it was. But there hidden beside the shoe boxes and hat boxes was a pair of eyes.

One green, one yellow.

I could barely make out a short, plump body with white fur and black spots.

She just sat there, her little feet tucked in close to her body and her tail curled around her. She slowly looked up and blinked at the light invading her darkness. She looked kind of cute.

I reached out to her slowly, my fingers stretching out to touch her fur.

But in return all I got was a hiss. Then she retreated back into her darkness.

I tried again but stopped when I heard the honk of a car horn. Only my grandpa would honk.

“Mom, can we get a cat?” I placed a spoonful of chili into my mouth and swallowed.

“Why would you want a cat?” my mom asked.

“Because it will be a good companion and will be sweet.”

“Having a cat is a big responsibility and it costs money.” My mom poured cheese into her bowl.

“I could do it and it would be free”

My mom looked at me “What do you mean?”

“Mary Lou is getting rid of Angel for free.”

“She is?,” asked my grandpa “how do you know?”

“She told me when I went over to her house, so can we mom?”

“I’ll think about it.”

“Is this her?” My mom crouched on the floor.

“Yes. She’s a good cat and doesn’t have any problems,” said Mary Lou

“How old is she?” My mom asked.

“Five, I believe”

My mom softly grabbed Angel from under the bed and wrapped her in her arms. She started to pet her and Angel began to purr. Then, my mom started to rock back and forth like she did to me when I was a baby. “She’s adorable, a little fat though.” I looked over at my mom with hope shining my eyes. She nodded. Words could not express all the joy I had at having a new friend.

Angel really influenced me. She influenced me to be happy for the things I have because I might not always have them. Angel really means a lot to me and my family, and one day I might not have her in my life. She could be with another family or just be gone. It would effect my deeply if she were to leave, no one can replace her sweetness or her ability to make anyone smile when they are feeling down or sad. I have to give Angel love and attention that any good animal deserves because in the future she won’t always be there curled beside my while I sleep, her fat, little body resting beside mine and her head in my arms.

Okay why is my paper blank?

Okay why is my paper blank?

I am just stuck on what to write.

My ideas are swarming in my head eating me up and spitting me out

So many different colors to choose from!

So many prompts!

I wish I could attack this paper with my pen

If only I could compose a poem in a night

Or a sestina in a day

My mind is a vault with each idea encrypted and locked

Nothing is coming out on my paper

No words

I am spitting it out like a machine gun yet I see nothing forming

Just a bunch of words on a page

Oh wait…

There is something on this paper now

- Zeke

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