March 4th

Write about something that people usually find ugly but find the beauty in it.

I see it on the news, saying how bad everything is around us. They all see what they want to see, the ugly. Let’s take time to slow down and relax, feel the sunshine soaking into our skin. The smell of the air that goes through our lungs as we draw a breath. The trees swaying in the breeze waving as the world passes us by. The smell of the freshly mowed grass that caresses my nose. Flowers blooming with the rise of the sun.

Write a poem about nature. Using the words: Car, cement, phone, and billboards

An Ugly Inconvenience Or A Beautiful Possibility

(In The Eyes Of The Beholder)

By: Chenoa Jackson

“There is a winter storm warning in effect. Please stay inside your homes until it passes.” The radio man’s voice states evenly. A storm is coming. People start to grumble around me.

“We don’t need any more blasted snow!”

“We already have too much!”

“I hate plowing!”

“When will mother nature stop throwing storms at us!”

Everyone starts to hustle off to their homes. I stand next to the radio store window a little longer and I am soon left alone. People don’t like snow because they think it is inconvenient for them. There’s too much, it’s too cold, spring better come soon. All the complaints that people have every winter.

I look up into the sky. I see the oncoming snow differently. They may think it is an ugly inconvenience. Well, they can think what they want. I see it differently. I see it as beautiful. The shimmering flakes as the snow first starts to come. The swirls the snow makes when the wind catches the flakes. They see ugliness and I see beauty. They see an inconvenience and I see potential.

I start off down the street as the first snowflakes make their way down from the sky. I hear more protests, but I tune them out. This is going to be a beautiful winter.

-relatable living in Maine

-dialogue works

--positivity works

--the radio man’s voice works

--nice description of snow

--radio store window?--50’s-- a bit retro

Michaela:

It’s the setting of a sad scene in a movie. Rain falling, pouring from the sky. Everything soaked a dark, dull, brown or gray. A car passes on the street and sprays out muddied water. A soft piano melody might play in the background. It’s an ugly scene, undesirable. Nothing you would want to find yourself in.

… but something I would. For however annoying rain might sometimes be I find it to be absolutely beautiful. When it permeates the Earth it brings out something almost ethereal from it. In rain everything glows. The drink from the sky allows the ground to come alive again. The way I see it, rain is the exact opposite of dreary: it’s life giving.

--weather

--the first paragraph

--beautiful imagery

--

Sydney:

War is such an ugly thing. It takes so much from the world. So many lives, so much blood. It ruins the land, landmarks, history itself but still it saves others. It keeps most from harm, keeping others from the front lines, from seeing all the blood spilled, all the pain and all the anger. I don’t see it so much as an ugly despicable thing, I see men and women protecting me and I am so thankful for the sacrifices. I think that there is nothing more beautiful than protecting the ones you love.

Becky Close

I can imagine it in it’s prime

A large milking cow

Slowly chewing on pieces of grass in a pasture

It is no longer startled by the cars that go by

It no longer lifts it’s head to watch as the metal being drives

Dangerously fast down the road that has seen too many winters

and too many tractors

It is no longer a cow, living and breathing

Its flesh has long since been absorbed into the earth, maybe the rest of it’s bones are somewhere on that farm land, rotting

All that’s left to remember this cow

this cow that was drained year after year for a family

Is it’s skull

Abandoned on the side of the road in a box with other bones

You can see the holes where they injected it

laying it to rest

There are two of them

I wonder if it felt pain

I wonder if it knew it was dying

and that rather than honoring this cow

that was a servant to humans for so many years

They placed it’s bones in a box on the side of the road

It’s skull now sits in front of me

As I do my best to interpret it on to a piece of paper

This cow had spent it’s entire life living so others could live off it

And now

even in it’s death it serves me

This cracked

roughly handled cow skull

Is now becoming the purpose of my painting

It is my inspiration

Allowing me to sit here and be as Georgia O’Keeffe must have been

And I wonder if she too saw the beauty in what remains of the dead

Jake:

As I lift my families decomposed daily matters held in a plastic bag to the outdoors, I notice how pleasantly light in weight it happens to be today. Score. I whip the door open and I’m greeted by the warm suns glow, reverberating happiness into my skin and throughout my bones. I match it’s intense brightness with a comparable grin. The wind takes flight and the breeze slowly surfs through my waves of hair. I frolic with the ease and poise of an interpretive dance. The Fresh blue sky and kelly green grass contrast each other in a powerful manner, causing me to almost forget the sack of stench balled up in my grasp. As I arrive to the trash bin I manage appreciate my surroundings and take a sample of every aspect. If only the smell would have the positivity behind it as the bliss I am feeling while talking out the trash.