| She calls herself Silver. Her
Daddy calls her BeeBee. Her mother is never sure what to call her.
Like all teenagers, she has struggled with herself, her feelings, and the
world that she lives in but does not understand.
She expresses herself through visual
art in a variety of media. Shown here are what she thinks of as her
two best pencil sketches.
She expresses herself in writing and she loves poetry and fiction.
In hope of providing the reader with a brief insight, I offer these two
poems. The first is, in Silver’s view, the best poem anyone ever
wrote. The second is, in Silver’s view, the best poem she ever wrote.
Enjoy.
~Ima Mansson
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Ozymandias
I met a traveler from an antique land
Who said: “Two vast and trunkless
legs of stone
Stand in the desert. Near them, on the
sand,
Half sunk, a shattered visage lies,
whose frown,
And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold
command,
Tell that its sculptor well those passions
read
Which yet survive, stamped on these
lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them and the heart
that fed:
And on the pedestal these words appear:
‘My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:
Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!’
Nothing beside remains. Round
the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and
bare
The lone and level sands stretch far
away.”
Percy Bysshe Shelley |
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Ode to the Parents
She threw her torn and tattered ragdoll
in the corner.
She watched it hit the wall, then fall
to a heap on the floor.
( Mommy said children shouldn’t think
the things I do. )
She took the place of the ragdoll, her
bright, empty eyes
Staring, staring at the ceiling with
no feeling, no soul.
(She said that little children shouldn’t
think about hate the way I do.)
Her mouth opened as if to speak, the
fabric ripping, tearing . . .
Instead of words came billows of her
head, white clouds of vomit.
(I asked her if that made me different
from my playmates.)
A little worn ragdoll thrown carelessly
into a trash pile
Stained and beaten.
(She said yes, it did. )
Her lips, pretty and delicate, handpainted
in blood,
Catch the hearts of all who see her
meaningless face.
( I asked her if that meant I was not
a child. )
The cute lips with the false smile begin
to melt
Dripping small crimson red spots on
her dainty frock.
( She said nothing. )
Small fabric hands reach up to a painted
face
Fabric claws tear out aching eyes.
( I asked her how children felt. )
Empty sockets stare at you
Fabric palms offering you her eyes.
( She did not answer. )
( She just walked away believing that
she knew why I never cried. )
“Mommy, mommy, my sawdust hurts so bad
. . . ”
“Your sawdust is nothing, child.
Go find your soul.”
She digs through the sawdust desperately.
“I can’t find it, Mommy . . .”
~Silvereve
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