CGC (Christian Girls Chat) discussion

I was going through my old poetry and short stories, and wanted to share. :) I'd love criticism and commentary!

Prompt: Take something ugly and make it beautiful.

A beggar sitting on the street,
His dirty hands, and his dirty feet.
Is a chance for redemption, a plea for mercy.
A desire for acknowledgement, not an insult spoken tersely.
He offers a chance to the passerby,
To satisfy his hunger, soothe his thirst,
People come and people go, but no one stops to be the first.
Love, care, a little emotion, he is a beggar sitting on the street,
With dirty hands, and dirty feet.
He could be a lawyer, a doctor, a teacher,
A president in eight lives past, a soul-saving preacher.
But now – a beggar is what he is.
In that beggar is the potential for greatness,
In every body, the identity unclear, each one faceless.
There is naught much higher you can go from height,
But from lowliness, you cannot sink low beyond sight.
That beggar can be great, greater, the greatest –
Only because he is a beggar.
A beggar sitting on the street,
With dirty hands, with dirty feet.

I reach for a pool of words, but I’ve run dry. I wonder where to turn, my fingers dancing over keys – ignoring the whispers, the screams that buzz around me. I know there’s a problem, but here I sit, glued to the glisten of my flute’s polished silver, feeling my cheek rub against the varnish of a viola’s oak, and my fingers dancing over keys.

There’s a problem, there’s a huge one – my life is a mess and I’m falling apart – and there is no refuge but my selective ignorance. I choose not to see, not to hear, not to feel anything but the notes that swirl in front of me, the tinkle of sixteenth notes, and the sheer smoothness of my fingers dancing over keys.

When life is a hurricane, music is the one thing I know I can control – I can blast away and deafen, I can run my bow up and down my strings... deadly straight, I can play sweetly or ferociously, my fingers dancing over keys.

I write. I speak. I read. Words make me up, and I make up words; but sometimes they fail me. So I take a deep breath and blow into a mouthpiece. So I lose control of my arm, and let it attack and shred against the metal strings. So I pull up the bench, stare at the clearly outlined black and white, and have my fingers dancing over keys.

When I have no words to say, I simply play from my heart. Lyrics can only go so far – it’s when I feel the oak vibrate in my hands that I feel like I’ve said what I need to say. Only when I feel the silver grow hot between my fingers that I feel like my argument has been made. Only do I conclude my statement with my fingers dancing over keys.

And eventually the stiffness of the piano bench gets to me, the flute weighs too heavily in my hand, and my bow slides down down down... and I think that life is a lot like music. You learn all the rules – how to be polite, how to play a scale – how to work and sustain yourself, how to play loudly and softly – how to work with others, how to play in a group.

Yet all of that doesn’t make music good, and it also doesn’t make life good. Expression and feeling and emotion and nostalgia and all the little sentimental things make me sway to the beat, cause me to cry after the last note, dance to the groove... and life is only worth living, and music is only worth playing when you know all the rules – but do nothing but feel from that day on.

So when I listen to others play music, and when I play with them, I don’t remember what notes I’m supposed to follow or when I come in – I go by how it feels, and it’s the only real form of liberation in a democratic society. I let something else control the breaths I take, the rocking of my wrist, the fingers dancing over keys.

She walks down the hall; backpack slung over one shoulder – pink earbuds in both ears, breathing audibly, on the lookout. Tall leather boots click softly, her knitted sweater draping her figure attractively, hair curled and tossed to one shoulder. She’s waiting for him. Looking for him. Yearning for him.

She doesn’t want to. There’s nothing but a swell of emotion – bitterness, joy, hatred, jealousy, love – whenever he’s around. From the girls who stand in awe of all that he is, she has nothing to take but pain. She can’t stand sitting in the bleachers, tucking her dark jean skirt around her knees, watching him skate the length of the rink in his familiar gait – knowing that she loved him so much it hurt... and those girls only noting the evident attractive quality he possessed.

Only she knew the way he held his violin when he was nervous before a performance. Only she noticed the way his hair curled at the nape of his neck those hot summer days. Only she cared that he had a penchant for mandarin oranges in the early mornings. She watched the way his fingers strummed his guitar, ran up and down the piano keys, grasp a pen in hand. She watched the way his friends flirted with her, and the way he never seemed to notice – or if he did, he didn’t seem to care.

She had barely said two words to him, but every day, she slipped into the places he’d be, wishing and wondering whether he knew she existed. She couldn’t breathe when he played his solos on the guitar – every beautiful note she’d heard on those old vinyls were recreated in front of her with the same passion, the same emotion, and the same irrevocable feeling. She felt every throb, every downbeat, every shake of his finger that brought about his signature vibrato and her signature quick breaths.

Watching from afar... loving him more than any of his admirers could. Her hours spent on a piano bench, playing her heart out – all those notes blown out on the flute with him as concertmaster. Nights spent wondering whether she was a nameless face to him, or a faceless name...

These are very good, Sam. A few comma mistakes in the poem, but that's it. I liked them. :)

Thanks :) I have a slam poem I am thinking about performing for a coffee house. It's quite angry :P

Um, if I have a poem I wrote where do I post it?

StreAM wrote: "I reach for a pool of words, but I’ve run dry. I wonder where to turn, my fingers dancing over keys – ignoring the whispers, the screams that buzz around me. I know there’s a problem, but here I si..."

OH MY GOODNESS THATS GOOD SAM!!!

Jack wrote: "Um, if I have a poem I wrote where do I post it?"

u post it in the thread poems

StreAM wrote: "She walks down the hall; backpack slung over one shoulder – pink earbuds in both ears, breathing audibly, on the lookout. Tall leather boots click softly, her knitted sweater draping her figure att..."

crying..

Thank you!

Here is the slam poem I performed last week :)

IDEALS

She’s really perfect and pretty
And her skin is flawless and it’s a pity
That girls are struggling to look like she
Living with depression ‘cause they can’t be
Anything like she is. Not her symmetrical face
Or her faultless eyebrows and those lashes that grace
Her eyes that have been Photoshopped to a twinkling green
That can’t possibly be real.

He’s gorgeous and attractive
He’s a jock and he’s active
And all the guys want to be that way
It’s sad that that’s all that makes their girlfriends stay
And you say it’s cliché – but newsflash – we can’t even meet halfway

Because.
It’s what our society is now – every guy thinks they’ve got to get a girl who’s skinny and tanned and extremely hot – but nobody cares about that girl in the corner who shines as her own
Person, as who she is straight out from where she came from
Because guys don’t whistle when she walks by, or want her for her body
They only way she’ll get a date is because her dad drives an Audi

And it’s the same way with guys, all the girls want abs – it doesn’t matter if he’s dumb
Or a stupid jerk or an abusive player
He’s got abs and he’s hot – that’s what we ask for in our prayers
Because all the boys and girls on TV are that way
And popularity is swayed
Because of how much you weigh.

And we want to live like on the big screen
Like the celebrities under the bigtime spotlights
Who seem happy in the daytime but shoot drugs in the nights
Into into into their veins
Because they want relief from their chains
Can’t deal with the pain
Because they have to stay perfect and skinny and flawless
And being wasted or stoned is the only path to the solace
That we won’t give them, and they won’t give us
And so it’s like a cycle of pain plus
Fake joy and until we learn to appreciate people for who they are
Not for their six-pack or breasts or how they look on par
To our standards.

So every time a teen starves because skinny is what keeps them sane Every time
a teen cuts their wrists because they’ve fallen in love with the pain Every time
a teen risks skin cancer to go to the studio to get tanned Every time
a teen attempts suicide because no one helped them take a stand Every time
a teen struggles with depression because they can’t live up to everyone’s norm Every time
a teen throws up because their friends mock their form –

there is no one to blame but us.
Because we put up with it – we let other people tell us what to do
And what to look like and what to wear
We are a democratic country with a dictatorial air
If we were really free –
Then we would live to be
Not replicas of what we see
But fabrications of our own ideals.

that is

in itself

all i want to say

about today

I love IDEALS

Thank you! I made my class/teacher cry with that one :D

You told me all about it. :)

:D I'm sure I did, with all my babbling :P

Sam wrote: "I reach for a pool of words, but I’ve run dry. I wonder where to turn, my fingers dancing over keys – ignoring the whispers, the screams that buzz around me. I know there’s a problem, but here I si..."

This is absolutely wonderful. This is why I want to play an instrument.

Sam wrote: "She walks down the hall; backpack slung over one shoulder – pink earbuds in both ears, breathing audibly, on the lookout. Tall leather boots click softly, her knitted sweater draping her figure att..."

Beautiful. :)

Sam wrote: "Thank you!

Here is the slam poem I performed last week :)

IDEALS

She’s really perfect and pretty
And her skin is flawless and it’s a pity
That girls are struggling to look like she
..."

I have no words. :')

awwww! thanks Christal ♡

ikr.........:,)

SAM! HOW HAVE I NOT READ THESE?! Okay, well I've read some of them I think, but the Ideals one. DANG! So good! I love it! Of course you made you class and teacher cry! They'd be rather heartless if they didn't - so much emotion and substance to that one! I love it! *e-high five* <3

Thank youuuuu ♡

Sam wrote: "Thank you!

Here is the slam poem I performed last week :)

IDEALS

She’s really perfect and pretty
And her skin is flawless and it’s a pity
That girls are struggling to look like she
..."

I can't even think of words to describe how amazing that poem is.

sam's amazing, fact of life XD

awwwww thank you!!!!