I Hate  This Suff 

Huge Waste  Of Time 

I’d Rather be locked up in cuffs 

Or out enjoying the day it’s fine 

Homework is tough 

Can’t stand this crap 

It has turned my brain to fluff 

I have sudden bursts of anger I give the desk a rap

These poems are very hard to make, balancing the rhyme scheme with the Iambic beat. I learned a few tricks that I will continue to use only my next poem. These are; however, extremely fun to write.

My favorite sport 

It’s fun to play 

Each play is short 

And when you score they yell hooray 

Football is fun 

It can’t be beat 

You have to stop the pass or run 

And hand your opponent defeat

I met a sort of mental block in writing this one, I didn’t really know what to write about. So I just wrote about the one activity I love most, football. It was much easier to write these hard poems about something I enjoy doing so much, this was a valuable lesson I will take with me in future writing.

And how it impacts my daily life

One good thing about music, when it hits you, you feel no pain. ― Bob Marley

        An important afterthought. Music is something we don’t often think about being so important in our daily lives but in reality, most of us listen to maybe at least an hour of music a day, I know I certainly do. Whether it is driving to work or school, some background tunes as you work or study, while you’re at the gym, we all listen to, and enjoy music. Even in doing all these, most of us never really stop to think about how much we love music or how much we use it in our lives. Everyone also loves making music, strumming a guitar nonchalantly, rocking out or even just messing around with friends, making music is also really fun and not extremely hard to do. Yet still we continue to somewhat take it for granted. To me, music is a huge source of entertainment, but it is also a way for me to unwind and relax, decompress after lots of work and stress. For me and many others, music is much more than just simple entertainment, it’s a safe haven, a place to escape to. Music—for me at least—takes me away to a place where I feel comfortable, safe and not have a care for what is going on, music is many things, but for everyone, music is very important. Also, who doesn’t like bumping Chief Keef in the shower? If you just think about taking music entirely out of your life for an entire day, what type of impact would it have on you? How would you cope with things that you normally cope with through music? How else will you vent your negative emotions? When you realize how much music comes into play in your life, then you can start to see how much it really means to you, but more importantly what music can mean to not only you, but everyone else in the world around you. I love music, I listen to countless songs every day and I could never go without it. Music is very meaningful and has a pretty big part in the way I live my life.

A meaningful challenge. The Negro Speaks of Rivers and Black Panther are two poems that are fascinating to me and really have a message rather than in the past when I have just chosen a poem that seemed easy to memorize. Memorizing and becoming familiar with these two wonderful poems has taught me something not only about poetry but also about myself. First of all, Langston Hughes — the author of these two poems — is a wonderful poet who possesses an astounding way with words. His style and flow just melt onto the paper to create spectacular works of literature. I chose these poems for two reasons, one was that I love Langston Hughes’ fantastic writing style and two, these poems are very closely, if not directly, related to race struggles and the way the world was back when Langston Hughes was writing and living. In The Negro Speaks of Rivers, the poet talks about the dignity of his — and by extension most black peoples’ — soul. It is a simple poem with a much more complex meaning. In the second poem, Black Panther, Langston Hughes talks about his stance on the Black Panthers, and how he doesn’t approve of them, he feels they are a last resort for a desperate people looking for a truth to speak in the face of powerful violence and injustice. The truth they find however is still a lie, the truest of oldest lies, and through this he implies that vengeance will never overcome injustice. I loved committing these poems to memory and getting to know them better because it helped me see poetry in a whole new light and they also assisted me in finding a phenomenal poet with an extreme talent for words.

By: Ben Lisa & Edoardo Takacs

A fun classic

At the end of the day, if I can say I had fun, it was a good day - Simone Biles

              As Patrick Süskind said, not a visible enthusiasm but a hidden one, an excitement burning with a cold flame. Around the World in Eighty Days was a wildly exciting classic that surprised me at every twist and turn that made me realize reading could actually be fun, who knew. Through all the old English, odd 1875 sayings and parts of the world back then I didn’t understand, I just read the book and had fun. Around the World in Eighty Days taught me that sometimes it’s better to enjoy cool things rather than to try and process and think about every little detail. The book helped me see that doing that can often ruin things. I started reading this book because it was the first one Fitz out in my hand. I thought it would just be another book that I would go through the motions of and not really enjoy. It ended up being one of my favorite books I’ve ever read. I will never judge a book by its first couple chapters again because I stuck with this book and the end result was great. In reading this book, I learned that even reading can be fun. I learned how exciting it can be to read a good classic. I learned how satisfying it can be to finish a good old piece of literature. This re-introduced me to fun reading, and showed me stick with a book no matter how boring or flat the beginning is. I recommend everyone, not just teenagers, should go and try to find a great classic book and to just read it, but most importantly, enjoy the book. For anyone who doesn’t like reading, such as myself, I will say to always try and stick with a book. If you get to the middle and you still don’t like it, then go ahead and get a new book but at least stick with it until then, because just because it has a slow start doesn’t mean it’s not an 100 mph book.