'Verse in the Valley' High School Winners

The winners of the Scotts Valley Arts Commission’s annual “Verse in the Valley” poetry contest were announced at a June 6 city council meeting. There are first, second and third place winners in five different age group categories and a first place winner in the class poem category.

Scotts Valley Patch will run the winning poems in each category throughout the week. Today, we have the middle school category winners. Read the kindergarten through third-grade and class poem category winners here; the fourth- through fifth-grade category winners ; and the middle school winners .

First Place–Maggie Imboden

“Structure”

Cages of porcelain, frames of white

Thoughts of my bones keep me up in the night

Fragile and bendy, so easy to crack

Wonder how it would feel if one of them snapped

Squeeze my sides with two hands, feel the ribs bend

Trace the lines through my hips and my wrists and pretend

Rub skin in circles, like paper mache

Fingers tap collarbone, your piano to play

Roll shoulders back, feel muscles flex

Joints popping, skin stretching, the cracking of necks

Brittle and breakable, hollow and thrumming

Put hands on my heart and hear my pulse humming

Feel them curve, feel them twist, feel them crackle and grind

Xylophone spines, like shells all aligned

Put together your bones, picture piece by piece

Femurs and ulnas slide into their sheaths

Fill my gaps, hold me up, build me up from the core

All I need is some structure, no less and no more

No bones and I’d just be a puddle of skin

Be my bones for me, and I’ll let you come in

Second Place–Mei Manzo

“Speaking Up”

Knowing I should, but

Feeling I can’t

These limitations

Are none but my own.

Every word is a stone

Waiting to be thrown

Brain and bone,

Imitation of what I should be.

Raise my hand in class, a lonely flag

In a sea of silent air

An offering to the potential

Of the Future Me.

The words fly out

Trembling and unsure

Birds taking flight from a nest of brewed thoughts.

Skipping so freely, these

Stones grace the clear lake

Made a boat to sail across

The longer silent sea.

No longer unaware,

(A breath of fresh air)

No longer naïve

(A drink of cool water)

I am free

(Stones that don’t sink)

Free to be me.

Third Place–Alyssa Elliott

“The Pain”

The pain

It’s slowly eating away at you

Bit by bit,

Smile by smile,

Most people can’t see it,

But your eyes betray more than you think they do

And I can see the silent hurt that you carry with you at all times

The pain

It’s a hurt deep down inside of you

But it’s slowly making its way to the surface

I can see the life in your eyes fading away

And the hurt and the heartache replacing it

Soon you’ll just be a shell of the person you once were

And that time is getting closer everyday

The pain

It’s changed you

The spark is gone

And now you’re dull and lifeless

And your smiles are fleeting and sad

I want the old you back so badly

The happy you

The pain

It was brought on by the evil of the world

They wanted to take your happiness

And break it

They couldn’t stand to see you smile

And now you’re suffering

It’s hurt deeper than words could ever express

The pain

It was caused by cruel words and ugly lies

That these people threw at you

That aren’t true and never have been

And I wish you would realize that

And I wish that the people who hurt you

Knew that their words have the potential to kill