Great Poem By Emily Dickinson - Death

Because I could not stop for Death,
He kindly stopped for me;
The carriage held but just ourselves
And Immortality.

We slowly drove, he knew no haste,
And I had put away
My labor, and my leisure too,
For his civility.

We passed the school, where children strove
At recess, in the ring;
We passed the fields of gazing grain,
We passed the setting sun.

Or rather, he passed us;
The dews grew quivering and chill,
For only gossamer my gown,
My tippet only tulle.

We paused before a house that seemed
A swelling of the ground;
The roof was scarcely visible,
The cornice but a mound.

Since then 'tis centuries, and yet each
Feels shorter than the day
I first surmised the horses' heads
Were toward eternity.

Children's Book

I never realized how talented children's book authors are until I had to make one for my creative writing class. Seriously, with a kids book you have to come up with an age appropriate moral and an interesting story all in one. My writing was laughably bad for this assignment; I wrote about a girl who was too tall but felt better after seeing how tall the giraffes were. Plus, we had to illustrate it, and I'm definitely no drawer. For that I turned to my scrapbooking. This is my favorite page from my 10 page book, mainly because of the illustration (I didn't draw the giraffe or the lion, I just printed them from google images).

For the ground, I used a bunch of different colors of brown torn up paper and a little bit of brown paint. The same goes for the pond & the greenery.

Poem- Satriani

That's actually not the title, I'm just supremely lazy and horrible with titles. It is a line from the poem though. This is from an assignment we did titled "Home & Family"

A riff
a string
Satriani
a rattle
a pot
overflowing
a puff
a mattress
Inflating
a click
a key
Opening
A shriek
a hug
my family's home

Poem- Change

Modeled after a soliloquy from Shakespeare's Macbeth.
I think I really like this one because it's more formalized/very stylistic. I don't ordinarily like non free verse poems of mine, but this one is a bit whimsical.

Yesterday, and today, and tomorrow,
Change creeps in on stockinged feet from dawn till dusk
Greeting victims with deceptive smiles;
And all our yesterdays are seemed forgotten
'Till tomorrow appears. Come, come, dear change!
Life's but a still sailboat; a ship without wind,
That rocks and sails the quiet endless sea,
Searching for a port; it is a life
Unwanted by the living, bereft of passion,
Signifying nothing

Snapshots - San Diego Harbor, Coronado Island, Star of India

Poem - Where I come From

I come from a picture of my family

Twelve of us, together at once
Frozen in the animate language
Of laughter

I can etch out
The faces, trace their smiles
And say, she is me, second to the left
In the bottom row, between sister and mother
Yet I am not her.

I was once her
Dwarfed by my siblings
If not in size, but in sheer life
Caught between the states of impression
And self
Wondering who I was

Their faces are confident
Fleshed out, dimensional and whole
Whereas she is parchment paper
Transparent, flat, only an outline
A cartoon character
Not the lead heroine in her life

She is uncomfortable, uneasy
Uncertainty comes to life
In a black dress and high heels
Her face mirrors theirs, laughing,
But her eyes are pleading
For experience, for character

She does not yet identify
She does not yet embody
She does not know who she will emulate
Or follow, or become,
In her quest of self

And yet her body tilts
Aligns with her family
Surrounded by love and laughter,
And acceptance
And in the flash of a camera
She becomes me

I am from my family
I am the ninth, the sometimes overlooked
The always loved
But I,
I am myself
And myself comes from within me

Arizona Snapshot - Phoenix Zoo Lights

I went to Zoo Lights at the Phoenix Zoo last Christmas and this was my favorite picture. They clothe the zoo in thousands of colorful lights, many of them around wires in shape of zoo animals. The best part is the line of lit palm trees set to music around the lake.