Poetry Festival will be held:

Saturday, April 27, 2024

2016 Winner

Messed Up

I am a person

the one you look at every day

I have feelings

the kind that make some people stay away

I ask myself Who am I? Only

because I’m afraid, I get up every morning

brush my teeth with Crest White toothpaste

the kind that makes your teeth want to

scream and say YAY! I’m clean!

Who are you?

 

the nomadic child

never cares about their who’s and whereabouts

the one that gets notorious off of lame Instagram

pictures the ones where your lips are

puckered and your body curved like a horseshoe

and halfway exposed with

your butt all out and you’re barely dressed in clothes

Who is she?

 

The man that lives lavish

whose younger daughter is a savage

whose son is locked up and got famous

for selling drugs

The man who cares about nobody but himself

The one who has bottles of Ciroc on his shelf

Who is he?

 

The one who thinks she’s Beyoncé but deep down

inside she’s afraid of herself she thinks

she is meager

but when men come around she gets eager

just to know she’ll have money in her hands

because cash does

nothing but make her dance … in those shoes

she doesn’t have

a clue that what she does can affect her so much

but those silver poles

put food on the table for her because deep down

inside she knows her life

isn’t stable

Then I think again and ask

Who are we?

 

We are the people of our nation we sabotage

things and destroy others’ feelings

I wish I could say that I love the universe I live

in but everything we do is always

considered a sin.

 

We are dexterous deep down inside our hearts

which we think is enormous but what we fail

to realize is that the size … the size is very small

because we don’t stand up

for each other and we don’t stand tall!

For what we believe don’t be afraid …

don’t be afraid to cry, it’s okay. We are docile and

if we cry it’s a sign of weakness but if we hold it

inside there would be nothing but darkness

cold like the North Pole while this hatred is

stopping some from reaching their goals.

Yet I wish … I wish that I was audible … I wish

that he felt solace with all his children

the one in jail, the savage, and the one he

doesn’t speak to

I wish that she could just be culpable and take

the blame for what she has done

and try to be someone new

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most of all I wish that we as a family could just

come together as one and this is coming from I

as “I” write this poem

I hope that you can see being I isn’t as hard

as being He, She, You or We

I just love being I because

You is nomadic,

He is living lavish,

She is meager,

and I …

I brush my teeth with Crest White toothpaste

while I go into the world a bit afraid

but I guess that is what family is for

I am just unknown and my family

doesn’t care anymore

So I wish I could stay I forever and pray for

my family so everything would get better

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Elissa Khoury

Parkmont School

Grade: 8

Hometown:

Washington, DC

Birthplace:

Montgomery County

Favorite Author or Book:

Money Hungry

Dream for the Future:

Journalist and Fashion Designer

Inspirational Figure:

My mother