MPitS - Mendocino Community High School

MPitS

Mendocino Community High School
2004/2005

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Breaking social taboos, making eye contact, I am hit by the recognition I see in you. I have always known you. You have always known me, and so I could never think of blushing now.

As the universe swells and breathes, big bang exploding out, collapsing, over and over eternally, the sun, the dust and the smell of your tan skin circle in and out of my nostrils.

I am god playing with my own head in my garden. I will find out everything about you so as to better know myself. We will make love like the tides pulling, like misty rain, like mountains falling, like birth, like pine trees, like redemption, plague and war all for us to explore each other.

I will learn your native language, learn all your history, follow your molecules across the face of all this, all the while feeling inexorably part of you, the mingling of one great universal creative force...Life is utter creative destructive joy, and I see the recognition, the understanding that I am looking at another part of the puzzle experiencing the universe.

Jimmi Lester
11 th Grade, Mendocino Community HS
Karen Lewis, Poet Teacher

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I wake up with bed-head
just to learn my fortune.
I have to see it twice,
I know I will forget.
Go life, go hard,
don't remind me of the truth,
the truth my life has made.
This random vertical spiral,
shooting down like an uzi.
I wander about, looking for dead.
A seagull's heart in my hands, dripping.
There is Cal-Trans all over,
like adhesives hugging a heavy box.
I can smell my mother's perfume,
while I learn her crazy dance.
I'm sitting near a translucent school,
finding the electricity of the walls.
The walls move in and out,
like my lungs--
it's this ultimate lollipop.

Elise Tager
11 th Grade, Mendocino Community HS
Karen Lewis, Poet Teacher

Summer

Summer time at last
speckled shadows fall through leaves
I hope time will last.
Nature
Blue air is clean
forests are in full bloom
the sea water calms.
Dance
Music for your soul
dance in rhythm to your drum
fill your life with joy.
My Eyes

Please look for me now
deep into my faithful eyes
They watch you always.
Sad Times
My childhood dreams
I watch my favorite dress twirl
round and round again.

Sage Sibbet
10 th Grade, Mendocino Community HS
Karen Lewis, Poet Teacher

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Words are nothing, an illusion
Let beauty be beauty, the fabric of life
Words make life so deadly confusing
Don't make me write poetry, it only brings strife
The voices poets read in are amusing
Don't judge don't categorize don't compare just let it be free
Don't grade me don't advise me just let me be me.

Cody McMurty
11 th Grade, Mendocino Community HS
Karen Lewis, Poet Teacher

This Is My Life
(from the photograph Fisherman , by Chris Honeysett)

From day to day, year to year
I look at those mountains and every year
they seem to change as if they're mercury
floating along the foggy horizon.
Sometimes I like to walk into the trees
ever so slightly and turn around and
glance back at the water, with its mercury
mountain reflections, but once again the reflections
seem to change. Are these mountains alive?
Or am I dead and living in the perfect world?
Fish are abundant in the lake I now sit by.
Perhaps one day the silver fog will lift
me up and slowly descend me into the mercury
that always seems to change.

Travis Yolles
10 th Grade, Mendocino Community HS
Karen Lewis, Poet Teacher

Seven Ways To Look At India

I.
Looking out from behind glass, their crippled hands
motioning bite by bite in the stale hot air.
Don't penetrate the closed folds of my virgin eyes.

II.
Boiling a soup of sandhu, incense. Smoke billows out
and I frantically search about in this stew of the deepest night,
hypnotic chanting. I'm paralyzed between the car lights,
and I scream in a panic, "Where are you?"

III. Giggles glide from the already wizened faces of
dusted school children, as we're caught in their gazes.
Each one already has a story to tell in the worn skin
and eyes that we've covered up so well.

IV.
From my bed, I view India from the bottom of my
bucket as I make use of it. In the gnawing aches in
my joints as I lay shivering, drenched in cold sweat.
Wrapped in endless corners. Around me the city pulses.
I try to close my stiff fingers around the air--of over
100 degrees--and I wretch and I freeze.

V.
Advertisements bombarding my mind. I'm searching for
a clear open space free of corporation. It's impossible to
find your impeccable ways are twisted and sick as you
desecrate the world and plaster it over. I linger hopelessly
un-rebellious, and resume to consume.

VI.
In the sunlight, I stand cleansed for a still moment on the edge
of the mountain bathed in the light between clouds and sunrise.
I watch from neither side and savour both the raindrops and rays.

VII.
In the vibrant colours, noises and smells, I admit to myself
I must return someday to my vivid memories, and immerse myself.
Yet for now, have I ever lived in the present tense.

Elimah Gerken
11 th Grade, Mendocino Community HS
Karen Lewis, Poet Teacher

Untitled

Sharks eat fish. This has been true since the beginning of sharks.
They are predators of the sea,
scavenging and ravenging any meaty thing they see
There is no other way to say this, but in this obscene age,
sharks are everywhere.
You think you're safe? You, yes you in your cubicle
job on the 27 th floor of the newest skyscraper
drinking from your starbucks monstrosity frappé.
Well, I have news for you mister.
You are fish. We are all fish. Just waiting, wait.
the corporate sharks are circling us,
picking our pockets dry, but don't let me stop.
Go ahead! Go on and go to wal-mart and
empty your wallet. Go on and support the
slave wages and child labor of Honduras or
China. Let them charge for the water that
falls from the sky. They tried in Bolivia, and
America's likely to be on the list. But go on.
Go to k-mart or some other corporate shark.
Let them eat us all up. But don't complain
to me when fresh water or even AIR is a
commodity for sale.

Shawn Spiller
11 th Grade, Mendocino Community HS
Karen Lewis, Poet Teacher

Silent Assassin

Dressed in a tuxedo of black and white
going to cities, giving old ladies a fright
More scary than a bat
and more stealthy than a cat
they sneak into your house
as quiet as a mouse
They open your freezer
with a tweezer
they sense your presence in their lips
and waddle away with empty clips
You must have realized it all to late
or else you could've prevented your fate
Dressed in a tuxedo of black and white
We await their return another night.

Tyler Grinberg
10 th Grade, Mendocino Community HS
Karen Lewis, Poet Teacher

Eight Ways to Describe my Couch

I.
King of the living room
The best seat of all
Place to lie in the winter,
spring, summer, and fall.

II.
All covered in pillows,
soft blankets and cat hair.
And I know this because
I often lie there.

III.
My couch calls me to it
whenever I'm home
'specially when I'm talking
to girls on the phone.

IV.
I sit on its smooth grey skin
getting my homework done
Because then I will chill
and maybe have some fun.

V.
My couch is a temptation
when I'm in need of rest
I'll lie there all day
If I don't feel my best.

VI
It is my addiction
When I'm not so happy
Or those times when my day
Has been kind of crappy

VII

My couch is inviting
to family and guests alike
I always lie on it
after long days of riding my bike

VIII
I am so very thankful
for such a glorious couch
without its comfort
I would be more of a grouch.

Will Lennox
10 th Grade, Mendocino Community HS
Karen Lewis, Poet Teacher

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