A great poem helps resuscitate our sense of wonder. Whether it’s an intricately wrought ode to ancient urns or a plain-spoken image of a red wagon among leaves of grass, words memorably strung together can remind us that existence itself is extraordinary. The Independent is happy to team with the Santa Barbara Public Library annually to present a selection of prize-winning sensory wake-up calls culled from Santa Barbara’s fledgling bards. They help us recall that the hollow trunk of a tree, the celebration of birds, and even the simple fact of a dull knife can return us to ourselves.
First Place
Song of Believing
You must know
This moment-this is not about you
This is about sitting, cross-legged, under
a tree
This is about tasting the wind and knowing how sweet the birds sing
When it is nearly nightfall and they believe themselves invisible
This is about the blades of grass that flicker up from the warm ground
Like messengers from a beautiful, hidden world
This is about the simple complexity of nature
This is the pure, uninterrupted song of the earth
A singing that comes from nowhere and everywhere
A beautiful, discordant paradox of a harmony
This is about walking home in the dark
Believing the song will deliver you
To that place where a fire burns and warm food cooks
Civilization: it is comforting but altogether too tame and unsatisfying
For the song cannot be heard from inside closed doors
It lives only in the hollow trunk of a tree, in the celebration of birds,
In the darkness, which can lift a man up
And return him to that original vulnerability,
The place where trust is supremely vital
So you must know, now
This moment-this is not about you
This is about a song that is made more of feelings than notes
A song of closing your eyes and feeling your way through the dark
-Amber Harrington, 11th Grade Santa Barbara High School
Second Place
The troubles of Nobelium
If I were made of Nobelium, my life would be different.
Every 58 minutes half of my body would disappear.
I would make everybody around me sick.
I would be a little overweight, at about 23,101 lb.
I could withstand temperatures up
to 1,521° F.
For now I’ll stick with H O.
-Aaron Eidelson, 11th Grade Santa Barbara High School
Third Place
Untitled
i’d be more popular if i didn’t speak my mind
and my voice was less annoying
maybe if i wore a push-up bra
and drank til i was snoring
and maybe bought a brand new car
(used up my college funds)
and maybe rote my wurds like this
commended war and guns
and maybe if it didn’t work
i’d change the way i look
and suck up to the nearest jerk
and burn my all my textbooks
so damn my mom, for teaching me
a mind all of my own
and damn my dad, for teaching me
the truth that should be known
if they’d all just let me snort a bit
and go party late at night
i’d run and jump and play and sit
my IQ’d drop out of sight
but now i have a brain to use
and a trap that can’t be shut
i can’t help but think how great life’d be
if i was a slut
-Anonymous, 10th Grade Carpinteria High School
Fourth Place
Purple
I live in the veins of an old woman’s hand
I am the sky at twilight
A dusty aged amethyst ring, and
The swirling color of paint
A robust glass of wine
Let us dine! Let us dine!
With the shiny young skin of an eggplant
-Padina Nolt, 11th Grade Santa Barbara High School
Fifth Place
A Love Letter to Anonymity :
I love the delicious taste of your attention
I love the cool breeze of rejection that smells like your specificity as you stride past without recognition of me
I love when you forget my name, and, embarrassed and flustered, call me by the name of your cat or ex-girlfriend
I love the radiance of your dysfunction and the cacophonous cadence of your depression
I love that you are ignorant of my sins, my attributes and my being
I love that you will never laugh at my insecurities that have so eloquently summed up my passion
I love the cruelty of your voice which flickers out from behind your perfect teeth like the conflagration in a dragon’s mouth
I love the sound of your disdain as it matches my pace in the hallway, stride for stride
I love the passionate way your hair shields the top of your eyes from my penetrating gaze, how I can never look you in the eye
I love how you taunt me with your flippant shoes and unnecessary belt buckle
I love the cold sweat that forms in the crevices of my breast when you touch the fine hairs that line my hands
I love the torture of watching you leave my presence
I love the girl whom you do not ignore, the girl whose body you know like the pattern of the well-worn tee-shirt I gave you three years ago for your birthday
I love my anonymity
-Rachel Love, 11th Grade Santa Barbara High School
Junior High School
First Place
Dull Knife
In Santa Barbara
There’s an apartment
In that apartment is my home
In my home there is a kitchen
In my kitchen there’s a cabinet
In that cabinet there’s a drawer
In that drawer there is a tray
In that tray there is a dull knife
-David Lopez, 8th Grade La Cumbre Junior High School
Second Place
My Life as a Severed Foot
I’m a foot,
Well a detached one I should say.
My owner abandoned me.
He left me alone in the streets.
I didn’t know what to do,
I became a homeless foot.
I couldn’t do anything,
Especially without opposable thumbs.
But one day,
A light of hope,
Shined in the distance.
Well, actually it was a car’s headlight.
The car hit me of course.
But out of that car,
Came Hope.
Yes, a girl named Hope,
The girl who helped me out of this predicament.
She befriended me,
She took me home.
And one day she told me a secret,
She had lost a foot.
So she took me to the hospital,
And finally we were connected together forever,
Surgically.
-Chris Siefe, 8th Grade La Colina Junior High School
Third Place
Four Seasons
A baby deer awakes,
Ducklings arise from
Their nest,
Birds glide across the water,
And a new life has begun
Temperatures begin to rise
Animals begin to sunbathe,
A child is free
And summer has arrived
As it gloats from its throne,
Children dive down into the water
Splash!
But slowly the throne
That once so greedily ruled
Disappears into a pile of leaves
Children line up and a new teacher
Says “Hello”
Fall has taken over
A leaf falls like a snowflake
So daintily floating without care
Squirrels gather nuts the color of amber
Owls begin to hoot later at night
The sun changes the hours of day
And a turkey is served
After the feast,
All is quiet
Until the whisper of
The first snowfall leaves a cloud
And in comes winter
Snowballs fly,
The aroma of a
Christmas tree fills the air,
Presents are passed around
Everything is at peace
A new year arrives
Rain splatters the ground
Animals go to sleep
And dew glistens on the
Morning grass
Then suddenly in the month
Of March
A baby deer awakes
Ducklings arise from
Their nest,
Birds glide across the water,
And a new life has begun
-Katie Tovar, 6th Grade, Mountain View Elementary School
Fourth Place
Don’t Judge a Book
by Its Cover
Don’t judge a book by its cover,
As people always say,
This saying quite confuses me,
In many different ways.
If you don’t judge a book by its cover,
Then what do you judge it by?
Title? Author? Publisher?
But not its cover, why?
What goes around comes around,
Isn’t always true
Why do people say this?
If I only knew.
If you pass your cookie around,
You may never get it back
But those you pass it to,
Will get a tasty snack!!
-Kelsey Rich, 8th Grade, La Colina Junior High School
Fifth Place
Finger Painting
The clean smile of the paper,
The different colors in front of your eyes,
Each little boy and girl staring
At the paper smile up at them,
Like a change of a traffic light or
A blow of a whistle
The colors splattered, each finger a different color,
Hand prints on each page, big, small, fat, or thin,
Everyone’s a different color
On their own skin.
-Skye McGill, 8th Grade, La Cumbre Junior High School
Gabriela Mistral Prize
Olvidar
Me preguntan que si te he de olvidar,
Olvidar piensas que he de olvidar
Ese cuerpo tu yo moldeado por los
Mismos ¡ngeles, olvidar tus ojos,
Dos perlas hermosas, tu boca, dos petalos
De la flor mas preciada de este jard-n, dime que harias
T°?
-Jes°s Olivo Nicol¡s, 8th Grade La Cumbre Junior High
4•1•1
The Young People’s Poetry Contest winners will read their work at the Santa Barbara Public Library’s Townley Room tonight, Thursday, April 17, from 7-8:30 p.m. For more information, call 564-5621.