Cleaning up my documents:

While cleaning up my documents I found my poems from my advanced creative writing class: They were kind of dark, but it was my theme!


Flight

The storm blows in with a fierce north wind,
Grey smoke pours out of chimneys into the bleak winter day.
Yet there alone stands one home whose red fires have long since turned to ash,
Cold wind and silence dance among the dirty floors.

Once the fires did burn brightly and the warmth encompassed the house.
Once was the chirping of birds like a beautiful song on the radio.
Yet as it may the birds grew up to fly away to their new nests to create new songs,
Each flap, flutter, and flight a piece of their symphony left also.

The windows now filled with dust was once their escape,
Once a comfortable space to perch and to dream
Daring to go out into the green branches that kissed the sky,
Ready to start a whole new chapter of life.

The windows opened all too soon.
The sun shined in its panes so bright.
A hesitation lingered in the air like the sweet scent of the first bloomed rose,
A moment occurred and the bird wandered if it shall ever take flight?

A smell of pollen lingered in the spring air
Bees buzzed excited with the scent.
Surely there was no better time to fly?
It closed its eyes, spread its wings, and took a leap into the unknown.

Soaring into the world to discover such grand, green, gigantic trees
Who hold their hands out to hold a soul even just for a while.
Every branch holds a new adventure to take on,
The earth a playground.

Love, marriage, a child in a glorious nest,
Life was now perfect and complete.
The view of colored flowers and green grass below was beautiful,
But not as beautiful as its own unique creation.

A furious storm shook the tree violently.
The branch broke and snapped into two,
Surely it did not take the nestling?
An empty heap of straw was found.

Small, black feathers blew with the wind,


(No Stanza break)
They floated slowly down like a deflated balloon.
Only memories remained now,
Mother Nature took their precious baby.

The weather did get better,
But the sad and heartbroken birds never did.
Depression tore the small family a part,
She was left to face the cruel world alone.

Oh the black robin fights to get back home,
Back to the nest that kept her warm for so long.
To hear the music of her childhood,
Yet as it may, the window was closed and nothing remained.

The house where she hummed her first tune gave way to time,
How she longed for the past.
And the robin made her last flight and hummed its last song,
For winter had come at last.

Christina Marie Gordon




Distance

We are birds that watch the world from a distance,
Yet we see better than the souls roaming on the ground.
They do not take the time to carefully observe situations;
There are better things in their lives to be found.

We remember a scream, a cry from the grey home every night,
The crack of a whip that was never made for humans.
We wished we could take the small four-year-old boy with us to fly,
A flight to rescue him from the cruelty that his parents relinquished.

Surely, the neighbors could hear the nightly beating occur,
His burden was too heavy for some to bear.
They were too busy building the perfect nest to notice such pain,
Pretending that nothing was happening.
Ignoring the situation at hand always seemed easier.

We flew above like eagles bravely watching over him at school.
The teachers said his behavior was unacceptable,
He was the small boy with glasses too large for his small frame.
If they only knew what he went through at home,
They would have been quicker to love rather than judge.

The attention he always demanded was cries of help,
They called him a problem child who interrupted a perfect day.
He showed his frustration through violence,
Bruises and bite marks on others was how he was defined.

One stormy night after a bad note from school,
The punishment went too far.
The thunder was louder than his cries,
And with one blow to the head the little boy died.

They found him with his glasses broken;
The neighbors told the cops they never heard a thing.
They shivered with the cold north front making way;

(No Stanza break)
Winter air filled what should have been a warm spring.

The flowers turned down their heads to cry,
Their petals turned brown and their roots rot in the ground.
The green grass lost its soft texture;
There was only death to be found.

The teachers all seemed so shocked;
They pretended to have no clue at all.
Yet the signs were always there in his actions,
In his angry pictures hanging on the walls.

Oh how we as birds did hum a sad tune,
As they laid that boy to rest.
We made our home amongst the dark cemetery;
The crooked tree with branches like claws holds our nest.

Let this be a lesson,
That distance can be good.
People need to take the time to step back and see,
And take actions as they should.

-Christina Gordon