MPitS  

Fort Bragg High School
2004/2005


I am the grandeur cono-clasmic destruction...
I am the grandeur cono-clasmic destruction
      of forthrighteousness
I am someone who has overanalyzed myself,
     my life, but not my meaning
See that which is vaguely conspicuous and search
    for that which has happiness
    I have far too much.
   Me duele la cabeza
   This is something
You are something with fried chicken and mashed potatoes
     and Felipe's gross ketchup.
     Ugh.
   I do not
Ugh, ugh, ugh
It engrosses everything.
  What is it?
  I don't know
I hate pronouns and I hate reading quizzes
And I miss the days of Mrs. Turrentine galvanizing
about discussing conclusions with her eyes looking at her brain
Only white backs to see
As if she is in the Latvian summer
of her malevolent and benignly indifferent past.
I hate and love big words
I try so hard.   Why?   Now?   Later?   Always?
What about travel?   For what?   For sex?   For understanding?
   My questions go unanswered.
    Though I know it is soon
I am aware that in 3 minutes I will lie dying on a couch
of that which knows me.
I will and only then see success
     see it is not the answer.
Congratulatory inertia does not give way
  to overwhelming goodness.
     But what does?
      The meaning?
My answers are wrong and so are yours.
Where is Mrs. Turrentine when I need her?
    I want to see my brain, too.

Luke Lintott
12th Grade, Fort Bragg High School
Scott Meltsner, Poet Teacher

 

Not Many People Can Sleep Next To A Redcap

Back again to the gray.
I return to the gray
and as I leave the door I put on my face.
The odor slowly ekes from the birds.
It spills out into the world and is devoured by the cold.
The world is not a place for me or my people, yet we live.
Still, we fight the war.   We fight tooth and nail.
I will not let the autumn claim us.
Dreams must live.
Dreamers must be.
We fight the war with roses

                                    broken toothpicks

                                    blood

                                    a practically eaten cupcake

                                    a line from a love song

                                    a 5 leaf clover

we fight the war with dreams.
It is sad when we die but
more sad when they die.
When the dreamers die.
For it stings of autumn.
We and I dance and play against the Death.
I fight this war on our home front and I ask
"Where is our king?"
We are not a type to be ruled though
so we make our own court.
They were wrong about the king.
I will fight this war.
I will die for this war
my immortal blood will spill and time will claim me.
I will win, by my friends above and below, I will win.

Sam Mikesell
12th Grade, Fort Bragg High School
Scott Meltsner, Poet Teacher

 

 

I am in a house I have not lived in for years
the air iis warm and my eyes... they will not open.
I hear voices and I know the sun is rising.
I am outside and the cold air presses on my skin
the sky is streaked and the trees are very, very tall.
Smells are strong and colors are bright
there is so much that I have yet to feel
I am sliding over the water and holding the wooden oar
we all keep laughing and waving to the people on the shore
the water is cool and deep and I do not think about what came before
I do not dwell on what will come
I think only of the movement of the oars and the sounds
of the water as it rushes past.
I am running in the grass
the pink flowers and raspberries are all I see
I watch as the sky grows dark
and I feel the warm air and the silent laughter.
But change comes quickly and the air grows cold
Perhaps the people who live there now do not appreciate
the taste of a raspberry on a warm summer day
when you run breathlessly through the grassZ
and the trees are so tall above you.
Now I think about the past.
I think about the future.
I am remembering that night
when lightning held the world in its grsp
and we crowded around the windows
so warm, so excited
hearing the steady words of the radio
smelling the butter that would be melted over popcorn
excited about the moment
not knowing how quickly it would disappear.

Kendra Ruczak
11th Grade, Fort Bragg High School
Scott Meltsner, Poet Teacher

 

 

My Saturday

Saturday is the possibility of a day in the open,
of old scuffed boots
day in the high desert,
hills and mountains
of sage and juniper.
There is wind sighing through the grasses,
and cicadas buzzing.
Saturday bans pointless, weary boredom,
and invites endless possibilities
of long trips
with no clear end in sight.
The sun is intensely warm,
Saturday summer sunlight.
It is a sandwich eaten on a log,
bleached bone white.

Randy Forsythe
10th Grade, Fort Bragg High School
Scott Meltsner, Poet Teacher

 

 

Evil people eat anger in a feast.

Like the horns of an angry wildebeast.
Evil people drink madness in a glass.
Like a cigarette when you pump gas.
Evil people eat anger in a feast.
Like a drive-thru wedding priest.
Evil people like to see things die.
Like worms in your apple pie.
Like a cigarette when you pump gas.
Or the mailman who has a dog bite him in the kiester.
like worms in apple pie
it makes midgets scream, "O my!"
Evil people like to eat
They're not the bad ones though
The hippies that get in your way when you want to go to Starbucks
They're the ones who are nuts.

Norman Rogers
10th Grade, Fort Bragg High School
Scott Meltsner, Poet Teacher

 

 

Contradictions

They tell me to work
They tell me to try
I work, I try
They tell me I must do well
They tell me they know I can
Do I do well?
I don't know that I can.
They tell me to breathe
They tell me to sleep
I breathe, I sleep
They tell me to stop
They tell me to relax
But how do I stop?
I don't know how to relax
They tell me these things
These things don't make sense
they tell me two things
two things don't match
Which do I listen to?
Do I work or do I stop?
Do I try or do I breathe?
I don't know, will I ever know?
Until then--
They tell me to work--I work
They tell me to breathe--I breathe

Lilli Tichinin
11th Grade, Fort Bragg High School
Scott Meltsner, Poet Teacher

 

 

I do not celebrate myself and celebrate myself constantly.
I believe that I know myself better than any other, yet I do not know myself at all.
I wonder.
I see, yet I am half-blind.   It makes me wonder what I have missed out on and gives me bad depth perception.
I love deeply, managing still to not know what love is or feels like.
I can't accept that I am wrong but believe that I am.
I am filled with doubts in my own mind, about my own mind.
If I say that I can't, yet do, does that mean I can achieve the impossible?
I worship my body and destroy it.   It hates me for what I do but persists for some reason that I do not yet know.
I love to live.
And I loathe it.
I am full of wonder and awe and sleepiness and disdain.   Sometimes I let the events of my life whisk by and don't even bother to become a spectator.   In those times nobody is watching my life and it may run rampant.
But if I am not even watching it, am I even living it?
Those times are rare: I like to be in control.
I have faith in a watcher.
I know.
I know that I like chocolate, adrenaline, and the ocean when I'm sad.
I know I enjoy fun.   Sometimes I wonder if I actually feel.
I am repulsed by the mindless masses but count myself among them.
I am not a mindless blob of goo.   Believe it, dammit.
I care what others think of me and treat them with abandon.
Their opinions and silly assumptions mean nothing to me.
I surround myself with hippos and squirrels and monkeys and the dead.   The live ones are scarce.
I don't like the smell of the dead.   I seek to revive them, but they refuse to respond. I want to give up.   I don't know why and I understand completely.
I want and despise possessions and dependency.
I wonder at everything around me.
I understand, yet I don't get it at all.

Emily Reiff
12th Grade, Fort Bragg High School
Scott Meltsner, Poet Teacher

 

 

Music?

music is the echo of each solitary drop
of blood from a martyr's wrist
music is the wine that stains the lips
of sovereign housewives
music is the innocence that drips
from your cheeks every night
music is the will to survive
when a knife lies in your hand
music is not bass, guitar, and drum
you are music.

Elyssa Turner
10th Grade, Fort Bragg High School
Scott Meltsner, Poet Teacher

 

 

 

tranquilized

heartsick
head numb
shell
yesterday, they shot a man
horror-struck
heartsick
weeping
one
yesterday, they shot a man
profit-bound
heartsick
struck gold
greed
yesterday, they shot a man
paranoid
heartsick
friends dead
prey
yesterday, they shot a man
inhuman
heartsick
no words
damned
yesterday, they shot a man

Laurel Meissner
12th Grade, Fort Bragg High School
Scott Meltsner, Poet Teacher


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