The Hook
"Poetry is the art of substantiating shadows..."
-Edmund Burke
Below is featured poetry written by Upper School students and faculty in a variety of styles and forms. Poetry often helps express deep emotions that are otherwise difficult to explain or talk about, or they could simply relate a simple event that made you smile. The reader obtains a brief glimpse of the poet's mind that otherwise, might prove impossible.
Memory Lane
Amelia B. ('14)
I sometimes catch myself missing you.
Little pink spots of nostaliga will creep
between my guarded ribs and reemerge
memories of our walks when the rain
would slide down my translucent skin
and you'd whip your brown hair back as I
longed for my fingers to be entangled in it.
I worry that I'll forget the shades
of your jaded green eyes or the
way your magician hands would
float down the bone keys of my piano
as your gentle voice would lull me
with a song of heartache and lost love.
I wonder if maybe you'll come back
and against my better judgement
I'd write you back into the pages of me life—
Perhaps your chapter isn't over but merely
waiting in suspense for your grand return
when we're both a little wiser, a little different
so we won't make the same mistakes again.
And at times I gasp because the breeze
has caught a scent similar to your cologne
and I hear melodies of tunes I wish
I could share with you and marvel over
their perfect harmonies together,
But then I am reminded of the reason
you are not in my life
And those pink feelings turn gray
And I can't help but question if
you are the person whose hands held my heart
or the fists that broke it to pieces.
Wool Hat
Lindsey T. ('14)
You picked me.
Out of all the others,
I was the one that you liked best.
You paid for me in full.
You liked me and I liked you.
My vivid colors made way to your heart.
I kept you safe from the cold,
You kept me safe from harm.
When the trees started to turn green again,
There was no need for me.
You were moing on,
Leaving me in solidarity.
I got old and grimy,
As you needed me less and less.
My colors dulled,
As I became more redundant.
In your mind I was just a temporary necessity,
But your absence left us in permanent polarity.
Chanel No. 5
Beth R. ('15)
That old guy with the glass eye
who lived to the right of my grandmother.
He died last November.
Mom said you don't have to wear black
to a visitation, but I was anxious of
disrupting the shock. I jotted illegibly in the book
and respectfully looked up at the glossy 4' x 6's and
5' x 7's. I ogled at the frames. Then I filed in the line
of telemarketers screaming "I'm fine!"
He loved Dad, and I love him for that. He was a white
ironclad - a pilot - a POW. He called me trouble
cause I called him the candyman for the
Snickers and Skittles. But now I guess I understand.
In Berlin, they only fed him spinach.
The man I knew never ate spinach again,
and he never once gossiped about the president.
At the end of the line, I came upon his wife in a chair,
and I, donned in black, looked down at her as she sat.
The brown rings in her eyes totaled eighty-something. We said
the civilities- then, she sported a worn white coat
and displayed her data. She told me people
get too mad. Idealists were once realists, and
Medusa's stone mockingbirds let their dreams
get away. They wake up one day to swallow this
pill with their Donepezil, Sertraline, and Trazodone.
She told me to skewer what I want
with a victor's blade. She told me to fight dirty.
She told me to wear perfume everyday because with
every step I will monotonously decay.
Every Sunday night, I go to my grandmother's
in Chanel No. 5 and glance to the right side
hoping to see some sign of life- even just a porch
light. I guess she got tired, and I eventually caught up.
Sunday in Bed
A poem in the style of Polish poet, Czeslaw Milosz
Adelaide G. ('15)
I liked watching you sleep.
Pale lids covering pale blue eyes,
Uninterrupted satisfaction painted on your face.
Long, slow, deep. Breaths building then falling,
Like the passage of Time – building then falling.
Brow furrowed and eyes squinted,
Somehow conveying a dream or a thought.
And when you rolled away,
Eyes travelled the curvature of your soft back.
Hair kissing the nape of your neck like
Blades of grass or feathers of birds.
Somehow fading the poisoned world outside.
Perhaps watching you wake was what
I really enjoyed most about Sundays in Bed.
Your pale lids revealing pale blue eyes
With their flutters and fast blinks.
The brief look of confusion,
The small smile after it passed.
Somehow mirroring my heart’s expression.
Though today was Sunday,
And though today I spent in Bed,
You were not here. You were gone.
But I remembered you when I woke.
Rather, I remembered you had left
Somehow taking a small piece of me.
When the cold front of your absence
Whisked past my tired face,
I wanted to forget you, but did not.
I stared and stared at my empty Sunday bed.
It seemed I was called for this:
To glorify things just because they are.
To glorify things just because they were.
Like a child who blows on a dandelion
Jack S. ('14)
---
Like a child who blows on a dandelion
and spreads its seeds far and wide
so too will we go off on our own.
Once bound together now we are loose
Starting a new journey into the unknown.
Some will fly away together, some apart
But all drawn back by some gripping hand,
So many years together from the start.
To shared memories and similar dreams
To moments happy and sometimes sad,
Understanding now only that it's at its end.
We have to let go and say our goodbyes,
and off we fly setting our sights far and high.
Landing were we may ready to grow again.
Travel
Henry J. ('15)
H
I've become obsessed with the open road.
In my small world that's pretty strange.
I've lived in the same house my whole life,
Gone to the same school since junior kindergarten,
Even known the same handful of kids.
Maybe that's why I want to leave so terribly bad.
When I'm tired, in the thin place between consciousness and un,
I think of myself traveling down the open road.
My car is dirty and worn, but then so am I.
I eat only at diners by the side of the road,
Meet and know only strangers, no longer strange.
I mark a spot on a map and travel there, generally.
I am lost, not in a rush to be found.
Every roadside attraction is attracting to me,
I never put up much of a fight against them.
Take it all in, I want to know every experience,
The rust colored deserts, the chrome colored cities.
The open road is a better platform to learn from than a book.
If my car breaks down, I find a bike.
If the bike tire bursts, I walk or hitchhike.
I think I am driven crazy by a crazed person, a fanatic.
I'm not sure what my pilot is looking for,
But I know he's ready to look somewhere else.
Anywhere byt here, he asks, anywhere but here.
Then I sleep, and wake up with false memories.
But I've still got hope that someday they'll be real.
Then I prepare myself for my work, ignoring the itch.
I get to my car and open the door, I turn on the engine.
Anywhere but here. Take the open road and go.
Maybe someday soon I'll listen. I think I would be happy to.
Order
Beth R. ('15)
The king wanted to love, wanted the secret to life.
He wanted to grown and never commit a crime-
secretly obsessing to be able to look at his reflection
and not lose himself in artificial introspection.
He sought to stop the tears that would try and break
through into his life - wrecking what he had on time.
The king had a death wish to be perfect. But the feeling was
lost in attempts to interpret it. He didn't know how to
say what he wanted to say. He kept trying because he thought
someone would get it - because maybe - they felt the same way.
The king became lost in his empire - searching for someone
or something that wasn't there. He paid someone to dissect
his life - longed for someone that could tell him why he was
so angry inside. What he was told he brushed off as lies
because it took too much of a toll on his pride. He decided to
keep waiting for things to get better.
In doing this, the king had stopped living. He worried waiting
was all he would ever end up doing. He anticipated that soon
something would pop into place and his head would leave space
and begin to orbit around things that it was supposed to.
Unfortunately, in this confidence, he became easy to manipulate -
craving to participate. And in the midst of all this, he made a mistake
He betrayed his empire.
And strange was that day when the good went away
replaced by that feeling way down in the depths of his
stomach threatening to explode something. His blood froze.
His mistakes were known. The air inhaled into his body
was lead. His muscles felt like they must have been shred.
Death didn't seem like such a bad option. The good
around was honestly just lost on him. Nothing would ever be
the same, and he was the only one at blame.
The empire forgave him, but the king remained in a
different reality, filled with brutality, with demons
manipulating normality, and with angels clinging to vitality.
But, the king still coud not see anything other than the
wrong he had done. He desperately wished for the mistake
to become a memory - dismissed into the past since he felt he had
learned his lesson accurately. Why had he not stopped before
all the good was gone and right seemed wrong? He tried so hard to
shut up, suck it up, and just be strong. But - he had to face
the consequences that his head felt appropriate until he
deteriorated under his own punishment. From then on, never
existing like he used to. One lesson learned harder than it needed to.
I was the king who searched for perfection. I was the empire
that looked back in his reflection. I wanted to be what I was not
I wanted to help myself but got lost in trust. I was the evil tweaking
what is real. I was the good that falls for Lies' appeal.
I couldn't find what hurt my pride the most. I created anarchy,
and I am sorry. I was the one who drove the sword until I breaked no more.
I watched myself withering. Dying. In the mirror.
I am anarchy. And I am so sorry.
If you wish to betray yourself, copy my mistakes. Look at yourself
in the mirror and suffer in hate. Just know that everything you craved
for once upon a time, never was mine. Instead,
I ordered every mirror down from every shelf. I attempted to
avoid the reflection for the rest of my life, but tears still broke through
and wrecked what I had on time. Please don't be like me
and displace yourself in a false reality.
If you do, I promise you will always be sorry.
I wish I had learned that life is not about innocence-
but rather - reconciliation that is limitless.
Unaccepted remorse will never be enough.
Mistakes that go unforgiven are the opposite of love.