2 Cool Sonnets

Street Artist’s Sonnet

Rebels in the morning sun hit the streets,

This is the art they have chosen.

Gliding along black pavement with their Nike-covered feet,

Isolating each joint as if the world was moving in slow-motion.

Controllers of their bodies and masters of their spirits,

With their hands they solve King Tutt’s ancient puzzle.

They know not the future and they do not fear it,

Willing to Battle the guardian of Hades, sans the muzzle.

These rebels are not heroes, simply artists with excessive skill.

Whose arms twist in grotesque shapes like action figurines.

Dark ballerinas who do not know defeat and never will,

This is the lifestyle they have chosen indeed.

Forged underground and brought into new light by the Feinz,

This is the art that reflects the true value and passion of the streets, Turfing.

Ex Sonnet

I see you with him and it hurts my soul,

Knowing that once you were mine.

To give you a unique kind of love was my only goal,

Now all I can do is look back in time.

I hear about your newfound “perfect man”.

I hear that he is “the one”.

I hear that he agreed to your crazy fantasy wedding plan.

Yet I also hear that with other girls he has fun.

Your “perfect man” is the fox of foxes

Like those “gentlemen” that appear on Maury.

Now I hear that you are broken and looking for the truth to fight,

As you question life over your half-eaten fudge cookie boxes.

You “hit me up” as if old times for help to which I say “sorry”.

Sorry that you chose this path of heartbreak, but I cannot help, I have a date tonight.

Personal statement take 2?

Who am I?

            I am Ezekiel Starling, only son of Lou and Michele Starling and self-proclaimed Starling prodigy. I was unwillingly pulled from my mother’s womb in the Kaiser hospital of San Francisco on the 15^th of October in the year 1994. I am an African American but I am not sure if I am mixed with anything else, my parents never told me if I am and I have never asked. My mother is the eldest of 4 children on her side of the family deemed the Pleasants. My father hails from the family of Starling and is also the oldest of 4 children. Some may see this as confidence but I view it as a sort of destiny, like I was meant to be brought into this world.

            I have lived only with my mom since birth. My parents split up when I was a very young so all I remember of the break is a very vague member of me listening to my parents arguing through my cracked open door. Despite never living with him however, my father has always been part life, albeit he has not been as supportive as my mom. My childhood life was a lot different than most peoples, the reason being that I have moved to a new house about every 2 years until I arrived in Pinole. This being the case I became sort of a shut mentally but I was tried to portray a happy upbeat person. I formed a very dark alter ego one could say, and I in turn locked away my true personality. In fact it is fair to say that I did not comfortably develop my true self until I got into high school, the true self that I am proud of and feel blessed to be every day.

            So you may ask, what exactly is the kid all about? Well I shall tell you. I am the very definition of an optimist, I always look on the side that will bring others joy because to do otherwise is to invite back a darker me that I would rather not have around anymore. This however does not make me naïve, I know how evil and cold the world can be but I choose to “kill them with kindness” so to speak. I believe that human beings have the potential to do so many positive things in this world and just need to be pushed in the right direction by someone, and that someone is me. I spew confidence and encourage all of my friends to do the same, not to be arrogant, but to inspire those around me to have faith in themselves and their abilities. This pay it forward tactic was incepted into my mind by the very life I grew up in, and it reflects my positive nature. While I may say I act one way however, certain people tend to see me in a different light. What I see as a friendly attitude toward everyone others may perceive as an annoyingly blunt personality that they cannot stand because they are not used to it. So in a sense I am very much misunderstood and rejected by some people. While to others this would be a source of sadness, to me it is simply a motivator to keep pressing on. Others may see me as a hindrance now, but as I continue down the road of confidence and inspiration I can only hope others can see me for the positive person I truly am. So just to clarify, I am not some sort of big shot who believes he is the single most important thing in all of creation, no.  I am a boy who believes that the world is full of good and bad, but in the end the good will always ultimately triumph.

            My positive eyes, seemingly bright as the sun, have seen their fair share of pain however. In particular I remember my freshmen through sophomore years I had no father. Through an instance that had no control over and was sprung upon me without any type of mercy or forgiveness, my father told me he was going away…for 2 years. I had never really thought about life without my parents, but at the moment he told it suddenly hit me, he was leaving. Up until that point in my life, even though he did not live with me, my father had been my hero. In my mind whenever I thought of him all I thought of was a strong athlete who was always one of the “cool dads”, I was proud to be his son and I wanted to grow up to be just like him. It was a hard reality to face and all I could do was cry, I felt the pain of not having around for the first few weeks of school, and after the sadness I felt anger build up inside me. I thought to myself “how could he do this to me? Right when I need him the most, the first years of high school…why?”. It took a little while to cope with but I got a shocking revelation from the experience, and that was that my father was not perfect. This ideal of him that I had built inside my mind was not entirely accurate, he was a human with flaws, and these flaws made me decide to become a better person. This period marked the beginning of a new me, a me that relied on becoming the best person I can rather than relying on becoming like my father one day. It took the experience of losing my father to realize that I had not put enough time into developing my own persona. This helped me distinguish myself mentally and properly started me down the road to becoming a strong and independent man, a better man than my father. I do not belittle my father’s parenting qualities, this instance purely provided me with the mental insight that I must never put my son through something like this, and that I must train myself to be the best I can be.

            In my life I have always struggled with my self-image. I have tried to adjust my personality to please those around me and be more popular. I believe this was due to me moving around so much as a child and having a new batch of friends every 2 years. I hated the fact that I did not know how my future self was going to turn out. I had a mental picture of how I wanted to turn out, and then I had the image of how reality would force me to turn out as. I was terrified that I would become a dangerous person who was isolated from society, or worse, a threat to society. I tried to change, but it never worked because there was rubric for me titled “the person Ezekiel Starling should mold himself into” and for the first two years of my high school I had no real father figure to teach me about becoming a man. With nowhere and no one to turn too (I could not tell my mom about this, I held up a happy image around her as to not worry her) I simply sank deeper and deeper into the Zeke that I did not want to be. I thought that the state I was in was absolute, and that is what I struggled with the most. The dark promise of eventual insanity seemed more and more prominent as the days wondered on, and this did not change until high school.

            I remember a time where I blew it was when I was trying to get into the Ivy League Connection (ILC). It was a big deal to me when I was nominated to participate in such a prestigious program. If I were to be selected to participate, then I would be able to go to an Ivy League college for a w whole month in the summer of my sophomore year. I was pumped and ready for the challenge; I went through all of the steps and made it to the final leg of the competition, the interview. This is apparently where it all went wrong, I had bad interview conduct and as a result come off with the appearance that I was not confident and therefore not a good candidate. Needless to say I did not get picked to go, and I was heartbroken. I had built the thought of me going up so much in my mind that I now had no idea what to do. I felt as though I let my entire family down, and even worse, a lot of my friends were picked to go. This loss of my goal made me hate the whole ILC program and feel like a failure. In the weeks following I developed a different reaction to the experience. The rejection from the chance to visit my dream school over the summer made me more determined to fight for the chance to actually attend my dream school in real time. I realized that I had a lot more work that needed to be done on my own person before I could actually attend an Ivy League college, so in a sense I found a way to make myself get over the rejection of the ILC by looking toward the future. I know I am not guaranteed a spot in any college, but the rejection I have already experienced has braced me for the fight ahead, and this time I will win.

            An experience that really taught me something special was my summer camp trip to the rotary funded camp royal in the summer before my senior year. This was a special interact oriented leadership camp that was a week long and without a doubt a truly life changing experience. This was by no means and ordinary leadership camp, quite the opposite; instead of teaching you how to be a leader politically it shows you the spiritual aspect of it. From this camp I learned the true extent of why you should not judge people; we learned from first-hand experience that everybody has a story, some good and others bad. Through this trip I was able to reflect on my own life and not just see how far I have to go, but how far I have come and developed since my freshman year. This trip gave me the knowledge I need to succeed as a leader in life and gave memories I will never forget. I sincerely believe that that that week and camp royal brought out the best side of me and gave me the courage to dive headfirst into my senior and whatever lies after.

            Looking back…I have had a lot of really great experiences in high school, but if I had to pick one that will stand out more than the rest, it would probably be being part of the PVHS marching band. Through the band I met some of the people that would end up becoming my closest friends and had some of the best times of my life. Being in band is more than just being a performer; it is being part of a family. When I really think about it, band is full of people trying their best to get along even though we know that we all have our differences, is that not the very definition of a family? I think it is and it is this very family that has shaped my high school image. Due to the band I was no longer just a lost kid trying to find himself, I belonged to a positive and well respected group that had my back when I needed it. Band is defiantly one part of my life where I have zero regrets, the good moments band has brought me defiantly outweighs the bad and I am eternally grateful for it. If I had to give any advice to any middle school kid thinking about continuing band in high school, I would strongly urge them to do it, because it is worth it, there are very few places in life where you can feel truly accepted by people and the PVHS band is certainly one of those places. The confidence and strength I have gained from being part of this family has become my moral support and keeps pushing me in the right direction, even if I start to doubt myself I can always find my way back to the right path.     

            In my future I hope to be the biggest success I can possibly be. I plan on starting this by attending a four year college. My top choice as of now is Columbia University (my GPA may be low compared to other students, but I am counting on my strong unique personality to secure me s spot). I plan on majoring psychology and/or anthropology so I can better understand people and be able to help them more. I hope to make to make a career of what I love to do most, which is helping people. I believe that all the positive things I have done in my life are meant to be used for a bigger purpose. I never really think about my future family because I think it is weird to focus on something that will just end up worrying me. I can only hope that one day I will have a beautiful wife and kids, until then I will press and go to school to secure me degree and continue bettering myself. I want to do something with my dance and music skills as well, something on the side to keep increasing my skills and have a good hobby to de-stress me in times of dire need. My future is very vague but I have no doubt it will turn out as awesome as I imagine it to be.

            It is kind of strange, but in a sense writing this essay has sort of made me step back and look at my life in the form of a timeline. From my darkish past of being a kid with low self-image; to the confident, funny, and overall joyous person that I am today. I have made mistakes in my past but I do not regret anything, for I know that everything has happened to me for a reason. Whether it be the will of God or my own dumb luck, I have turned out on top. This statement made me realize that nothing ever got me down enough to give up hope in myself, and through my experiences I was able to beat my dark side. This is no time for me to start slacking off though… now more than ever it is time for me to keep blasting through the walls of life so I can achieve my goals.

            So who am I? I am the lucky boy who found the pot of gold at the end of his rainbow.

Personal statement take 1?

Please describe the factors and challenges that have most shaped your personal life and aspirations. How have these factors caused you to grow?

I am a unique individual. There is no one on this planet exactly like me nor will there ever be. Since my freshman days in high school I have grown into an intelligent, well-rounded, and reliable person, however the credit for this growth goes not simply go to me. In my journey to become a good person I have had big influential factors on both sides of the positive and negative fence. On the negative side there is the negative influence of my absent father, and my own personal sense of rejection. Whereas on the positive side I have my amazingly supportive mom, and the sense of community and acceptance I have felt by being in Pinole Valley High School (PVHS) marching band.

My Father has always been a part of my life, but more so in spirit than actual reality. Since my childhood I remember always looking up to and viewing him as a hero, only later on in my years did I come to see that my visions my slightly distorted. To put it simply my father is not the most reliable person and is only present when it is convenient for him. When I started to realize this I could not help but wonder if somehow his absence was related to me being a bad son. While one might see this as a sob story in the making, I learned to develop a new mentality based off of my father’s personality, a mindset where I told myself that I would never be my father. I vowed to become educated and reliable, someone respectable and amazing. This is a goal that I think of everyday and inspires me to strive in everything I do and become the best person I can possibly be.

On the reverse side of my father is my mother, who gives me strength every time I look at her. From her I have learned the value of genuine support and surrounding yourself with positive people. She always told me “do not worry about our financial situation, that’s my job. Just worry about school and becoming a good man”. These words resonated within me and allowed me to point my attention toward my academics and extra-curricular activities, without having the constant mental remainder of my financial situation looming over my head. There was even a time where my mother and I were forced to leave our home of 6 years due to sudden foreclosure, and as traumatic as this was to me at first, through me moms optimism and undying faith that we would find a new home I was able to remain calm. Through her love and positive aura I have grown into someone who wants to emit the same positive energy as she, and will not stop until I am able to be reliable as she.

Like a lot of other teens in my generation I have dealt with the problems of low self-image and a sense of unimportance among my peers. From the moment I stepped foot onto the grounds of high school I feel inadequate and awkward. I was not one of the perfect students who were taking all advanced classes in their freshman year or had taken them over the summer. I felt alone, a lot of my middle school friends were either gone to different schools or took a darker path than I. My fear overcame me and instead of learning to be myself I tried to adapt to what would make me the most “popular” and well liked. As a result I became a nuisance and sank even further into my own self-pity. It was only at this low point that I was able to find my saving grace: marching band.

At my school the marching band is about being part of a family, and it is this family that accepted me for the person I was and not the person I was trying to be. As far as I am concerned the marching band was the start of my high school life. It sparked my ideals of giving as much back to the community as possible and being positive role model for future generations. As I progressed through all four years of high school, the marching band has been one of my main support systems, with its combination of having the friends I love in it and teaching me to be a more outgoing person. Without band I know that my high school experience would have led me down a road that I was not meant to go. It has shaped me into an upbeat person with the goal to energize and inspire others.

These factors make up the person I am today, I regret nothing and feel as though I can only go up from here.

what do you think?

  

The Venting Senior

I hate venting. I hate the very idea of bearing my thoughts or feelings to anyone because I feel that they will never truly comprehend me, which is a valid point considering when I vent I ramble on in an insane fashion until the anger subsides. I will make an exception this year because I am just tired of this creeping feeling that feels way too much like stress: something I don’t do. Here we go; these are the reasons for my discontent.

HEARTBREAK:

          Might as well get this one out of the way first since its messing with me emotionally. I refuse to go into detail of this situation but let us just say that a long standing “something special” recently fell over. I am not an idiot and I saw it coming from a mile away, but I always thought I could stop it. In the end that was about as helpful as standing in the path of a speeding train and trying to slow it down using only your mind. My whole high school world has been shaken up by this because the person involved has been very close to me since my sophomore year, and now she is gone. I know that I should be happy she has moved on and found someone that makes her happy but that does not make up for the hole I feel in my soul. People are not replaceable, and do not let anyone ever tell you otherwise, people are 100% unique and it is not possible to simply replace one with another. This hole compiled with the other things has got me caught in a bad place.

COLLEGE APPLICATIONS:

          Whoever had the “splendid” idea to make college applications: cost money, take forever to fill out, and just be the biggest thorn in a person’s side EVER should be erased from every sort of existence.  I HATE this overwhelming feeling of father time breathing down my back as I struggle to stay on top of schoolwork and my extra-curricular activities while also putting together a teacher recommendation packet, and stay ahead of all deadlines…if  I hate the applications this much, am I even READY to embark on the college journey? I do not know anymore and my only hope is that the same monster father time who is currently my worst enemy, will become my ally in the near future and let me know that under his influence I am ready.

SCHOOL:

          And of course what is stress without a little school? This been not only the worst start of any school year I have ever had, but it involves me and a few of my friends to split ourselves mentally between what we love to do and what we need to do. I have never been stressed out by things involving school but now it feels as though the entire administration is plotting against us. I know this is not true, but I cannot shake the feeling, like we are being punished for a crime we had no knowledge of. I am not a quitter, and refuse to make any choice that I do not have to. I am not a fall man, nor will I act like one. The result of an action my friends and I had nothing to do with is causing us to be unclear about the fate of our own schedules….UGH. That is how I truly feel and its not getting any brighter. I will continue to keep my head up but unless things change for the better and fast I think I might literally lose my mind.

Quite the Senior year…  

A Short Poem For APlit

A mother catches her breath to stare in awe. Witness to the gift that was 

given to her as the snows of winter thaw. The joy of life, one of many. The first to grace her life forever yet it cost not one penny.

She holds the gift close and feels its heart beating strong. A feeling to amazing to be expressed by any kind of book or song.

Hours pass and she makes the trip home with the precious joy she has vowed to protect. The vow runs blood deep and will remain up kept and pure with no neglect.

The First Born, the legacy, the heir and light of her world. No evil will she let touch the child, no harm will she let come upon it, nor any pain will she let unfurl.

In the child’s eyes she sees the light of life ever so coy, this is her First Born, her pride and joy.  

(this was alot longer on paper T_T)

Senior Year Starts With A Bang -_-

Okay, for the record let me just saw that I am incredibly mad at my schools administration. I usually do not writing about my day without giving it some sort of deep meaning that is meant to help those who read, but this time I will make an exception.

A lot of teens hate school. This is an irrefutable fact that has been true for many decades, but the instances that have happened at my school the last two years have made this all the more true. I am the type of person who loves the social aspect of school, friends, performances, rally’s, etc. but when my personal comfort zone gets messed with, I can hardly find the time to enjoy school. For the past two years my class schedule has been royally messed up, it has been that way for a lot of students, but these last two years hit really hard. Students not only are not getting that classes they want, but they are not getting the classes they NEED and as such the madness begins. Due to a horrid mistake and terrible planning my friends I (who deserve to have their classes fixed more than I do) might have to drop some of the classes we really wanted and or needed.

This situation has yet to sort itself out and if it does not seem as though things will end in my favor. My senior instead of being filled with fun classes and comic relief is instead being dominated by a cluster of confusion and an uncertainty of what is to come next. I am usually not one to complain, I have dealt with and ignored all kind of negative event in in these last 3 years of high school, but I refuse to stand down as the very classes that me and my fellow classmates have EARNED are stripped away from us due to poor planning our administration.

Do not get me wrong, I love my school and I take pride in being a PV Spartan, but something this stressful could not have come at a worse time, it is not a good feeling walking up and not knowing what the rest of your year will be like in terms of classes, the people you are with (in those classes) , etc. I will continue to strive for excellence for that is the only thing that can be done in this situation. We have tried fighting it and complaining, and we cannot afford to throw a full-fledged protest, so all that’s left is to deal with the cards that you are given and hope for the very best. This is not how I wanted my senior year to go, but I guess this is the final test of our high school lives, to see if we can deal with a negative situation while still keeping our awesome mojos, who knows?

I know one thing for sure, I have come too far and worked too hard to let something like this stop me. This storm will pass is what I pray, and until the day it does I will do my work and just keep my fingers crossed x_x 

MP3 EXPERIMENT

Yesterday I attended the mp3 experiment in San Francisco, and I can honestly say it was one of the highlights of my summer. For those who are not aware of what I am talking about, the mp3 experiment is a sort of improve gathering where people get together wearing different colors and play a special mp3 they downloaded of the experiment home page and play it at exactly 6:30, from here on they follow the directions of the mp3.

I was a bit nervous to go, considering me and all the people who went with me were wearing Red and were worried about being mistaken for gang members. Well we arrived late due to horrid SF traffic and when we approached the site of the even I was amazed, tons of people in assorted colors all playing thumb war (we started the mp3 at 630 so we could keep up with what was going on). Me and my friends joined in and started following the mp3s instructions…which ranged from playing “Steve” Says (the voice telling us what to do was named Steve), making a human dartboard, playing twister using the colors around us, and freeze tag.

It was so cool to see the crowd of non-participants watching from the edges of Union Square and the windows of the adjacent mall. I heard someone asking “is the music telling them what to do?” and I could not help but laugh. Through the whole experience I could only wonder how weird or awesome our group looked from afar, and whether or not people wished they could join us. This was a perfect event for me, considering I have a fondness for controlled chaos and randomness, which is exactly that this event was. It felt good to just go with the flow of what was happening and not worry about anything else. The event ended in an epic battle in which the red and yellows faced off against the blue and greens, using only inflated balloons as our “weapons”. This was fun and insane as I rushed through the sea of green and blues to push to other side…this was the only strategy I had considering my balloon was taken out of my hands within 5 seconds.

After this was all over the crowd of colors all waved goodbye and I went with a few friends to get dinner.

 We roamed around the mall, but what happens there is for a different post, until then I urge you, if something like the mp3 experiment comes near you, GO TO IT. It is pure fun and randomness, i.e. a perfect venture for friends XD.

Forever Spontaneous