MPitS - Anderson Valley High School

MPitS

Anderson Valley High School

2002/2003

The Birds and a Bush

We have a finch at home
Who lives in a decorative box we call a cage

There once were three
When one commenced its morning trumpeting
Like a herd of brainless sheep
The others would echo.

These piercing announcements were always in lieu of specific disruptions
Perching cats
A brother with a call to match their own
Unforeseen visitors
Confinement to the outdoors
These things and more
They just impeded life

Floppy lettuce needed to be dragged from one side to the other
Seeds to be selected and eaten

It annoyed me deeply to observe them so engrossed
Wrapped up in their one by two foot cubic lives
So packaged
I would bang on the cage to see the effects
of my cause.

Bush
Our brave Commandeering Chief
Of what?
Disgruntled teenagers with a deadly aim
Illiterate forty-year olds-with millions to spare
Racial profiling with absolutely not racism involved

There has not been and never will there be honesty nor truth
Greed is like the sickeningly emerald stench of fear

With unwanted non-understandable war
The plain and unprotected scratch their hairy brows
Lives just want to be lived by all
Preferably with all limbs and mental capacity intact.

When wrong is once again committed, the cries of outrage total:
Not many.
Not many are are able to open their eyes wide enough to trace the muddy boot
Which has soiled their carpet of white ignorance
Interrogation is answered with long face-purpling sentences
Started with st-uh-tt-ers
Finished with an under the breath whoosh of air
Like my mother's old vacuum
But goodness gracious people!
Give baby Bush a chance and some more room to breathe
He has got a fair bit on his non-recyclable plate:

Things to cover up,
Budgets to cut,
Oil,
The pursuit of evildoers (is that a word?),
Women's rights to smother,
Naps.

Can't you subtract?
The sum's products = no time to listen to what the people wish

There used to be three of those lively birds
They slowly died
One a suicide
A heart attack.

Slowly
a smile begins to crawl
like a festering maggot
inching its way across the clean shaven line of a white mouth
a blooming smile
more like a sneer
you can almost see the tobacco-stained teeth.

The government guffaws
And sometimes
They just bang on the doors for a laugh out loud
Because it's still morning out
and most are still asleep.

Soquel Schaefer, 10th grade
Kim Campbell, classroom teacher

Lying

locked up and barred away
the key is waiting
like Pandora's box
boring holes into my conscience

the key is waiting
until my brain is a strainer
boring holes into my conscience
all thoughts ooze out

until my brain is a strainer
fluid of a life half-lived
all thoughts ooze out
every day these holes grow

fluid of a life half-lived
one day there will be no brain at all
everyday these holes grow
all because of this little lonely secret

one day there will be no brain at all
like Pandora's box
all because of this little lonely secret
locked up and barred away

Cyd Bernstein, 10th grade
Anderson Valley HS

A lie's truth is a precious memory no one can remember
The spindle's thread an everlasting circle of creation
A circle of creation and life that spins and spins until
the blanket of forever is complete,
Throughout eternity there is a crystal glass of pain and desire
A picture of a mother's lullaby
Knowledge is a recycled newspaper clipping among shreds
of lies and truth
Seeds of life and death are planted in the soil of nothingness
Eyes gaze upon what is not,
What is, is never seen,
When things are gone as they were,
When time isn't time and life is something else,
When water lifts
and heat reigns,
All will come together,
All will repeat,
And spindles of thread will spin again,
They will create the blanket of forever again,
The lies of truth will be memories no one can remember again
Life will be life again.

Erica Schimmel
7th grade
Ann Pantajja, classroom teacher

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