3 poems

'Free Verse'
22
The number that started it all
My uncle represented it
In everything including a ball
I loved it, every bit
His passing made me realize
To mourn for only a little
Cuz' I always see him with my eyes
And he lives through me, each and every day

"Acrostic'
Life
Loving every minute
Investing time in the important matter
Vanishing negative energy
Ignoring other predispositions
Navigating through hardship
Giving rather than receiving

Tone Pieces

It was mouthwatering, perfect even. The ham I ate was perfectly glazed in brown sugar and pineapple juice. I always give credit to my Grampie when its due. He always seems to blow my mind with his culinary genius. Easter is a time for religion and such, but you can't go wrong with a good Easter dinner. My grandfather definitely did this correctly.

The Easter celebration was no where near what I expected it to be. I was pissed to see the awful Easter ham glazed in the same gross sauce it is every year. I have no idea what my Grampie was thinking when he was cooking this horrendous piece of meat. I will surely never attend another Easter party ever again. I hate Easter.

Distillation

Conveying the theme of the harsh things people will do to discover advancements intellectually the narrator in the excerpt shows this thoroughly. Incorporating specific imagery, powerful hyperboles, and unique word choice to negatively define scientific intellectuals. The use of these devices showed the severity of the article, the author said, "cut them up, without a pang of remorse, into little pieces." The exaggeration of this conveyed a negative tone in order to portray this towards the intellectuals.

200 word sentence

Many games, when I have played my absolute heart out, realizing it could be my last game or my first championship, my emotions wrapped up in the complex rules, tendencies, and foundation of the game, like the way a little American boy loves his chocolate bars or candy, unfortunately only affecting my body and shoulders, illuminated by the immense amount of self-reward, described as hitting the game winning home run, making the game ending double play, or even just having an efficient day at the office, like a man with cubical duties at an insurance office or a law firm, giving responsibility to the player and his attributes, noticing the severity of the next at-bat with the uttermost importance of each and every play on the beautiful diamond, -many times I find myself going for long runs to decrease the buildup of lactic acid in my arm and in my joints, to ensure my best performance in each and every individual game, baseball gave me the chance to express many emotions I bottle up deep in my subconscious like that of rage, strength, and promise.

Angry Letter

Dear Vanessa,


Your bad behavior has to stop. It has been much too long since the last time your family has seen you. Your addiction has not only negatively impacted your life and your health, but it has been devastating to your loved ones. Do you know what its like? Do you know the pain we have felt the past five years? It's been hell, and I just wish you'd realize that. You were so happy and considerate as a young woman, but now its taken a turn for the worst. I hope you can understand that if you ever want to be back in this family you'll have to formally apologize to not only us, but most importantly your father.

I can't imagine you are having fun living on the street in god knows where. I doubt you like living like this. Living day by day, pay check to pay check. No one wants to be put into your shoes, and with help from your family it won't be as bad. We can help you begin to take the recovery steps by going to a clinic or something. You know my number and everyone else's. Just call me is all I ask.


Sincerely,
Keenan

unreliable narrator draft

Unreliable Narrator

 

                The clock finally struck six. It was time for us to carry out what we’ve been plotting for what had seemed like years. The day had dragged on because of my anxiety towards the situation at hand. It was finally my time to become rich.

Our group consisted of some of the dumbest people I had ever met in my entire life. These five strong, evasive men were just stupid enough, though. Most of them came from my high school nearly a decade back. There was Stevey, Boar, John Carlos, Snake, Tim, and then there’s me.

We all went out for a few drinks at our favorite pub before we went out for the heist. The waitress at our table noticed how Tim wouldn’t stop shaking.

“You alright there hun?” She said.

He looked incredibly nervous and looked up slowly, as if he really didn’t want to talk to her.  

“I just need another drink. Can I get the usual?” Tim replied.

                For some reason all I noticed was the deviant, evil look in our waitresses’ eye. I began to question if she was really even a waitress or not. I guess it was just the stress of the day that came over me.

                “Do you mind if I ask you a few questions before we head off?” I said.

                “Sure, go ahead and shoot.”

                With a somewhat stern tone I asked; “How come we have been going to this restaurant every Monday for the past five years, and you’ve never crossed our paths?”

                “Oh I started last week! Probably why you’ve never seen me” she replied.

                “Well alright then, I guess we should be going now.”

                This awkward exchange lead me to believe that the day wasn’t going to go as planned.

                We left the pub, and proceeded to Northeastern Bank just fifteen minutes down the street. We were equipped in our all black dodge van. There were several M5 rifles lined up in the trunk of our van with grenade launchers and red dot sights attached. It was safe to say we were ready to take down anyone or anything in the way of our target. Snake was our guns specialist, and he carefully loaded the weapons as we approached the destination. At this point my hands were clammy, and my body was sweating. I had a terrible feeling in the pit of my stomach that I couldn’t really describe. All I knew was that it was our time to shine. We got out of the van and put on our armor. We took the rifles, and signaled to Tim to stay in the car and be on the lookout.

                Five minutes and thirty seven seconds later, we carried out one of the toughest robberies Boston had ever seen. One thing was getting in the way of this, though. Our so called "waitress" was an FBI agent and ratted us out to the headquarters, "so that's the story behind it." The investigator replied with "Alright. We will escort you to prison tomorrow, and I hope you have a nice 25 years. It was nice talking with you." 

 

The Plot Sickens: Free-write & Reflection

The article The Plot Sickens by Franny Howe criticizes tendencies of young contemporary writers for multiple habits they possess. She begins by enlightening the audience to the violent attitudes and situations young writers include in their characters, and more importantly their stories. She conducted a study based on her college level class, and found that a few students included non-violent aspects to their writing. Howe stated, "Of the 20 stories generated by this assignment, only 5 had endings that could qualify as "happy"-endings, that is, in which a problem was resolved. All the others concluded with extraordinary violence." Ultimately, 75% of these writers included violence which supports her claim; students included stories that involved harm one way or another to the protagonist. She explains how this theme of violence doesn't enhance the plot in a positive way. She said, "For me it is not the violence per se; it is the fact that violence enters the story without benefit of plot, as if by metaphysical caprice." The predisposition of young contemporary writers is to offer as much mindless, deviant acts to spice up the text. Howe supports that this method is both unnecessary, and inefficient. She then goes on to criticize the structure of the plot of her student's writing, and shows their ineffectiveness to portray their stories. Howe explained, "Thus, in my student's writing, there is no confidence in any relationship between character, act, and outcome. The figures in their fictions are victims of hideous violence by accident; they commit crimes, but only for the hell of it; they hate, not understanding why they hate; they are loved or abused or depressed, and don't know why." Therefore, Franny Howe depicts young contemporary writers as people who include violence in their stories for no reason whatsoever, and it takes a toll on the potential of the writing as a whole.


My free write most certainly substantiates Franny Howe's claim that young writers include violence for almost no reason at all. I wrote about a brutal car crash in which a young boy gets hit by a car and dies. My story wasn't too bad, but could've been far better if I had principles of justice and reason. She was correct in her claim that my story had almost no reasoning behind the madness. I believe she was right in saying that students in our day and age think differently than in past years and decades. Howe stated, "To my mind, the changing role and character of violence in student fiction reflects a change in the way we imagine what will determine our destinies." I believe this is all too true because of the development of teenagers and students worldwide. We are more open to violence and violent acts, like that of my story. Therefore, Howe's claim is substantiated by my story, and I am kind of dumbfounded to say the least.