Liya, 11th- Oakland, CA
USA
The land of the free 
Think about it how free can we really be
People blinded by the fact we not really free
People crossing countries and sailing seas
Just to see
And to be judged by skin color, race and the way you eat
This is America "the place to be" ain't no place can beat
A country that's divided by multiple sides 
And everyone stuck up in their own
We searchin' for bones 
Come on
We need to do better
We all been through stormy weather with hopes it will get better

We kneel down we pray for those whose bodies hit the ground 
Shot by supposed protection
How am I suppose to feel safe
When the ones that "protect and serve" got the nerve to be loud and disturb the peace but
But there was never peace
The ones that stood up are deceased 
Very little violence we just spoke
Yet our number one leaders were smoke 

We came a long way from being captives 
America's history has long chapters
But it doesn't stop the fact most prisons are filled with blacks and it's wack 
I'm tired 
I'm tired of being a statistic  
Because of my color, I'm considered a misfit so if you have the time just listen 
Just listen, please 

There are things we need to work out 
When you speak they close your mouth 
Filling your mind with nonsense 
Hiding the true facts 
Our education is trash, bring the culture back
The war on is being swept underneath the map 
While there's big facts being shown behind a colored glass 
Corruption is such an assumption but only truly a fact
Born to have a number slapped on my back
We have to win cause they don't expect us to pass
They time is slow because it moves fast 

Open your eyes the best way you can survive in this country is if your white 
The unfairness in this country isn't right  
I want to fight 
I want change 
But America loves fixing problems with bandaids 
Rip them off 
Let's heal these wounds 
I wake up every morning wondering if things will change before I meet my doom 
We say we want change but never take that step 
If we don't work together, how are we considered the best

I get it 
We have fresh food and water 
But ourselves and other people we slaughter 
Killed by the guns we love 
Agitated by the clouds we make
"In God we trust"
Murdered by people of the same faith 

The clock is ticking its time for change
If we don't get it 
It's us to blame

emoney, 9th - Oakland, CA
Darkness lurks and like light it beams
I learned that one day while I was at a stream
All that meets the eye isn’t as it seems

He said good day and I said okay
I think I kind of like him but
Darkness lurks and like light it beams

His looks were stunning
Like he’d been sunning but
All that meets the eye isn’t as it seems

When I told my friends
They laughed coldly and said
Darkness lurks and like light it beams

Oh how I longed for his love but
He broke me to pieces and left me alone
All that meets the eye isn’t as it seems

How I wish I’d have listened
When it was once told
Darkness lurks and like light it beams
All that meets the eye isn’t as it seems

A, 8th- Oakland, CA
Remember just a couple of weeks ago where you might’ve been actually happy. When you could interact with people socially, and literally be alive.  When you looked forward to seeing your friends because you knew you would be happy and have fun with them. Fun. You’d have fun. You’d laugh with your friends in person, and see them smile with you. You’d be able to feel so good knowing that you were around people that cared about you, and you cared about them. But, now you’re alone. Probably stuck in your room, craving the feeling you had with others. Fun.

You can’t rely on other social people to be entertained by, so you’re stuck on a screen all day. And honestly, it’s the only thing keeping you sane. Or maybe, it what’s driving you insane, too. I don’t know really, maybe both. But in reality, it the only thing you can and will do.  The only thing that’s bringing you “fun”, or an idea of it. And remember that feeling where you knew you’d be happy? You’d go to sleep and then wake up everyday knowing that you’d see who you made you possibly happy, or maybe someone who made you excited. Either way, maybe you’d look forward to it. At the same time, you’d know what to expect. You’d see them. But now, we’re only playing one game, the waiting game.

We can only wait every moment of every day to see what will happen next. It’s so frustrating to not know what will happen next, unlike before. We knew, or we thought we knew, what would happen the next day. Up until these past couple of weeks, you were able to be with others. Now, you can only imagine it. Crave it. Maybe you’re imagining plans you had with your favorite people. Of course, now, you can only imagine what it would be like. Maybe they were canceled. All you can do, all everyone can do is wait. Wait for fun to come back, or whatever fun was, anyways.

Aditi, 11th - San Ramon, CA
What’s in a name
besides history and turmeric powder,
bloodline and hibiscus roots,
and truth playing atop a mango bough?

Jhumpa is no Nilanjana,
but nicknames chime sweeter than cumin-spiced
syllables for strangers to cough
through (better for business too).

Yet when my father stumbles on
the sticky branches of homographs and idioms,
no one bends their trunks of pompous language
to make room for him to pass through.

So thank God my father slashed the mango pulp
of his surname
in half and grafted it to my newborn roots. Short
enough to escape crooked tongues, though

the yellow smear of a bitter-flavored accent lingers
to remind me: had I not been born in the land of the
free,
these lines would have rhymed enough,

and this name would be mine.

"WHILE PEOPLE MAY BELIEVE THAT SOCIAL MEDIA HELPS TURTLES, IT ACTUALLY  IN NO WAY DOES"
Lord_JABARR, 6th - Oakland, CA
For a long time now, sea turtles have been an endangered species. Sadly, one of if not the most problematic reason for the sea turtle’s collective demise is human beings. I doubt there is anyone who is clueless about the plummeting sea turtle population. Sea turtles are dying, and it's our fault. Whether it’s because of how much we dump our plastic into their homes, or even the people who wait every year for the turtles to come back to their home beach to lay their young, then they kill the adults and take the eggs. On social media, there are people who spread awareness and think they are helping to save these cuties, but at the same time there are people who do the action of saving turtles. Thousands of turtles are killed by pollution every year. What are the people on social media doing to stop this? Take Seaworld Orlando for example they help in many ways!

Sea turtles are a special kind of animal, and a special one that’s worth rescuing. There are people who care deeply about the well-being of all sea turtles, like the employees of Seaworld Orlando. At Seaworld, they take in sick and/or injured . People call there in order to get the turtles into Seaworld it’s kind of like 9-1-1 for sea turtles. Sea turtles often mistake plastic bags for jellyfish and suffocate themselves.

#Save The Turtles is trending, but just saying something doesn’t always mean you are actively helping that cause. While people like the employees of Seaworld Orlando are helping the turtles pulling those plastic straws out of their noses, but like Seaworld, social media in some ways helps spread the word of the turtles current situation. Still there are jokes made about turtles and their deaths to straws even though their situation isn’t something to joke about.

Seaworld Orlando isn’t as known while #Save The Turtles is trending, but which of these things are helping the turtles? Seaworld is pretty much healing turtles and making them suitable to go back in the ocean even after their injury. While social media is super popular, everyone has some account, but they really don’t do much. So which one is better? Something that helps turtles by healing their injuries, or something that shows people just talking about saving the turtles--not actually doing it. Still  people continue making fun of them for death by plastic straws? I don't think that this should be something that is admired.

H, 11th - Oakland, CA
Heaven where only the good goes mom says
Heaven where life's secrets unfold dad says
Heaven where nice people go brother says

Where's Heaven?

No food in the cabinet
No warm water
Mom is working hard not to miss a payment

Where's Heaven?

Heaven where there's kool-aid barbecue chicken, and tacos mom says
Heaven where everyone you loved and lost is waiting for you dad says
Heaven where the streets are made of gold brother says

Where's Heaven?

Bullets shattered my window
Bullets killed my brother
Where the — is heaven?

Where's Heaven?

Heaven where all the bad gets kicked out mom says
Heaven where there is no more fighting dad says
Heaven won't look like this baby girl

Where's Heaven?

I fall and cant get up

Ay it’s yo brother again Heaven is beautiful you ain't got
to worry no more just keep working you
will find your way up here

Wyeth, 8th - Los Angles, CA
(Artist E.Degas)
The man gently sits himself down before the easel; the stool creaking below him. His all-black funeral garments are itchy, but he doesn’t shed them yet. Instead, he allows for the lingering scent of sadness clinging to the cloth to send his mind into a sort of psychedelia.

All his brain can see through the shades of black and blue is his face, the face of his father, the banker; who now sleeps six feet under the ground, who always used the pretentious spelling of his last name. Augustin de Gas - what a very grand name for only a moderately wealthy man. His father, the banker; how he dreamt for him, his eldest - Augustin had five children, yet none could ever compare to Edgar, the oldest, Edgar, the lawyer - because remember, you must be a lawyer, Edgar - Edgar, the boy who made a room in their house into an artist’s studio, the boy who changed his last name to the less pretentious spelling, the boy whose father wanted him to go to law school, the boy who did.

That boy, no longer a boy, is the one who rests on the stool; staring at a blank canvas. He has finished law school - Faculty of Law of the University of Paris, how very grand and pretentious; his father had loved it - and traveled the globe; copying the masters of the Renaissance. Art has always been a hobby - nobody will ever like anything you make, boy - nobody will ever like anything he makes, but now, with his younger brother spiraling into business debt, now, with the family name - De Gas, how very grand and pretentious for a lower upper class family - on the line, now he must sell his house, now he must sell his work, now people must like his work, now they must like his soul etched into paper, now they must like him. Now, in order to preserve his father’s dignity, Edgar - the boy with a man’s face, the man with a boy’s eyes - must do the very thing his father hated.

Paint, boy, he can hear his father whispering from the grave.

And he, the boy who always does what his father asks, paints.

Small, frenzied strokes born out of the blackness of his funeral clothes. Pale pink pastels spilling across the page. Tints pulling a sense of movement - no, not pulling, exploding kinesthesia outward. Little girls in tutus performing for their dance master who leans on a long cane, staring indifferently. One girl, a center girl, twirls and twirls and twirls; around and around and around - the master does not care. But does she?

He paints.
And he paints.
And he paints.
And, for the first time in a long time, he smiles.

Bortybo, 11th - Oakland, CA
In Samuel Beckett’s award winning play, “Waiting for Godot”, the audience follows the mind boggling dialogue between Estragon and Vladimir as they endlessly wait for someone, or something, labeled: Godot. They cross paths with the equally strange Pozzo and Lucky, who, like Estragon and Vladimir, also seem to not know what they are doing. The indirect use of language leaves room for much interpretation and forces the reader to conclude their own meaning of what the play is trying to get at. The perplexing story and eccentric behavior expressed by the characters in “Waiting for Godot” symbolizes and mocks humanity’s search for purpose and overall way we choose to live our lives as a society.

The endless cycle of waiting shown by the characters represents the futile attempt to find meaning in life. Pozzo, Lucky, Estragon, and Vladimir all wait for their purpose, whatever it may be, and they wait without questioning what they are waiting for or why. Pozzo, expressing his fear of futility, laments, “but is it enough, that’s what tortures me, is it enough?” (Beckett 30). Pozzo is overwhelmed by the fact that no matter what he decides to do in life, in the end his actions may all be pointless. Meaning in life cannot be achieved by simply waiting for it to find you, you must go out and experience life and search for purpose itself.

Pozzo anxiously ruminates with Estragon and Vladimir on how time will inexorably pass, marked by the light of day slowly losing its hues until it comes to rest in darkness. He exclaims, “but behind this veil of gentleness and peace night is charging and will burst upon us pop! Like that! Just when we least expect it” (Beckett 29). Pozzo expresses his anxiety surrounding the fact that we have no control over the passage of time and what is to come as a result. The path of accepting indeterminism over fatalism will predict people's attitudes towards the future and what it has in store for them, that being good or bad. Pozzo invokes the idea that it doesn't matter when something is to happen, because eventually, with time, it will happen. He aims them to the point that they might as well live in the present and disregard all anxiety directed toward the when of life and to break their redundant performance of doing the same thing looking for different results.

Vladimir analyzes society’s perpetual bond with habit, showing how habit can interfere with one’s ability to achieve a meaningful existence. Vladimir comes to the realization that he’s been living his life in a cycle devoid of meaning. He laments on this fact saying, “we have time to grow old. The air is full of our cries. But habit is a great deadener” (Beckett 81). Vladimir has become the stereotype of people. He lives a life situated around a single goal of waiting for purpose and repeats the same tedious process to achieve it, which he now knows will never help him. By living this life composed solely of routine, the only thing that is guaranteed is that he will grow old and die. Unfortunately for Vladimir, he knows far too well at this point that in the end, his life of meaningless perpetual habit will result in a meaningless end. He comes to this conclusion while thinking aloud to himself and asking, “when I wake or think I do, what shall I say of today? [...] I waited for Godot? That Pozzo passed, with his carrier, and that he spoke to us? Probably. But in all that what truth will there be? He’ll know nothing” (Beckett 81). The reflection of one’s existence being forged in habit will conclude to having learned nothing. Vladimir bears uncertainty about everything in his life due to the fact that the truth of his existence rests upon him living in a endless routine that leaves him in a stand still lacking progression.

The basis of the play “Waiting for Godot” ridicules the way humans try to find meaning in their existence and how society forces people to obtain purpose through routine. One way this is represented is through the perpetual waiting the characters undergo by waiting for godot. Vladimir shows the audience that humanity’s bond with habit can take away from finding true meaning in life. The relation to real life and society found in “Waiting for Godot” is used to show what an awful template for life society and its constructs have left people with. Making it harder to find meaning in day to day lives, making it more difficult to connect with the world around us and leaving us with an empty soul.

Daisy A, 11th - Oakland, CA
In my deep dreadful slumber, I dreamt
Of new beginnings and different endings
Brighter days and darker nights
Warmer winters and cooler summers
But the polar bears still drowned

As they abandoned the abysmal air, I inhaled the burnt oxygen
As they swam, I waited for the elevator to reach the 40th floor
They fought to reach the top but I fought to stay on the bottom
I never realized how important it is to fearlessly float
In the end we both saw green

When I was awakened by the assailants
I lifelessly ran without fear or fraudulence
I swiftly fell off the steep bumpy faith glacier
Then I realized I was looking in a cracked mirror, still asleep
Not even the pleading roars could wake me

Never late, always early
Better to be safe than sorry
Better to be sweet than salty
It's better to be alive than dead
But not when the struggle is among the breathing ignorants

Threatening silence rules over the loud noise
But one word can shatter the silence into a million pieces.

by Nalli 10th
We’re running in an open field, leaving behind us nothing but a black sky, big enough to swallow us whole, big enough to make us feel like we are insignificant specks of dust.

I wish the Milky Way would come down and scoop me up,
“Will you pick me up from school today? I feel sick.”
I want to float, be cradled by the stars.
Will the universe do me a solid?

I know people won’t always be around to hold my hand, even when I am scared, because there are things you just have to do all on your own with no one to hold your hand.

And there is this relentless voice in my head that is always telling me everything is going to be just fine, and even looking up at the sky the smoke practically spells out “YOU'RE OK.”
Yet I still struggle to believe.

From the tip of your head, to the heels of your feet, you are made of particles and stars, a cosmic milkshake. You matter. I can see the significance in even the tiniest things that you do.

And I'll always want to hold your hand.

I had a nightmare a few winters ago, I was floating in the middle of this pool, my body full of peace. I could hear the water moving around me, crashing on the concrete. Then all of a sudden, I felt every feeling, person, everything I have ever known slam into my chest.

It took the form of a shark right before my eyes, this giant mess of a shark, all teeth and fins. Floating right in front of me.
Then with this crazy speed, he bit into my stomach.
And all these butterflies spilled out as he started to laugh.
He said “You taste disgusting.”

My stomach hurts, bring me a butterfly net and, please,  try to catch everything that escapes my body.
Put it into a jar and label it “You’re Ok.”