My family members are dying, one by one.

Wraith

Death has extended

his icy hand,

so it would

appear,

a smirk drying his chapped lips

as he singularly taps the

unsuspecting

shoulder of my family

and blows cold breath

onto its cheeks.

With slender,

black

fingers,

Death

penetrates the

spring

chest

of my relatives

and mind,

syrup leaking

into the veins

and trickling

through the circulatory system

before

blood

and

ink

drip out

of our slightly

open

mouths.

"Why?"

"Why us?"

Death's smirk

simply

grows

into a grin

and he shrugs

his

bony

shoulders,

causing a temporal ripple

down his arms

and

lanky

legs.

He's so thin.

My mother escaped.

She clenched her rosy fists

and shook her head,

demanding a doctor's visit,

albeit somewhat unaware

of the feat she'd just mastered.

Death raises

his

mo

las

ses

brow,

tilts

his

languid

head.

"Which would be worse -

to live as a monster

or die as a good man?"

"I'm never watching that again."

"I warned you."

"Yeah, but I'm never watching that movie again."

Yet, for some reason,

the name

Scorsese

reminds me of a

butterfly.

"It was weird."

"Yeah."

"Something's going on."

"Yeah, I agree."

"It's definitely spiritual."

"Yeah."

And I look to my

finger

nails,

wanting

the subject

to

change.

How long

until Death

rights his

silky head,

ends his

curly smirk

and

dips his

tar-

drenched

finger

nail

into

my

mother's

sternum?

Or mine,

for that

matter?

Her cheeks emulate roses.

A Pretty Bad Poem

Violet Transgressions


While I draw within the lines in the confines of my mind, I sip from the chalice of creative malice and consider the callousness of me. I am a simpleton, a ditzy blonde with nothing left to lose, and while I consider this, I also consider you. You seem to me so full of life, insight and trite, but I know your tightly rife hindsight. You smoke with superiority and bottoms-up your individualism while I stand back and compete with witticism and petulance. I am a mood cloud and you are a false one but at least I rain creativity where you reign with insanity.

Conceivably, I pull these words from some recess left untouched, and yet somehow I make them rhyme.

Wringing forth the purple art from my gel-cap brain I stagger north in tripping arcs and leave marks on some Aurora Borealis of my transcendentalist culture. I am a beautiful butterfly that has no feel for algebra or hard work at all really and oh my, this soup's delicious. But still I tiptoe because for some reason it seems more effective. My Mona Lisa has yet to rouse herself from her hazy wonderings of republicans, democrats, and how the Lord giveth but still taketh away. I may be a sorry excuse of a poet, but at least I'm not the best. I see the rest in a soft limelight and though it makes me crave, I still smirk at your oblivious snobbery.

Conceivably, I feel unwanted and surround myself with fluttering negativities, and yet somehow I have the world thanking me for my coarse fingertips.

(Midnight was three minutes ago, but dusty twilight still stuffs my nostrils. As a recovering Ibuprofen addict, consider me relapsed.)

In the bear traps of my hometown, I start most sentences with a prepositional phrase and drive with my head out the window. To be a widow is to be severed, I think, and to be so tethered to sociocultural norms is so collectivist, don't you think? So rather than making like a tree, let's all be Socrates and shed some purple to those poor dwellers in the caves with nauseatingly fluorescent lights. Speaking of nausea, I know a little too much about internal infections and how they can kill if left untreated.

Garden of Eden

I had another strange dream.

There was a young, blonde girl there, and somehow I knew that she was Alice from Alice in Wonderland. We were in Wonderland already, and she was showing us around. Us being a young man and maybe me, if I was even there. She brought us to a closed gate that looked more like a wall.

"Do you know the password?" she asked the young man. "I think I might've forgotten."

He seemed puzzled as he scanned the blank wall with only a blue, horizontal line. "No, I don't know."

Alice looked back up to it and thought for a few moments. "Maybe it's The Green Tree, because I know there's a green tree in there somewhere." She picked up a paintbrush and painted the words 'the green tree' onto the wall with green paint that seemed to materialize from the brush itself.

"Now we have to create our own birds," she explained, moving over to the other side of the gate. The paint color in the brush changed based on what you wanted to paint, and she painted a red and orange bird with her small form atop it. "You're not going to be able to ride anything if you don't paint it on here first." With that, she handed the young man a brush. After a few moments of confusion, he too began to paint birds with little miniatures of himself riding them. They both laughed, and as they did, the gate broke apart and opened, and Alice took his hand and led him inside.

She took him to a red table and they sat across from each other. Behind Alice was a large tree. "This is the game. You have a dream of something and it comes true. For instance, I have a dream of a rain shower." Out of nowhere, rain fell onto the young man, despite his protests. "And you have to beat it," Alice continued, watching idly.

The young man looked completely confused, but then started beating away the raindrops somehow, and the rain eventually disappeared.

Alice grinned now. "Too easy. I have a dream of a place to play."

The tree all of a sudden opened up into a garden, and the two of them went inside. It right outside the tree's doorway, there was a smaller tree with bright green leaves and a red fruit hanging from one of the low branches. The two played games for a while before their time was up and they returned to the table outside of the tree.

"My turn?" the young man asked, clearly having fun with this. As she was about to warn him to be careful, he closed his eyes, leaned back, and spoke the words, "I have a dream of another dream, of another Wonderland, that's dark and mysterious."

"That's too much," Alice answered, but the tree opened up and a loud, shrieking, whirling wind came to pull them in, but before it could, I got a glimpse of the new Wonderland the boy had created. It was the same as the garden that Alice had created, but everything looked dead and sinister. The sky was dark red and the trees were black silhouettes against it. Black birds flew out of the thin branches. The small tree now had black branches with no leaves, and the red fruit still hung from a low branch, but now seemed evil rather than juicy.

But, then I woke up.

Killackey's Request:

1. Why am I here?
I'm here right now because I love English. I love everything it has to offer. I love being able to see things not only as they are on the surface, but as they want to be beneath the face-value. The study of English fascinates me - it's abstract and artful, like my own thoughts and ideals - yet it's concrete with strict rules, like grammar, punctuation, syntax, and all those rhetorical devices I learned a few months ago. I'm here simply because I love the rigorous analysis and the emotion that can be revealed if one chooses to look deeply enough into a piece of literature. I want to learn more about the study of artful analysis. In complete honestly, I want to soak up as much as I can so that I can not only apply it to my own writing, but acutely appreciate the works of others - books, movies, or otherwise.

2. What is the point of reading a novel, poem, or short story?
The point is what can be derived from the novel, poem or short story. The thematic statement, the commentary on life and religion, the deep, nameless emotions that can be so accurately described in a literary work. Literature can change the way one views the world, a troubling situation, or even himself. Without literature, we as people would have no gage for what matters and what doesn't. We wouldn't know what to do with our emotions or our burning questions about life, love, and pursuit. Literature artfully shows us our own emotions in a way that brands our minds with images that we never would've seen before otherwise. The point is the inner message that can enable our minds to ingest an idea that may or may not change the roots of our perceptions.

3. What have I brought to this class and how do I intend to use that talent?
I've brought all I can offer - my feeble attention span and burning creativity. I'm always vocal during class discussions and can offer varying perspectives on different topics. I'm also an extremely interrogative person, so beware. I'm rarely satisfied with one answer. I love going into detail on essays, if you can't tell, and, when it comes to English particularly, I push myself until the emotion or point of view I want to convey is successfully revealed. I can promise that I'm an interesting person, for better or worse, and my questions will keep coming. I love talking about English.

4. What will I give up to give my best to academics?
My academic life, to be quite honest, has always been an intense struggle for me, not only because I really can't focus no matter how much I want to or how much I try, but because my life has always been in a state of violent disarray that, I realize now, will never settle. I don't question my intelligence, as narcissistic as that sounds, but I do question my willingness to sit down, shut up, and focus for a minute. I amaze myself with how distracted I am as a person. If I could give up my distractions, I would. Trust me. I've wiped away countless tears of frustration for my academic life that's always been robbed and maimed by my ADD or whatever it might be, (not that it's not my fault or responsibility, because I understand now that it is.) I can promise you that I will do my honest best. It's senior year and no one has any idea how to sick to death I am of falling behind and trying to catch up all semester.

5. Am I willing to daily read 40 to 60 pages of an outside reading and/or class reading and keep an ongoing log or response to what I am reading?
Willing? I give you a resounding yes. Capable? I give you a seemingly although not actually disrespectful maybe, I'll try. Based on my aforementioned array of mental issues, I can't promise a wonder student that will be everything you've ever asked for in a student, as much as it pains me to say it and probably annoys you to hear it. (Hey, you asked for honesty. Here it is.) However, this year, I've finally found what I believe to be the motivation to quiet my forever inanely buzzing mind and focus on school. I am willing. I am capable. It'll be extremely hard for me, but I can do it, and I will definitely try my hardest to do whatever you or Mrs. Vandagriff asks me to do.

6. What is my highest personal accomplishment?
I want to give you a girl scout résumé complete with the maximum amount of merit badges and saving the life of the troop leader by an impromptu CPR session. However, I was only a girl scout for the earlier years of my life, before it went insane, I think, and I have very little, if any, notable achievements that might be considered worthy in the eyes of someone that's only skimming this ridiculously long email. My greatest personal accomplishments include: feeding my cat every day, doing my homework the day it's assigned, cleaning my room before it gets out of hand, and waking up on time. I'm a social retard.
However, I do have a few that transcend the normal you're-really-dumb-if-you-consider-this-an-accomplishment area. For example, I very nearly directed an amazing musical. I say very nearly in the sense that it was never actually performed, because some of the people involved left the production, but we were almost complete, and it was almost a breathtaking show. I'm proud of what it would've been, and I'm proud of the fact that I know, despite that failure, that I'm going to try it again.
I'm proud of some other things that probably wouldn't be tactful to put on here, since they're extremely personal, but know that they're there.
I think my highest personal achievement is becoming the person I am right now. I've been many different people with many different beliefs and attitudes, but the one I am right now is someone who's less fluid a concept and much more flawed, but in a good way. I accept the responsibility of my chipped attention span, and I accept that I have a lot to learn about life, myself, and on a smaller scale, English. But, I want to learn and I want to reign in my rampant mind. This year, the person I am right now is willing to do anything to get off the track that I've been on and move into a direction of structure, something I've always envied. This person, this confident, likable, artistic, inherently flawed person is willing to push and push as far as she can go to obtain the future that will make her happy and then go on to affect the world. I can promise you that, Mr. Killackey and Mrs. Vandagriff. I don't know if you'll like me, but I know I'll like you and I know I'll try my hardest to do right by both the school and myself. It'll be really, really hard, but I think I can do it, and that's the best place to start. Or so I've heard, anyway.


I hope I didn't irritate you with the probably excessive length -

- Kate Howell

Eighteen

Today is my eighteenth birthday.

I have a job, a car and now eighteen years of memories.

I can go to all those doctor visits by myself, sign all the necessary paperwork.
I can move out into my house if I want to do so, and I can do it right now, (assuming money/school weren’t an issue, of course.)
I can register to vote for the president of my country, have my own opinion that may or may not minutely affect the polling system and, ultimately, the choice for who leads the country in which I live.
I can buy a lottery ticket.
I can smoke cigarettes and not be questioned.
I can buy porn.
I can go to jail.
I can stay out past midnight.
I can get married.

It’s a strange, dizzying feeling to realize that I am able right at this moment to do what I want to do, within reason. The world seems so much larger after knowing and evaluating the true weight of these things that I can do. Can, present tense. There is no future tense anymore.

My life as I know it has ended, descending into ashes as a new life ascends, only a meager ember at the moment. With prodding and room to breathe, it will erupt into vivacious flame, and my new life will sprint across the earth, leaving creation in its wake. My new life will be my forever remembered eruption into what can now be called adulthood.

This strange spiraling moment will not last forever, or even a few days, but it will take root in my soul and sprout a blossom of violet creation and inspiration. I am now obligated to make myself happy.

This is a milestone, as they say, and this stretch of mile will be unpredictable. However, I can predict that it will be one of the happiest couple of years of my life, simply because I refuse to ignore the importance of happiness and aesthetics anymore. This is my last year of required schooling, and I am determined to make it the best year possible, not only for myself, but all of those I choose to love and cherish. This year will be unforgettable. It’s time for us to breathe again.

This is it.

I'm unnecessarily angry right now.

You

are

a

narcissistic

self-involved

life-sucking

drama

queen

that

feeds

off

others'

flaws

to

diminish

your

own

I

can't

believe

I

put

up

with

you

I

eagerly

await

the

day

when

we

go

off

to

different

colleges

and

never

see

each

other

again

Can you believe it?

If your life flashes before your eyes as you die, what does that say about the afterlife?

Do you forget everything once you get over there?

If your life flashes before your eyes and that's the last time that can ever happen, could that mean that the memories are simply streaming from your body, like tears and blood dripping and swirling into a river of nostalgia and past lives?

What if a memory stays with you when you go to the afterlife, like a stubborn insect unable to be shaken from the bottom of a shoe? Would that mean that heaven, hell, the next life, your rebirth, was false, since it wouldn't be a completely fresh slate? Is it possible for your repressed memories to clog up your nacent mind? A gurgling confusion that roils with doubt? Naive questions about life, love, and pursuit, all leading to pointlessness and an overused drainage system?

As my eyes protest any more use and their shields simmer to a close, I consider the necessity of grief and sanity. If peanuts had more protein, we could just eat them instead of cows.