2015 Youth Winners


They Say It’s True

Knowledge is given and taken away,
Snatched by envied talons and greedy claws,
Placed carefully to set our minds astray
And molded, twisted for a selfish cause.

Ideas we have all come to know as real,
Only labeled as such because they said,
You’ll be rewarded if you do no evil,
Be kind, in return you’ll be given bread.

Wed well and your future will be golden,
But a man must wed woman, and not man.
Say you’ll rot in hell if rules are broken,
If they’re not then in heaven you will stand.

How naïve we are believing in truth,
That grew from the blind eyes of all our roots.

Katie O’Malley
Orlando, FL 


To Lose the Moon

Remember when you used to be my moon?
Seeing you was the best part of my night.
Then you would leave and I’d begin to swoon,
But soon return, face shining just as bright.
Sometimes I feared I lost you; My heart would yearn.
I worried as I watched you disappear
That you might reach the sun and slowly burn,
But you’d return and be my shining sphere.
Except one night you took a different path.
I lost the pull that kept you close to me.
And now you face the universe’s wrath.
But finally, my moon, you are set free.
Each night is blind, my moons are down to none
And now you are another planets sun.

Raelynn C. Peter
Winona, MN