rant/rave | Young Writers Project

Jul 20

miagalvinn

Comfort of My Own Soul

Have you ever wanted to block the whole world out?
Just speak to no one.
Disappear into the darkness...
even if only for a few hours.
Just evaporate into thin air,
to think,
to breathe,
to just be.
To not worry about saying the wrong thing.
Or saying too much.
Letting people in feels so good...
but it's a dangerous game.
Who knows if they are playing to win...
or playing to make you lose.
I strive to find my own space.
My own safe haven.
Breathe in my own breathes...
To think about words we have said.
Because the words people say are permanent.
But, the feelings behind them are forever temporary.
One minute, they will do anything to fix things, help things progress.
Next minute, everything you say is incorrect.
That isn't letting me live...
That is cutting my wings.
And, honestly,
I just need to be alone.
Let me be alone.
Let me think,
let me strive on my own.
I live for the comfort of my own silence,
yet somehow you've tainted it.
The reason I'm in my own silence is because you've stuck me here.
It isn't my choice anymore...

And that is the worst part.

Jul 19

in poem, rant/rave 2 Comments

miagalvinn

Collection to Keep

You paint pictures with your words.
You leave tear stains on my cheeks.
You fill me with endless joy.
How you move leaves me speechless..
I can never stop staring.
How you care leaves me wondering...
Have you always cared this way for me?
How your eyes constantly search within mine...
I hope you never break our gaze.

I have waited for so long for these words.
They fall effortlessly from your lips,
and leave me with butterflies in my stomach.
The smallest words,
with the biggest meanings.
The smallest action,
gives me the biggest reaction.
This feeling... this love.
It's something I've fantasized about before.
But to see the feeling in your eyes...
The explosion of passion...
I'll never forget it.
I carry this memory with me,
as I carry you with me.
I feel our connection...
The strings between us only tightening with every passing day.

I only hope they don't snap.

Jul 12

in rant/rave 2 Comments

Nightheart

Shout it

So guys, this is what my brain came up with at ten o'clock at night

If we want to get heard,
we got to shout it,
We are not equal,
If we were, people wouldn't get
shot by the police,
We are not equal,
If we were, people wouldn't be
afraid of the police,
They turn down ideas of a women as president,
you should be ashamed,
it's the twenty first century for heavens sake!
We are Asian, Caucasian,
black, white,
we are all the different colors in the night
and you can shame where we come from,
but remember,
Your ancestors were the very same people you spit at today.
And when the goverment,
He ain't my president
Tells you to give up loyalty to the place you came from,
Just remember this when you're singing that song,
when the land of the free
isn't free anymore,
what've we got to believe in?

Jul 12

in rant/rave 5 Comments

Kitkat

To the Teachers Who Assign Homework Over Summer Break

(Hastily written between annotating A Tale of Two Cities, writing chemistry formulas and solving algebra's problems)

Teachers, you are important. To me, to your other students, to our city and state and country and world, even if it prefers raising bombs and oceans to raising children. You spend your life implanting skills and ideas and information into the heads of children, material they will carry with them for the rest of their lives. You determine whether a child will love or hate books, whether they will speak out in class, how late they stay up trying to finish their homework. You will influence where they go to college and what they will study and what they will do with their lives.

It’s a weighty task.

Only adding to your power is the fact that school is already such a large part of children’s lives— five days a week, we wake up in defiance of our biology to prepare for it, walk and bike and bus to arrive at it, work there for seven hours a day, then decide to stay longer at it, leave it and do homework for it until we can’t stay awake any longer.

Jul 09

in rant/rave 5 Comments

eulusivepurplepanda

Book Recomendations! (YWP Bookclub)

1. Blankets by Craig Thompson
This was an AMAZING book. It's a graphic Novel that's about 500 pages. . .
I read it all in one day! I couldn't put it down! The story follow the life of Craig and his first love. It's filled with a lot of religious commentary as well as thoughts on family, Love, and what it means to be human. The art in it is beautiful and I personally thought was done very well. I highly recommend it.

2. The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian by Sherman Alexie
I also read this book under a week. This story was also great but for different reasons. This book follows the story of a Native American teen (Junior) living on a Reservation in Wellpinit, Washington. He is living in poverty, has a distant older sister and an alcoholic father. Little the less to say his life is not great. On his first day in High School, he discovers is mother's name in a text book that he is given. It is then that he realizes that if he does not act soon, he will be doomed to the reservation forever. He then drops out of High School to attend the better and all white High School across town. His actions are met with much backlash from the kids at the reservation and the white kids at school. This book dives into modern-day Native American culture, race, Native Americans in modern American Culture and more. This had me laughing, crying and cheering at the same time. Loved it.

Jun 27

in rant/rave 1 Comment challenge: Angry

EmilyAnne

Angry

I'm sick of people telling me what I can and can not do.
How do you know my limits? How do you know where I'll go, or where I have come from? How do you know how hard I can work?
I can become whatever I want, from a lawyer to a policewoman to an artist. Anything.

I can't stand that sexism is still tolerated and accepted within our daily lives.
When you go into class and hear your male teacher exclaiming not how wonderful an actress Wonder Women is, but how hot she is, it gets under your skin. It makes my skin crawl. Does anyone have any filters anymore?
Women are glorifed for their bodies, and girls are starving themselves all the time. For what? To be accepted.

That brings me to another thing that makes me angry: The need to be accepted by the world.
Why? What's the need? The world has such twisted views...why listen to that? It won't bring you happiness anyway.

#sos17

Jun 23

in rant/rave 1 Comment

Salome Shubitidze

What do You Want To Be When You Grow Up?

What do You Want To Be When You Grow Up?

Adults frequently ask children “What do you want to be when you grow up?”. It is such a cliché of a question. As if a small, rosy-cheeked, knobbly kneed toddler, with wide innocent eyes, and grubby boogered hands could even fathom the parameters of the next fifty years of his or her life. In reality, a child’s dream of being a fireman, a policeman, or a movie star is just a reflection of society's expectations for the next generation. And as a toddler develops into an adolescent, the pressure to secure your career path increases. There is an underlying fear of becoming just another face behind a desk, living a sedentary lifestyle. Every day, waking up at 8:00 a.m to carry on the same sullen mind numbing routine, drinking dull black sediment filled coffee as you sit in the same blue plastic chair that sags under the accumulating weight of your flab. While sitting in a 6 by 6 cubicle, crunching numbers in an outdated computer, you watch arthritis build up day to day in your slowly withering hands. And the medical bills add up due to growing back discomfort as your spine reshapes to resemble a warped “C”.

Jun 22

in rant/rave 4 Comments challenge: Body

Fiona Ella

it works in reverse, too

I know this challenge was months ago, but I was looking through the challenges today and thought of this. I know it's not an sos challenge. But still. Also, I fully acknowledge this is terrible. I wrote it in a rush around ten o'clock at night and didn't have my thoughts articulated, categorized, sorted, or anything of the sort. Really it's a brain spill masquerading as an essay. Sorry.

Maybe this isn't valid. Maybe I'm just speaking from a lucky, privileged position about something that I really shouldn't be trying to pretend I understand. But it's what I feel, and I think that these issues are too complex to come at from only one viewpoint.

Jun 20

in poem, rant/rave 1 Comment challenge: Creating Conflict

Joe Jigg Futt

What is going on?

With the thought of having a partner I shiver,
looking into his/her eyes with a soft sense of passion.
I don't like the idea of having that resposibility as a partner
to "always be there for them" sor something of that sort.
Because sometimes I'm not going to be there,
not having that shoulder to cry on.
Even when I want to be I could be miles away.
If I had a partner, I would want to be there and if I;m not,
what might happen scares me.

I ask to myself, "what is going on?"
People my age has or wants to have that significant other.
They are looking for that life whereas I am trying to back away.
What is going on in my life where I can feel that need?

May 31

in rant/rave 0 Comments

Wildflower Mountain

The Girls At My School

I have watched all of the high school and middle school movies. Mean Girls, Easy A, you name it, I've watched it. But I never actually took them seriously. Plus, having a whole year of middle school behind me, I'm pretty sure that I know what I'm talking about. Apparently, though, some girls think that you're supposed to act like Regina George in Mean Girls. There's a group of girls at my school, about 14 of them, who refer to themselves as "The Group". I recently discovered that every girl has a spot and that this spot can be taken away at any time by the Queen Bee, Regina Apis (that isn't her real name but for privacy purposes, I'll just use the Latin name for "Queen Bee"). Come to think of it, "The Group" is just like a bee hive. There's the Queen Bee, who lays eggs, or in this case, creates little clones of herself. Then are female workers, or Apis Operatur, who are used as spies, and to find new recruits, and report any dangerous behaviour. Then, there are House Bees, or Domum Apes, who in a hive would nurse baby bees, clean the hive, and be like Regina's ladies-in-waiting, which is exactly what they do in real life. They take care of the "new bees" (the newest members), or Puer Apes. They are Regina's closest circle of friends. Finally, there are foragers and undertakers. The foragers, or Apes Eros, are usually the Puer Apes, and scout around, trying to fit in, which takes at least two years (unless they are undertaken).

May 29

in rant/rave 3 Comments

bailly-i

Physical Miseducation

“WHAT WERE YOU THINKING?”
Well certainly more than you were, I did try after all,
and don’t your parents tell you that it’s better to
try and fail, than to never try at all?

Gym class is my daily nightmare,
the class for which I count the minutes--
No the class for which I count the seconds,
until I finally hear the bell ring.

“JEEZ! WHY DO I HAVE TO BE ON A TEAM WITH YOU?”
I was wondering the same exact thing,
I wasn’t aware that this was a class in cruelty.

This is the only class, I’ve ever experienced in public school
where bullying, and harassment are treated as the norm
the only class where it is okay to scream loudly about the shortcomings of others
because it is ALL a part of the GAME.

“ARE YOU CRAZY? TRY HARDER!”
No, I’m not crazy, but I honestly wonder if you might be
for taking a game so seriously,
it doesn’t matter for goodness sakes!
and just as a note, I’m trying pretty damn hard,
but nobody is perfect, and I certainly don’t pretend to be.

The class where students are taught the wonders
of public humiliation, because you can’t simply participate--
you MUST make this class as miserable as possible
for everyone else.

Gym class in public school has very little to do with fitness,

May 29

in rant/rave 10 Comments

Icarus Blackmore

Without a sound

Age 4:

The world was an adventure,
And she was an adventurer,
She didn't care what was said of her,
Because nothing was said of her.

It was only natural that a girl,
That someone who was young like her,
Would want to climb, learn, and explore.
That someone like her would try to get of the floor, and out the door.
Because she didn't know what the world had in store for her.

----

That girl grew up.
And though they told her she was tough.
They also never told her that she was enough.
And so every day began to feel like some sort of bluff.

Because while they told her to reach for the sky,
They seemed to move the sky so that it was too high,
And they just left her there wondering why,
They just left her there living that lie

And they never told her it was okay to be mad,
Instead they told her to cry when she was sad.
Because she was a girl why would she ever be mad?
She had makeup, and small talk to make her look glad.

So while they told her to say how she felt,
They always just told her those were cards she was dealt.

Sure it was unfair she had to wear makeup and smile,
But that was just society always wanting to live in denial.
What could she do about it anyways?
She soon understand how she was feeling was just a phase.

That desire to question things would go away eventually,

May 24

in rant/rave 2 Comments

semacdonald

unoriginal

am i really who i used to be,
i know that
new words and
new experiences
are laced, interwoven, and layered on top of my previous self
i am sick of the media putting words in my mouth
and filthy songs in my head
i say that its a generational thing
and that there is nothing i can do to stop
the madness and the chaos caused by the pressures of the digital world,
but its a choice as is everything else
it is a choice to click on an image
it is a choice to sacrifice yourself to a screen
destroying your free will and your version of your own self worth
do you know who you are under the layers of the new you
do i know who i am
my skeleton of truth lies under so many layers
i dont know what it looks like anymore
things that used to matter to me are too hard to reach so i ignore the fact that they were ever there
i am scared to grow older
i am scared to gain more layers and lose that child, that soul inside of me
i am scared that as i am buried underneath layers of myself that the person who i used to be wont get a say anymore
this new hybrid version of myself,
a mix of things i have seen and heard but nothing original, nothing new
nothing that gives me a good enough view
of my bones inside that i cant even see, that i cant even feel.
am i my own person anymore or am i just a culmination of people and places i have seen and phrases i have heard

May 17

in rant/rave 1 Comment

Said The Sky

The Hat

I can remember the flakes accumulating in your hair
Like wheat on a bed of soil
It was freezing

Wiping them off did no good
Because before you knew it, there were twice as many

So I gave you my hat
To keep you warm
To protect you

And now, I have found that we all wear hats
Not always to keep warm
But to conceal.

May 17

in rant/rave 4 Comments

Monster_T_02

I am not perfect

I, am not perfect.
I am not the twirling, tendril, perfect beauty everyone perceives.
I am not.
Perfect.
rose bud cheeks.
Soft melodically voice.
Gentle hearted.
Peaceful.
Perfect and poise.
I'm snide remarks,
Empty bottle of gut wrenching pain.
Trips to the bathroom,
Vomit sliding up my throat,
Coat the silent tears that fall.
I am red.
Ever consuming.
I'm the Hit you didn't expect because I'm a "Girl."
I'm far fetched tales of half blooded pulps from people who dared cross my path on a bad night.
I am not silent.
I am not a "Good Girl"
I am not a teachers pet.
I am not dressed modestly,
I am not designer.
I am not for wondering eyes.
I am not an art piece for you to ogle at.
I am louder than a stereo.
I am labeled "Trouble Maker"
I do what needs to be done to keep my head above the water.
I wear revealing clothes to break the conservative style.
I am my mind, not my clothes.
My body is mine, a precious imported life.
I am human,
I am not an object.
My body does not define me.
My clothes do not define me.
"She asked for it in those clothes"
Is not a valid excuse.
"She wanted it,"
While I was under the influence,
Is not a valid excuse.
And you will show respect to keep your paws off what does not belong to you.