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Jillian Dimitriou
Jorge Ramirez
Felicia Williams
Felicia Williams
English 126: Creative Writing
Instructor: Sydney Brown
In the author's own words:
When faced with the task of describing myself, I often feel at a loss for words. To be entirely honest, I’m not sure I know who I
am, or that I ever will, so I offer you this instead: I listen to music because it is the closest thing to shaking hands with someone’s
soul that I have ever encountered. Guitars have been my salvation. I read whenever possible. I write whenever it is no longer
possible to stave off my wandering thoughts. I am a work-in-progress.
E-mail the author: originalfw1@yahoo.com
Unpatriotic
Violet mountain
Whose majesty,
Nearly forgotten,
Has become cliché
You look more like
Flowers crushed
Under black boots
Covered in suits of ash
Ash because the gods cry fire
Ash because the heavens are ablaze
And they haven’t stopped their
meteor shower weeping
Shadow like torn paper
Pasted against horizons
You’ll never be Everest
Everest will never touch Heaven
I’ll never touch Heaven or Everest
They’ll shoot us all for trying
While simultaneously infusing us
With meaning we never asked for
With meaning that we aren’t
And never were
You are not patriotic Mountain
Mountain, you are not America
America, you are not freedom
And I am not a poet, or an “I”
For that matter
We are simply the result
Of the shifting ground beneath us
We are plate tectonics
And conflicts in nature
Contradiction and puzzle for savior
Whose boots made the first imprint
And taught the rest how to march
America, the Lord’s army
Was your blueprint
Kill in the name of salvation!
Souls are lost!
Burn trails through tangled
Wilderness of infinite wonder
Until counting casualties
Becomes the standard method
For choosing lottery numbers
Murder questions
Censor answers
Keep distracted
America, with founding fathers
And noticeable lack
of the nurturing of mothers
You were birthed from nothing
But shifting ground
And shifting loyalty
Continental drift
United States of the uncertain
You are being choked
By your own bible belt
You are not freedom
You are not free
You are scared shitless
like your inhabitants
Shaking like mountain
Whose purple veil
Isn’t quite as majestic
As it should be
And trembling like me
Whose pen has never
been close to that of a poet’s
They will shoot us all for trying.
Jorge Ramirez
English 141: Poetry Writing
Instructor: Sydney Brown
In the author's own words:
I'm a first year student at Grossmont College. Pretty young in life I understood the power of the spoken word and the impact that it
made on human emotion. I hope my writing provokes some sort of revolutionary thoughts for positive change in society and
culture.
E-mail the author: jorge_ramirez87@yahoo.com
Reflection
When did hip-hop become a story about gettin’ shot,
chillin' on the block and livin' only to die by the Glock?
It's crazy yet fed to kids daily—
sewing seeds such as some preteen thug
who just had a baby with an urban queen
who slipped up ‘cause she wanted to be
sexy like them on the TV screen.
It seems to be at least to me
that this capitalist culture
doesn't care to change the scene
‘cause the money's too green.
And most human beings will only
feed into their greed without a care
for future seeds. Then I notice peace
is on the decline with a rise in shine
paired with a loss of mind.
If this is the fad, if this is the trend—
my question is, when will it end?
Hopefully soon when words are power
and lyrics are the revolution for an institution
of knowledge and enlightenment.
That’s only bound to liven mindless men,
and bring this struggle to an end.
Just note that it starts from within—
so when change comes—
You're either OUT or you're IN.
Where I’m From, Pt. 2
Where I’m from guns are shot and babies are born
only to die later for the colors they wore.
The good die young and they're droppin’ like flies,
and it'll never hurt less to say those last goodbyes.
By the age of eleven, little boys become little men.
And by their early teens, girly girls become hoochie queens
due to a mixed vision of what they think “grown” should be.
They wanna grow up fast, and who can blame 'em.
Livin' in a world where, really, only money can save 'em.
Livin' a little too poor so no one’s livin' well,
that's why he's on the block pushin' anything that sells.
That's why she talks the talk—
some men will do anything for a pretty face,
and best believe they'll throw
that cash out
if they think they'll get a taste.
But she's afraid to walk that walk—
they don’t know her real age—
but since she won’t give what she's got,
what she's got is what he'll take.
And that cat from the block—
well he got caught with a stray, that
sent him on his way to an untimely grave.
There's always two sides
on the coin of life.
The first you heard,
them tryin’ to get by.
The other kept inside,
there's no hoochie or no thug.
Just two lonely kids
lookin’ to be loved.
Jillian Dimitriou
English 140: Poetry Writing
Instructor: Sydney Brown
In the author's own words:
I am a second year student at Grossmont College. I was a senior in high school when I took my first creative writing class. That
class was the first time I invested any amount of time in writing poetry, also where I fell in love with the craft. The first poet to
really inspire me was Li Young Lee, specifically a poem from his collection entitled Rose. In my writing, I use a lot of nature
themes as well as exploring familial relationships.
E-mail the author: jilliandimitriou@gmail.com
The Dimitriou House
The music,
arriving out of hidden ground
and endlessly beginning, is now the flower,
now the fruit, now our cup and cheer
under branches more ancient than our grandmother’s hair.—Li Young Lee
Disheveled hair kisses my grandmother’s ears,
grey roots with purple
meant-to-be-black dye.
The kind of hair born from
overbearing issues,
of hospital visits,
forgetting the day before,
of too much medicine.
She now sits on her old wooden chair
on her porch, smiling at the sun and my car
inching up her driveway.
She looks at her green front lawn,
at its border of hydrangeas,
yellow and pink roses.
This is her legacy, the green
etched into the channels
of her son’s thumbprint.
She stands, leaning on her cane
clutched in her right hand. Her smile
grows when my car stops and the door opens. The long
brown hair of my sister dances as we step
out of the car into a caressing wind.
Eclectic Dirt
Rain
slaps
down on concrete
in shovelfuls.
Shovelfuls
of murky water,
rain mixed with dirt.
Not the dirt
a rose grows up in,
the eclectic dirt,
of a day dedicated
to twilight.
To ripples in cocoa butter
water bouncing with rain.
Water rebounds as grains of dirt
jump up into the wind.
The dregs of a day
like an empty teacup
leaves loose and muddy
like a
swamp. I wear my red
bikini and slide
my fair-skinned toe
into the brown-grey
water. Sinking into slimy inviting mud.
Trees placed methodically
in a half-moon surrounding the swamp.
You feel a creature sweep past
your foot in the water.
The dregs of a day
alone,
in the swamp under
a cold shade.