2024 VOICES OF LINCOLN POETRY CONTEST

Poets wanted. The 20th Annual Voices of Lincoln Poetry Contest begins in April, National Poetry Month. The contest theme is “HAPPY LEAP YEAR! . . . Leap Into Poetry.” Both adult and young poets are encouraged to enter. 

 

Contest "Rules and Entry Form" can be downloaded here or requested from Alan Lowe, Contest Coordinator, at slolowe@icloud.com.

It can be a cruel world. Survival can be difficult.

 

A peaceful existence desired, but not easy to attain, as you address . . .

 

 

Life’s Challenges

 

I don’t like the way I feel.

I wish I had the ability to strike a deal.
I don’t like being treated like this.

I wish my efforts to succeed hadn’t gone amiss.

I don’t like the weird smile on your face.

I wish you’d disappear from my life without a trace.
I don’t like the time of day I arise.

I wish not to see the people I despise.

I don’t like them here or there.

I wish they weren’t anywhere.

I don’t want my past to color my future days.

I wish I could mend the errors of my ways.
I don’t like the fear within me.

I wish for solace and harmony.

 

 

Copyright © 2024 Alan Lowe. All rights reserved.

What was your life like as a freshman in high school? Were you able to stand up to the bullies?

 

Or did you cower on the sidelines wondering if you’d survive their torment? How did you cope? After many years, you may find yourself . . .

 

 

 Revisiting The Past

 

     Twenty years have passed since that day at Forest Oaks High School. As a fourteen-year-old freshman, I was smaller than most guys my age. And as a self-identified bookworm, I didn’t possess the ability to fight the bullies who tormented me. As I lay in my stainless steel bed, I recalled all the details of that day.

     I woke up late Friday morning. The sun peered through my bedroom window. I stared at the clock on my nightstand. 

     “Oh, my God!” I screamed.

     “What’s all the racket, Brian?” Mom yelled.

     “I’m going to be late for school.”

     “No you’re not.”

     “I’m not?”

     “This is a late start day—teacher meetings this morning. Classes don’t begin until ten.”

     I breathed a sigh of relief. Maybe today wouldn’t be as bad as I thought.

     Arriving at school just before my third period class, I pushed my bike into the bike rack, secured the lock, and hustled off to class. As I made my way down the hallway, I straightened my horn-rimmed glasses and squinted, as the bright sunlight from a hall window blinded me.

     Entering my English classroom, I walked to my seat, placed my book bag on the desk, and . . . plummeted to the floor—as my chair disappeared from behind me. The laughter resounding around me was excruciating.

     I wanted to run, but was on the floor and couldn’t. So I crawled toward my chair, trying to stay invisible, and slid back dragging it behind me to my desk. As I managed to stand up and slide into my seat, I received a standing ovation. I tried hard to hide the tears of embarrassment in my eyes.

     At that moment, our English teacher came through the door. She glanced at us and smiled. Everything appeared to be, as it should. So she stood in front of the classroom, and said, “Good morning, class.”

     My school day had just begun, and already I’d suffered serious humiliation for being me. Would this ever stop, I thought. Running away was an option, but where would I go? And taking my own life? . . .

     The bell rang. It was lunchtime. I grabbed my book bag, exited the classroom and headed to my locker. As I approached, I muttered, “Oh, hell!” Plastered on the locker door was a picture of me in my glasses, with horns and a huge nose. I wanted to fall down a well and disappear.

     Instead, I took my lunch money, $1.50 in quarters, from my book bag, put the bag in the locker, and walked cautiously to the cafeteria. As I entered, someone grabbed me from behind, and my world turned upside down. 

     I yelled, “Hey! You’re choking me. Get your arm off my neck. I can’t breathe.”   

     “Shut your face, dweeb. Give me your lunch money,” my attacker demanded.

     “No way,” I whined. I had no idea where my courage came from.

     He said, “I want it now, you little wimp!” 

      And then his fingers were all over my face. “What are you doing? Those are my glasses. Don’t take them. I can’t see a thing without them,” I moaned.

     “Give me the money or I’ll step on them, you little twerp.”

     His voice sounded familiar. He’d picked on me before. “Stop it, Evan!” I shouted. 

     I wasn’t about to give in. Without my glasses, the world looked like one big fuzz ball. All of a sudden, I spun around two or three times and fell to the ground. I could hear the quarters I had grasped in my hand go plink, plink, plink, plink, plink, plink, as they hit the tile floor. 

     Then the bell sounded ending the lunch hour. My now empty hand rested on my glasses. I grabbed them and pushed them back into place on my face. I looked around and saw nobody. The jerk who’d picked on me had absconded with my lunch money.

     Why nobody intervened bewildered me. Where were the cafeteria monitors? I got up off the ground, tried to regain my composure, and headed to class. This has got to stop, I believed. . . .  And it did. 

     The headline in the Monday edition of the Forest Oaks Press read, “SIXTEEN-YEAR-OLD FOREST OAKS HIGH SCHOOL STUDENT MURDERED. Coroner’s findings indicate he had six quarters lodged in his throat. Fourteen-year-old freshman has been arrested and charged with felony murder.”

 

 

Copyright © 2024 Alan Lowe. All rights reserved.