MPITS- MPitS - Mendocino Middle School

MPitS

Mendocino Middle School
2003/2004

Masks

Let's say there's a girl
Who you may think,
A girl who answers teacher's questions without thinking
A girl who is covered with her friends
A girl who goes before others
A girl who is so kind
A girl who is extrovert
A girl who is introvert

But I wonder who she really is.
But I wonder how many masks she's using.
But first why don't you believe,
believe that she's a good girl,
Because I think it's better
For you to think she's a girl
who doesn't have any masks on.
And I believe if you think she's good,
I think she'll be good,
Even if she has masks on.

Youn Ji Song, 8th grade
Mendocino Middle School
Robin Curry, classroom teacher
Scott Meltsner, poet-teacher

Heading greenward to the fields
along the concrete river
Your body is fragile as a piece of glass
Yet you withstand all like a mountain of stone
Deer, with your coat a'gleam in the evening
Your feet find precarious footholds
your transition from soaring grass and streams
to plodding this concrete jungle is difficult
A heavenly light is set before your eyes
then agony then
there is
nothing
How to compare your transition
from soaring over grass and stream
to actual flight, they will never compare.
Your fragile glass body is broken
and you watch with regret
but your immeasurable joy overpowers your sadness
The tears of a woman spot your blooded coat
as she drags you to a fresh piece of grass
and shuts your broken glass eyes.
She is good
you are good, you
forgive and
fly away.

Hannah Fanto, 8th grade
Mendocino Middle School
Robin Curry, classroom teacher
Scott Meltsner, poet-teacher

I reached for the stars but ended up with less than I had started with
I longed for the hugs your friends and family give you before a long voyage
I needed to hear your voice just one last time
before the wave took you from me, but no voice was there to answer my prayer
I see your shadow in the window, while you look so close
you're light years ahead and behind me at the same time
this is like a prayer a little five year old makes before bedtime
this is like the man in the moon looking over us
deciding which way for us to turn
but whatever it is, or isn't, it's an unknown wish
never to be repeated, never, never to be repeated!

Laurel Waldman
7th grade, Mendocino Middle School
Dale Leister, classroom teacher
Scott Meltsner, poet-teacher

Strange Poem (Remix)

Eight AM I like a button on an elevator:
once you push it, your ride doesn't stop until you're where you should be
once you get there, your journey will begin

School starts at eight AM and it repeats
It only goes on for several hours, but it seems like three days
Like each hour is part of a song, and school is the beat
But when the bell rings, it's like a scratch in the cd, and everything pauses.

It is smooth and rough, like a two-sided piece of sandpaper
it has its places full of ferns and grass
Each minute of cloudy gray seems like it's only one day,
but stretches itself like a cracked rubber band and seems like a month of sun

The freedom of recess seems like a ten minute break from slavery
It tastes like the freedom of the smell of edible shampoo
breaking itself upon your flaring nostrils.

Once I get home
everything speeds up
like it's all okay now
because I live here.

Justin Daly
8th grade, Mendocino Middle School
Robin Curry, classroom teacher
Scott Meltsner, poet-teacher

Beach Comber

I am not who you think I am.
the man at the market bartering his goods,
the tiny grey kitten clinging pitifully to the branches of a tree,
The woman next door drinking tea and baking cookies,
I am none of these
though maybe I wish that I were,
I am the one you see only so often,
the one silently mumbling to himself,
he one wasting away at the shores of the sea,
I collect seashells, I snatch them all from the ripples of sand,
and store them away in the back of my mind.
I am one without memories, without thoughts, without dreams,
the one who covers up his past with the beauties of the world.
One day, though, when the wind is low
and the last sparks of sunlight glisten on the soft peaks of ocean,
only then will I bring out my collection for all the world to see,
and place each shell back into the gems of sand.
Only then will my conscience be clear.

Katie Lewis
8th grade, Mendocino Middle School
Robin Curry, classroom teacher
Scott Meltsner, poet-teacher

Woodpecker

Woodpecker, woodpecker,
sitting on a pole
As you drill and drum,
you make little holes.

When I sit in my room
toiling over old homework,
Rat tat tat, I can hear you drum,
setting a pace for my tired hands.

Holding on with little feet,
You hop up and down in search of grubs.
Filling your stomach, but leaving some more,
for your meal tomorrow at half past noon.

Your job now done, you fly away,
But you will be back the next day.
As you sit and think in a hole in a tree,
I wish you weren't so far from me.

Harris Jelic
8th grade, Mendocino Middle School
Robin Curry, classroom teacher
Scott Meltsner, poet-teacher

When the lights are low
and the bells are belling patiently
When the old geese are soaring
past the clouds that flow
the young butterflies are going home…
When the melodious doves finish off their melodies
while the sun whispers its goodbyes
screaming with raging peace
the mad teenager slams the door

Every tear that falls
disrupts the dusk
the dove
and the butterfly.

Rachel Rohe
8th grade, Mendocino Middle School
Robin Curry, classroom teacher
Scott Meltsner, poet-teacher

Ideas

Look into the past, see
bits of eternity
a crystal dancing in space
a piece of glacier with
the smell of the sea
Stand by the moonlight on
a small foreign beach
buried by imagination.
A piece of world in the palm
of my hand.

by Risa Hansen, Sixth Grade
Mendocino Middle School
Penny Honer, Classroom Teacher
Karen Lewis, Poet-Teacher

Black Ink

like a pen that can't write
like a bird that can't fly

like a poem written in black ink
my thoughts wanna flow

like a song that never ends
wanna flow but can't think

like my legs itching to run
but broken so it can't be done

like a sun that doesn't shine
these words run and hide

like the taste of blood
the wound does not heal

like a black tear on white snow
that, I guess will never show

like a poem written in blue ink
my thoughts do but don't think

like an image sketched in the earth
death comes after birth
night comes after day

like some one takes it away

like a pen that can't write
like a bird that can't fly.

by Sage Cinnamon, 8th Grade
Mendocino Middle School
Robin Curry, Classroom Teacher
Karen Lewis, Poet-Teacher

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