Gossip
Gossip
It stays in your throat
Until it comes up
Burns your tongue
Suffocates you
Until it escapes
Leaving a scorched victim
Word vomit.
Marie
Methuen High School
listen to Marie read her poem
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Beautiful Day
The life I live,
the life I own.
There’s nothing much to give,
and nothing to be shown.
This wasn’t my choice,
was not my decision.
If it was said by my voice,
it would be an entirely different vision.
Why I am like this
I cannot say.
I am the darkness
on a beautiful day.
These people come and go,
not caring for the helpless sorry.
With expectations that are low,
so they can always be happy.
I thrive on their silly lives.
They have little ambition.
They kill each other with guns and knives,
and doing this shows their desperation.
If they want something, they take it,
that’s something I’ve come to realize.
With no desired goal comes a fit,
rushing tears pour down their eyes.
For which I am different,
I don’t have the desired goal.
That’s my time well spent,
I don’t need an enlightened soul.
These people reflect their lives
every single day.
I take no effect in their painful cries;
to me they all must pay.
This was much like me in the early days,
the days that changed me.
Seeing Father hurt Mommy in many ways,
showed that this world is ugly.
I hate every person who is ignorant
much I was like before.
Go back to the old me, I can’t;
that life is no more.
These beautiful days we live
are full of surprise.
They say there’s not enough to give;
those are nothing but lies.
We have so many bad things
and no ways to stop them.
What the “New Depression” brings
is yet another never ending problem.
Why I am like this
I cannot say.
I am the darkness
on a beautiful day.
Taylor
Lawrence High School
listen to Taylor read his poem |
C*m On Hear the DNA Noize
(inspired by “C*m On Feel the Noize” by Quiet Riot)
Come on, hear the DNA noize
It makes girls and boys
In our chromosomes, in our chromosomes
So you think I have a genetic defect
I tell you honey
I make RNA, I make RNA
Come on, hear the DNA noize
It makes girls and boys
In our chromosomes, in our chromosomes
So you think there is only one of me
But I can replicate, can’t you see
And I don’t know why, and I don’t know why anymore
Oh no, no
Come on, hear the DNA noize
It makes girls and boys
In our chromosomes, in our chromosomes
You give us the blueprint of life
Which makes it easy for a husband and wife
And I don’t know why, and I don’t know why anymore
Oh no, no
Come on, hear the DNA noize
It makes girls and boys
In our chromosomes, in our chromosomes
Zach, Essex Academy
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The Disease
ONE:
“Here, take this.” She hands me a piece of paper. “It’s just something to take the edge off.”
That is what the adults say about their drugs. It’s an excuse. It’s an excuse for them to take them. It’s an excuse to get us to take them. I feel like handing her a dime bag and telling her it’s just something to take the edge off. I shove the prescription in my pocket, thank her, and leave the office. I nod to the receptionist on my way out. She ignores me. This was my fourth time in the office in the last month, and she finally caught wind of what I was in for. That is when she stopped smiling back.
I stopped at the pharmacy on my way to the car. I probably won’t take a single pill, but I needed to fill it or else I’d be in trouble. This disease and alcoholism are the only two diseases you can get yelled at, fired, or put in jail for. I am supposed to be recovering.
TWO:
The day finds me sitting on the hood of my car. My car is sitting on the beach. The waves are crashing heavily, and I want to be a part of that. I want to be washed away, drowned, or thrown into the sand and buried alive, but I am too afraid to jump in. My car needs me. Gary needs me. Gary is leaning up against the grill. The embroidery floss friendship bracelet I made for him is hanging from his G string key. It’s blowing in the wind, and dancing across my toe, as if it is trying to trace the word “left” I had written on my right shoe. I brought him out of the trunk. I brought him out of his case. I don’t want to reach my hand twelve inches to pick him up and play; my fingers are too cold, and a million other reasons. I haven’t even tuned him since I set foot on the road to recovery. He stands next to me in the sand. He is probably also wishing he could become part of the water and wondering what it must be like. What if my soul dissolved into the sea when I drown, so that the chemical make up of the ocean would be sodium chloride, dihydrogen oxide, and me?
“You play guitar?” I nearly fell off my car and crushed Gary. Standing to my left was a girl of about 5’6” with a sweatshirt, boy’s jeans, and hair shorter than mine. Something about her made me comfortable. Something about her made me uncomfortable.
“No, actually, I just like to let him out and let him do his own thing.”
“Ha. Funny. Seriously, what do you play?”
“Guitar.” I try not to smile. I don’t mean to be funny. Maybe I do.
“No. What kind of songs?”
She doesn’t get the hint or if she does, she’s ignoring it. Maybe I’m being too hesitant. Maybe I’m too reluctant to blow her off.
“Can I see it?” She reached for his neck, but I intercepted it.
“Him. His name is Gary, and he doesn’t like being touched. Actually, we were just on our way home.”
“What? Wait…”
I didn’t answer. I’m like this because I have to be like this. I can’t make friends, especially not like her. Before I shut the car door, she tried to say something else. All I got was, “Wait, I...” and she gestured to her wrist. On it was a bracelet similar to the one I was wearing. I have half a mind to stop and talk to her and be her friend. I can’t do that. I am supposed to be recovering.
THREE:
“What are these?”
I tried to throw them away, but my mom found them.
“I found them in the trash, full, with your name on them.”
“They’re from my doctor. They’re supposed to take the edge off this whole thing. I just think I’d have a lot more respect for myself if I did the whole thing cold turkey.” Or maybe if I didn’t put those into my system I’d have a choice on who I’d like to be.
My mother pauses for a moment. “Alright, good. I’m proud of you.” Then she leaves the room, and I pretend that I didn’t see her slip my pills into her pocket.
FOUR:
In a dream I am running. I’m always running. I don’t know why. There are walls where there shouldn’t be. People line the walls. People are the walls. Everyone is wearing a mask. The masks have horrible evil eyes that dive bomb me and bore into my skin like scabies. My skin itches. It burns. I feel like it’s going to fall off. I feel like it is going to burn off. I feel like it is going to get up and walk away. I don’t want it to leave because it’s all I have left. I make it to the beach and I dive into the water. For a moment I feel safe then the ocean spits me back up again. I try to dive back in, but there’s a wall in the way. The girl that meets me at the beach, she’s there. She looks at me. Her eyes are water. I want to dive into her, so I can be safe. I run to her, but there’s another wall blocking me from her. It is a mask, like the masks of the wall-people. I try to rip it off, but someone else is holding it on. When I wake up I have scratch marks on my face.
FIVE:
“I want you to start dressing more like a girl.”
“Like a girly girl?”
“Yes, like a girly girl. How’s your prescription going?”
“It’s alright. It makes me feel more confident.” This is a lie. In fact, I am the complete opposite. I back down from fights with teachers, and I’m doing my work. I’m not complaining. I’m making shallow, fair weather friends, and having conversations about bubble gum and male A-list actors.
“I can see you’re softening a little bit. Your hair looks longer and softer, and your nails look good. Just keep taking care of yourself. How are things with the boys?” I’m softening a lot, and not just physically. I cried the other day while watching The Notebook.
Terrible. I hate men. “I don’t think I’m ready to start dating.”
“You should, you’re a beautiful girl, and you’ll make some lucky guy a very happy husband someday. Especially if you’re as good of a cook as you claim to be.”
I’m not. I really don’t want to be a housewife, but I don’t say that out loud. I am supposed to be recovering. I wonder again what that means. Recovering from my disease. It’s a birth defect, they say. They justify it by saying they found a cure. I don’t like what I’m supposed to be. This so called cure is ruining my personality. I hate it, but somehow I’ve become completely complacent with it. I have stopped fighting. I don’t know why.
On the way out, I look at my image in the mirror. I guess I do look happier. Maybe I look more girly. I guess it really is all in the head. I guess there really is a natural way of doing all this. When I look deeper, I realize that it is a façade and if I look closely enough, I can see the internal conflict. Something isn’t right. At least before, I knew who was building the walls.
SIX:
For supper, my mom cooked dinner. We all sit around it, looking at it skeptically. Mom sits down and puts a smoothie in front of me.
“Drink it. I think you’ll like it.” I do. It’s strange, since my mom stole my pills, she has been extra nice to me lately, as far as making me special drinks or snacks or what have you. Maybe the adults’ drugs work for them. They just don’t work for me. If I didn’t recover, at least I could be a kid forever.
SEVEN:
“What happened?” she demands. She’s between me and my car. I can’t make a run for it without looking like a five year old. I stand my ground. I’m not as vulnerable as before.
“You changed. I saw you at school the other day and...”
“You saw me at school? Why? Are you stalking me?”
“You’re in my English class.”
Am I? I float through school from class to class; I don’t really remember what happens or what I’m supposed to learn. What grade am I in?
“Are you ok? You used to be different; like, you used to be cool.”
“What do you mean?”
“I don’t know how to say it. I mean, I kind of looked up to you. You were so defiant. You’d drag the teacher down to our level and make him talk to us like adults, or at least like people. You’d shove his words back into his mouth with one quick witted remark about something nobody had ever heard about, and then related it so that we all understood. That was the only thing that made that class worthwhile. Now it’s like eating sand.” To emphasize this last statement, she picks up a handful of sand and lets it run out of her hand. “Where’s your guitar?”
I don’t know why, but I tell her where and she gets it. She sits down next to me and starts tuning it by ear.
“So, what happened?”
“I’m supposed to be recovering.”
EIGHT:
I come home early. My last block class was a study block. I left through the back door and went out for a salad at the deli. Then I went home early. I find my mother standing over a fruit smoothie like the ones I’ve been getting after school. She’s dropping a powder into it from her pill crusher. She mixes it in, turns toward the kitchen table, and runs into me.
“Oh! You’re home early! Here. I have your smoothie all ready for you.”
“Mom, what did you put in it?”
“No nonsense; just drink your smoothie.” She presses it to me, pointing the straw at me with her thumb and fore finger, trying to hide whatever is behind her back.
I push past her and the smoothie and go to her work place. There is neat pile of strawberry tops, a banana peal, and blueberry stems to the right. To the left is an open pill container with its child proof cap sitting between it and the pill cutter/crusher combo from CVS. I pick up the pills. My name is on the label. I look at my mother horrified.
“It’s not that I don’t trust you. You just have to take your pills”
“Mom...”
“I am just worried. Then I called your doctor about them.”
“Mom...”
“She and I decided it was what was best for you. You’re so much better off now.”
“Mom...” I really don’t have anything to say. Normally, I’d yell. I’d kick and scream. I’d do something dangerous, normally, but now I don’t. I stand in front of her as a child. My doubts are cemented in my mother’s betrayal. My doubts take root in the mother’s denial of my ability to choose. I push past her as a beast, a freak, and a rehab reject. I go to the car and I drive.
NINE:
“Recovering from what?” She finishes tuning the guitar.
“Was.”
“From what?”
“From being this way.” I say, looking into her eyes. They are blue like my dream.
“Oh.” She looks away, and then looks at my wrist. “Well, if you’re recovering and all, why do still wear the bracelet?”
“I don’t know. Maybe so I can remember where I came from. Maybe ’cause I think it’s still a part of me. It is a part of me.”
She paused for a moment and laughed. “Are you sure? It’s a disease. It makes you do terrible things with people of the same gender.” She put her arm around me.
I put my head on her shoulder. It feels more me being diseased. I take the guitar out of her hands and I pluck at a few of the strings, still a little timid.
“My name’s Shel, by the way.”
“I know. My name’s Rae.”
Sam, Methuen H.S.
listen to Sam and friends read her piece
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Running the Race
As I sat in the hospital on that fateful day, one event kept replaying over and over in my mind. It was just about the only thing I could think of. It was the day of my first track meet during my freshman year of high school. I couldn’t have been more nervous that day. The only reason I joined track in the first place was because my brother Alex was one of the captains. He encouraged and pushed me to give it a shot. I agreed, hoping that I would grow to love the sport half as much as Alex did.
Unfortunately for me, that was not the case. I had never realized how slow of a runner I was until that year, not to mention how out of shape I was. I wasn’t motivated. Every practice seemed to drag on forever. Everyday, as the meet came closer, I got more and more nervous.
On the day of the track meet, I was just about ready to fake sick. Thinking of how I would let the team down, I decided against it. So I got in the car with my brother and drove to the high school.
Watching all of the events made me even more nervous. How could I compete with these kids? Then the 300 meter dash, Alex’s race, was announced. I pushed to the front to get a good view. The gun was shot and the racers sped like bullets. “Farese has been getting better every day since the first day he started. He is amazing,” said the girls’ team captain, who was standing right beside me. He truly was amazing. I watched as he pushed himself to take the lead, just like he pushed himself to excel in every aspect of his life. His face was one of determination as he crossed the finish line to take first place. I went over to him after the race to congratulate him. I told him how nervous I was about my upcoming race. He gave me the best advice I’d ever heard. “Whatever you do, don’t stop running. Doesn’t matter how hard it is or how you feel, just keep going.”
To make a long story short, I came in dead last. It was quite embarrassing. But I never stopped running the whole time. I never gave up. I had made Alex proud by just doing my best.
As I walked out of the hospital room and took one last look at my best friend, I knew I was going to be okay. Life is just like track. I just had to keep on going no matter how I felt. In the end I knew I would make Alex proud.
Gabrielle
North Andover High School
listen to Gabrielle read her piece
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Same Place
I step on the treadmill
On the wooden stage
In the auditorium,
Youthful and ripe.
And I push the button
“On.”
I run and run,
and I grow a beard,
and I see the same lights,
and I see the same curtain,
and in front of me
is the boy who looks
awfully familiar.
The boy is me.
And the boy pulls
a hand-drawn set,
a 20 foot tall roll:
scenery on a spool,
my drawings.
The drawings of my dreams.
My future family,
my unconditional
love for my passions.
I continue to run.
My legs hurt, I wince.
The boy comes to the end
of the roll of drawings,
The drawings I look back at
while I run.
My knees buckle, and a cry echoes,
and I collapse in front
of the scuff marks,
the scuff marks made
by my shoes as I first
mounted the treadmill.
And just before I close my eyes,
I see the same lights,
And the same curtain.
And it closes.
Josh, Andover High School
listen to Josh read his poem
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Art is…
Art is in every part of our lives,
From this paper I write on
To the flowers in a meadow.
Art is not all about painting, sketching,
& clay. It is also about architecture,
Geology & car manufacturing.
Art is full of many flavors, & it grows to many
Amazing heights.
Art is in the eye of the beholder,
Since it is portrayed as such, & people
Always have a different take on it.
Art is for the soul, the mind, the heart.
It can be in words or pictures, colors or B&W,
Lines or shapes, clay or paint.
It is simple to have art on a wall. It is hard to forget it exists. It is simple and sweet, but can also be complex & intimidating. It can clear the mind or cloud it more. It can heal the world or start a war. It has good points and & bad points. It is scary, yet peaceful. It opens the mind, yet closes it all the same.
Art is weird like that.
Art has music, dance & singing.
Art has cars, computers & trains.
Art has science, math & history.
Art has words, books & pens.
Art even has plants, gems & insects.
Art has it all.
So…
When you think of art, don’t just think of paintings & sculptures. Think of cars & trucks, movies & theatres, cameras & cell phones, music & instruments, computers & floppy disks, books & notebooks, & all other things like them.
This is art. Deal with it, or just keep your mouth shut & let the world enjoy their versions of art. Thanks & goodbye.
Arielle, Collaborative Alternative School
listen to Arielle read her poem |
