OPPF Annual Young Leaders Poetry Competition 2011
In 2011, winners of the OPPF Young Leaders Poetry Competition presented their poetry in a beautiful ceremony held at the United Nations Church Center. Among the attending were officials, supporters and friends from various UN Agencies, the Permanent Mission of Kenya to the United Nations in New York, non-governmental organizations, the civil society and of course, our wonderful award-winning students.
Keynote speaker of the night was Mr.Philippe Kridelka, Director of the UNESCO Office in New York.
The winners of the First Annual OPPF Young Leaders Poetry Competition:
First Place:
“Domesticate” by Jenny Ahn
Second Place:
“All I Know” by Chelsea Thomeer
Third Place:
“Moon’s Wish for Peace” by Ruina Zhang
Honorable Mentions:
“The World of My Sisters” by Debra Berger
“Peace” by Christopher Ferguson
“Diamond in the Rough” by Alyssa McGrail
“Peace” by Gabrielle Oppenheim
“The Final Battle” by Natalie Stio
Please take a moment to read some of the winning poems!
All I Know
by
Chelsea Thomeer
You write what you know
The unexplainable happenings of
Your life
Not someone else’s
You fit together your own
Half-missing puzzle
I wanted to start this peice
Like this:
The hunger grows in the pit of my
Distended stomocach
My mouth parches with thirst
And all I dream is water
Water
Water
Under the unforgiving sun
My bare feet blister on the pavement
At last, it rains
Help comes
Aren’t those lines pretty?
Aren’t they lovely?
Aren’t they beautiful?
They aren’t real, though,
Those words are fake
Contrived
Painted on air
Not even a part of someone else’s puzzle
Just tiny, lost pieces
Born from my head
Those words are twisted
Pounded together
Tyuped, spelled out, penned
Not written
Never written
Beauty is real
Those words will never be
You write what you know
I’m sixteen
I’m smart
I don’t know much
I don’t know poverty
I’ve never met hunger
I’ve never seen thirst
I’ve never witnessed death
I can’t tell you about them
You write what you know
All I know are the Holocaust pictures
Paraded across the white wall
Of my darkened history class
The terror, the horror, the evil
The piles of corpses
The skeletons of people
Faces, long, white
Inhuman
Alive
Eyes begging for mercy
I cannot give
It sickens me
Pains me
Kills me
For a moment
My teacher clicks to the next slide
Outside in the hallway, I say it
“Those pictures were the worst thing I’ve ever seen.”
The girl next to me nods, agress, acquiesces,
We walk on, down the hallway
We move on
“Is there a quiz in Spanish today?”
We can forget
Forgetting is a luxury.
All I know is the
Homeless man
With the missing teeth
And the ragged clothes
Still, waiting, in the parking lot of my church
I watch from the back seat of my car
My father reaches into his wallet
A five dollar bill waves, flutters, falls
The man’s hands clasp it
“God bess you.”
My father nods, smiles, jokes with him
Before he gets in the front seat of our
New, blue van
We drive away
Our consciences placated for
The moment
The man’s gap-toothed smile growing
Smaller, smaller, smaller,
In the rearview mirror
All I know are
The headlines, inky black
Big, bold, shouting
Reporting the tragedy in Japan
A world away
From the kitchen counter
With my hot pancakes
And my cell phone
Snug in the pocket of my name brand jeans
A world away
The earth shakes and
Waves crash and
Towns are swept away
People die
Children cry out
Cry out
Cry out for help that will never come
I murmur off a prayer
Like it’s a price to be paid
For the weight in my chest
I flip to the celebrity gossip page
These lines are scattered
Broken
Full of too many ideas
Too many puzzle pieces
Of me
Of my world
That I cannot fit together
There is no conclusion to be found here
No epiphany
No solution
No end to hunger, death, evil, poverty
No ending at all
That’s life
What a heartless, cruel phrase
What a true one
You write what you know
I can’t tell you how to fix the world
I don’t know
I don’t know
I don’t know
But there is light, somewhere,
And there is dawn
And Pandora slams the box shut
Somewhere, somehow
Just in time
One day
I hope
I will be
Brave enough
To face tyhe writing
The pictues
The truth
On the white wall
Outside the realm of what I know
*********************
Moon’s Wish for Peace
by
Ruina Zhang
I am a bright moon,
A moon that loves the happy bird on Earth.
I love her, and her name is Peace.
Peace is carefree like a saccharine sweet.
I had no worries.
Galaxy was my companion,
And meteor was my friend.
I played all the time until wars on Earch agaonize me.
Once, twinkiling stars asked me,
Why are you always frowning?
I shook my head and answered,
Pieces of my memory are full of scars of war and sorrow.
Once, a playful comet asked me,
Why do you always sign when you look at the Earth?
I shook my head and said,
My friend Earth has long been riddled with a thousand gasping wounds.
Once, a curious Venus asked me,
Why are your eyes filled with tears?
I shook my head and said,
There are too many eyes on Earth that desire peace!
There are too many tears for the families that have been broken!
When I see the sorrowful tears
Of a soldier’s mother,
When I hear the crying
Of helpless orphans,
Neddles pierce my heart!
When I am alone in the sky,
I wish I had more power than just illuminating the surrounding clouds.
I wish I could spread the truth of peace to the world.
Let the glory of non-violence shine!
I do not know how many children I have seen
Drawing the beloved Peace
With their little clumsy hands
Under the dim lights.
Sometimes I wonder why
Peace is so difficult for adults to achieve.
But I know that
Peace is stronger than monstrous corruption and greed.
My beloved Peace is venerated around the world.
But the cruel devil on Earth breaks her wings.
Yet, Peace does not give up.
She still flaps her wings,
Painful wails are the only thing that has changed.
But I deeply believe that,
The courageous bird, Peace,
With her obligation to save her mother Earth,
Will fly freely in the azure sky,
And sow the seeds of happiness on Earth!
************************************************
Peace
by
Gabrielle Oppenheim
Clash, dispute, and prevail
Gaining nothing but another’s fail
Acceding, thriving, just to succeed
To humanity, is this a deed?
The dead have brothers, just like yours
Who edified them, as their own mentors
But they disappeared in the mayhem
Do you ever think of them?
Competition is a way of life
From guns, to words, to just a knife
We flourish in other’s defeat
Just to gain our own conceit
But what if we focused on our own good?
What if we noticed the mind’s falsehood?
And corrected it, we might prevail
No more need to falsely assail
*****************************************
Diamond in the Rough
by
Alyssa McGrail
I awake breathing in the familiar grime of the air
The smell of sun baking the soot and garbage along the toxic stream
Its glare shines through the missing boards of my roof, awakening me
I walk outside into chaos, wooden shacks suffocating everyone like prison bars
The narrow path leading me into a mass of bodies working anxiously
To achieve a dollar to feed their children at dinner time
I walk quickly along the frantic scene, the balls of my feet landing on glass and wrappers
I bypass dozens of small shops, people selling groceries
Everyone is yelling, babies are crying, mothers are shushing them gently to calm down
A force collides into me from behind; I turn around and see a bunch of my friends
Their wide smiles of energy glow of excitement as we take off
We race, weaving through the crowds of people
It was our daily game, it was what kept us hopeful, alive
There’s a big city neighboring us, of which I have never seen
I hear the cars sometimes; I imagine being behind the wheel
Driving towards my future, towards an education, a new life.