Editor’s note: Lawrence High School students in Joy Clumsky’s creative writing class wrote poems evolving from four required words fused with heart and imagination.

Here are the students’ poems:

A Murder of Crows

My dreams are restless, my visions dark.

Sleeping and walking, neither give peace.

Crows caw raucously, wings in flight clattering,

Clattering like the applause of skeletal hands.

Unrest clouds their staring, black eyes,

Eyes that haunt like a black-sand mirage.

They speak to me, in voices hoarse,

Hoarse with messages that never ring clear,

Messages that yet I must understand,

Dreams that I must read.

— Charles Scholle

The Cabbage War

Beware dancing cabbages with elbows blood red,

Their spoon-edged bicuspids and asterisk-shaped toes.

Those follicles of marigold give me the shivers;

Their bookish illiteracy tingles my shins.

I watched them polka across furry hills,

Rumble the rhumba and waddle the waltz,

Hooting and cawing like butter-drunk ducks,

Belching Shakespearean soliloquies.

A green, leafy strike is their covetous plan,

Letting slip the canines of cruel constipation.

These strange turquoise cabbages scratch their navels,

Cabbages cart-wheeling like motionless stones.

Hear my warning of produce aggression!

They’ll recruit rutabagas and radishes ride!

Ignore my straitjacket and thorazine IV;

I’m totally sane, I tell you, TOTALLY SANE!

— Charles Scholle

Heartache

There I stood

On the edge of that dusty, abandoned road,

Watching the taillights fade

Like a rose withering.

He discarded me there

Crying, crying in the empty night

My heart heavy,

My soul shattered is.

I could faintly hear out sweet song,

TWO STUDENTS TAKE ADVANTAGE of a warm fall day on the South Park lawn.

Playing on the radio,

Through the cracked bedroom window.

Unfair it was

For him to leave me there

Without so much as a goodbye.

I ache to say goodbye.

— Shelby Shurtz

Underworld

Below the shadows rests an ancient secret,

With blood rushing through each vein.

Guarding the tower, vines thick and forceful,

Climb each once-cobbled stone.

Captured is the terror and violence within each crumbled wall.

Hearts that once fluttered and love songs once whispered

Echo inside, remaining prisoners behind bars of angry warriors.

Mysteries scurry to each corner, death black.

Curtains sway to a nonexistent breeze

Behind boards smashed into a window once bright.

On horseback it came, and stole

Memories and moments away

To a land beyond the hills, a land far beyond the cursed hills.

At gloaming, the abandoned world is revealed.

With each broken sunbeam, the temple falls to dust,

Deeper and deeper into the shadows below.

— Katie Willoughby

Daddy’s girl

Deep amidst the golden sunflowers,

A father clings to his little girl’s hand.

Together, they stare deeply into the evening sun,

Turned, like the sunflowers, to the golden orb.

Reflecting upon their future lives,

They laugh and sing their happy times,

But, as time flows, the little girl grows.

Loosen, soon their hands;

The father must utter goodbye

For death has beckoned.

Now, the woman stands solitary,

A flower among the rocks,

Amidst the golden sunflowers,

Reflecting upon their life extinct,

Laughing and singing their happy times

Till the twilight sun washes into celestial night.

— Amanda Hermesch

Aged Tree

The air is tranquil.

Darkness and silence envelop the park

Where the children once played.

The ancient tree with drooping, brittle branches

Yearns for the comforting weight of those little ones

Climbing upon its limbs.

A gentle breeze rises,

Bringing the distant resonance of the children’s laughter.

Somewhere, deep in the ground

Lie the dreams of the children.

The immemorial tree strains to hold on

With its venerable, weakened roots

But fails to grasp the memories

Of those happy, little children,

Forever gone.

— Katy Seibel

Farewell Song

Sunlight seeped

Into the black

Of the house tranquil,

Slowly, like water,

Through crevices

In the thick soil.

LIGHTNING BOLTS poke holes in the predawn sky during a storm in the Flint Hills.

Outside, the golden wheat,

Untouched by the

Brisk breeze, stands.

A blanket sheet of white snow

Kisses the once-fertile earth.

Harvest is over;

A new season begins.

— Shelby Shurtz

Hand and Hand

The vibraphone energy

Earthquakes my fingers

And drumrolls my limbs.

Tiny fire-flicker flames,

Rainbowing up my arm,

Sparkle their way into my heart.

Blood and sweat

Work their way down,

Warming their way down,

Warming this frigidy feeling.

His pheromone-flying spirit

Swings and sings in my hair,

Electrocuting the breeze.

What

A

Love-buzz!

You

Test my nerves.

— Molly Bretthauer

Victory Gardens

As I opened the tattered, faded diary,

The nostalgia of the haunting summer

Came

Like a spillway.

I was young

That summer,

The summer of Roosevelt,

The summer of victory gardens,

That horrible, unforgettable summer.

Remember

The filthy, clay trail,

Connecting homes like a frail thread,

And the air so dry, so very bone dry?

I remember.

Remember,

My father’s house,

How it creaked and cracked, bizarre,

In the wake of the heat wave,

Embezzling the endless inferno,

And the grisly, dehydrated storms,

Breaking promises made to the parched, suffering ground?

Like yesterday, I remember.

I remember

My Papa,

The governor,

Tormented more about his career than his progeny.

His legacy was in question.

This hideous drought would ruin him.

Mourning,

I remember,

How both the garden and family

Were defeated,

That summer.

— Jon Birney

Neo Wars

The door of the tower has been torn;

Now, a torch is the monument of the frosted kingdom.

The dark bishops shatter their way through the royal army.

Now, wide open for the knights, the frosted queen lies.

Tears for the beloved queen, the frosted king cries.

Face to face with the dark knights of doom,

Kneeling, the king lowers his head as the dark knight shouts:

“Checkmate!”

— William Machado

Silent Screams

The crackling of the fire

Plays a melody, broken.

Wind screams as it brushes past.

They battle,

The fire and the wind,

But soon unite.

They swarm across the decaying earth,

Destructive,

And, yet, so beautiful.

She watches as the fire burns

And thinks of herself

She’s been burned before;

You can see it in her opal eyes,

Behind the tears.

She can’t focus;

her inner fire has engulfed her.

Without thought,

She screams,

And the wind carries the empty sound

To another tormented soul.

— Laura Fletcher

The Storm at Hand

The thunder, it roars with laughter,

The lightning claps its approval,

And the wind dances with the cottonwoods.

Shadows spread their darkness upon the land,

Breathing life into the lifeless storm.

The storm violently wreaks havoc upon a tiny farm,

Showing its superiority on the hapless buildings.

Then, suddenly, all is silent.

Then, suddenly, all is silent.

— Daniel Barcus