My name is Kirstin Pulles, I’m a grade ten student at Centre Wellington District High School, and I love to write. I love poetry as a way to vent about how hard life can be sometimes, whether you’re 8, 18 or 80. There’s so many changes happening in a teenagers life at every moment that sometimes it’s hard to keep up. School, friends, boyfriends, family, everything. This is just how I work through things, and my thoughts about different things in this world that I’m learning more about every single day.
The first poem is the one I shared at Wordfest. It’s all about the pressure we face in high school and how hard it is to remember who you are when you have so many people trying to tell you who to be. It’s called “Me”, and it’s for anyone whose ever been called weird!
“ME”
I’ve been told before I’m a little weird,
A little off centre, off balance, off kilter – a little off,
I don’t really know why,
Maybe I’m too shy? Too smart? Is it my style? Maybe my smile?
STOP.
I shouldn’t be asking what’s wrong with me,
M.E.
One little word, two letters that mean a whole lot,
My thoughts, my dreams, connected at the seams by words, woven by experience, always changing and totally, completely unique,
You have a choice in every single moment that you live to take it and make it something special,
Then keep it in your pocket and by the time you’re 50 you’ll have a suitcase full of stories,
In it you’ll discover who you are,
A crazy, random, mixed up jumble of love and loss and life,
And if anyone tries to tell you this isn’t good enough,
Just stand up taller and say
I will only ever be who I want me to be.
My second poem is about the things that run our universe. I was thinking about how hard we try to explain things in our world, no matter how far fetched or unbelievable. I wanted to make a world where everything could be more simple, easy, and fun. This is what I came up with. I call it –
“We Are Man”
I once saw the man in the sky,
Who turns a crank to make the clouds roll by,
He’s friends with the girl who lives in the sun,
To make sure it burns, oh and there’s one!
Who cries for us all, to wash away pain,
Then we take this sorrow and call it the rain,
We make up our stories, our facts and our truths,
To explain away things that aren’t absolute,
We fear everything we don’t understand.
This is our power.
We are man.
The last poem I’m going to send you guys right now is called “Your Eyes”. It’s about the power of appearances, and how someone can seem so strong and so put together but really they’re just the same as you and me. The eyes are the window to the soul, so I think they are really the only way you can truly know someone. Here are my thoughts about it.
“Your Eyes”
Those eyes,
They look down on me,
Is it disgust or pity?
That I see,
That I feel,
You make it seem easy,
Being flawless,
Like your life is perfect,
But your smile doesn’t quite reach those eyes,
Is there more to you?
Are you like us?
Maybe not so great?
Do those eyes cry?
When no ones around?
Is there a real person or nothing more?
Behind those eyes.
– Kirstin Pulles
