Monday Muses: A Collection of My Monday Muse Inspired Poetry

This first poem was written after reading a poem called Harlem on a Winter Night, by Kofi Awoonor, that contains the phrase "eternal nightmare" and I was inspired to write off of that line, this poem is my interpretation of the phrase "eternal nightmare".

Eternal Nightmare
This world we live in
Is an eternal nightmare
Yet somehow it's also
A fantasy society
A persons eyes change the world around them
To match their personality
The bad people live in
Eternal nightmares
Running, hiding from their punishment
In our world, the kind ones live in
A fantasy world
Where there isn't punishment surrounding them
But eternal nightmares and fantasy worlds,
They mix
And they neutralize each other
To become the real world
These two alternate societies
Are just a vision
Of ones guilt


This next poem was inspired by Malala Yousafzai. She is young girl who was shot on the left side of the face by the Taliban, when fighting for women's rights. After hearing about her story in a video on nytimes.com, I was inspired by her story and decided to write off of her idea that nobody / nothing can stop her, not even a bullet. (Here is a link to the video we watched, http://thelede.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/07/12/video-of-malala-yousafzai-at-u-n-calling-on-world-leaders-to-provide-education-to-every-child/?_r=1)

They tried
They tried to silence her with a bullet
To stop a threatening little girl
To stop her from changing everything
They chose to stop her
With a bullet
They thought a simple
Pull of a trigger
One single shot
Would stop her
It didn't
It empowered her
She's speaking for everyone
The women
The girls
The boys
She speaking to make a difference
They tried to silence her with a bullet
But she didn't quit
They failed


This final poem is inspired by yet another poem called My Childhood, that we read in class, written about a man, named Matthew Zapruder's childhood memories. His metaphoric tone inspired me to write something similar to his writing, yet not exactly the same tone. I decided to try and "I remember" type poem. Although I'm still a child, this poem is about the changes made from elementary school to middle school.

Were all grown up
I remember
When at lunch you could sit with whoever you wanted
Before people became rude and conceited
And cliques were  formed to be pushed out of
When everyone was friends
And boys had cooties
I remember
Wearing clothes that were chosen for me
And calling teachers by their first names
When we weren't judged by the board of education on our test taking skills
And we were homework free, carefree
I remember life without
The stress
The pressure
The  scariness  of growing
I remember  wanting to grow up faster