This is another one of the poems I wrote during my eighth grade poetry unit, though it wasn’t one that I turned in. I may or may not have been under the influence of chocolate when I wrote it.
My heart melts
As I read
I fold the message
How sweet
I toy with it
In my mind and mouth
Both feel good
Oh how I love Dove chocolate hearts
This is another poem I wrote for the poetry unit, about a snake “hugging” a mouse. The narrator is a seven year-old boy who doesn’t realize what’s actually happening. It is imperative to the humor of this story that you read it in the voice of a pretentious small child. Warning: dark humor, euphemized death.
"Timmy, go outside!"
Mom's hollering across the house.
The door slams behind me.
She yells something
about attitude.
I mutter back about her not being the boss of me.
I'm seven now, after all.
I make sure it's just loud enough for our door cam to pick it up.
Really, I want to be out here.
It smells nice,
like pines,
and grass,
and wind,
and yesterday’s rain.
Not like inside.
Inside doesn’t smell nice at all.
Something’s broken, I don’t remember what.
When it’s nice and cold like today it turns on,
and the whole house smells like something is burning.
When it isn’t on,
it smells old.
I’m not sure which I hate more.
But I’m not inside anymore.
I’m trekking through my trees,
deciding what kind of adventure I’ll be having today.
Then I spot them.
I freeze.
I don’t want to startle them.
Either of them.
There’s a snake coiled around a pine,
and a mouse in front of it.
I wonder what they’re doing,
and I stay super still so they might let me see.
The snake leaps towards the mouse.
I flinch.
I’ve heard of some really scary snakes that’ll kill you with a bite,
but it doesn’t bite the mouse.
It hugs it tight,
like Aunt Joanna does to me when we see her.
I grin in delight.
I didn’t know animals hugged each other!
The mouse doesn’t look happy.
It’s squirming around,
like it’s trying to get loose.
I guess the snake really is like Aunt Joanna,
and that mouse really is like me.
I feel a bit bad for it.
I know what it’s like to get hugged by someone you really don’t like,
but I also know that I’m supposed to be polite and let them hug me,
and I think the same goes for mice, right?
So I just stand and wait and watch.
The snake squeezes harder.
Relatives always do when you try and escape their hugs.
Doesn’t the mouse know that?
If it would just stop squirming the snake would probably let it go.
Eventually, it does.
The mouse goes still.
I guess it figured out my trick,
cuz the snake lets go of it completely.
Either that or it said something really nasty.
I got in trouble for doing that to Aunt Joanna once.
She stopped hugging me faster than my sister runs when she sees a spider,
but then I got a talking-to and no dessert.
I think it’s easier to just stand still like one of the trees until she lets go.
I’m so excited that I sprint back to the house.
“Michelle!” I yell for my sister.
“You’ll never believe it!”
“I just saw a snake hugging a mouse!”
This is one of my favorite poems that I wrote for my eighth grade poetry unit. I present to you, “The Beast.”
The Beast prowls by the gates,
impatient to be unleashed.
Eager to return to the hunt
and sink her teeth into the prize.
But she has been banished here
by the keepers of her prey.
She cannot escape,
yet she scratches at the mass that holds her,
the horrible sound carrying down the corridors
as the obstacle slowly chips away.
She howls in frustration
as pieces of her prison fall away,
yet in whole it stands strong.
Bored, she turns to her cell.
What here can she do?
What to climb on?
What to destroy?
It depends on where she is held-
the keepers rotate her containment.
Sometimes she has company.
A keeper is kept with her,
much to their annoyance.
She scrapes at the walls,
calling out for freedom,
and bothering them in hope of release.
This time, she is alone.
The keeper would not stay with her.
The other obliged.
They needed help with the target anyways.
So there is nobody to appeal to;
no chance of sympathy.
I am a keeper:
the one who keeps her company.
Who escaped that fate, this time.
As her prey is moved again,
the other keeper turns to me.
“Unleash the Beast.”
I protest the order.
We know what will happen.
She will come for it,
again.
But the other stares me down.
“It’s been long enough. Go.”
And so I do.
I loiter down the passageway,
unenthusiastic about my task.
But I have my orders
from the head keeper.
I undo the latch.
Do I really have to?
Yes, I do.
I open it hesitantly, slowly.
The Beast pushes towards me.
As soon as it is open
just enough for her to squirrel through
she is out.
She ignores me, running past.
She is free!
She does not know where the target is,
where it has been moved to now,
but she does know where it often is.
She closes in on that place,
leaping towards her anticipated prize.
And the cat is on the counter again.
Time to lock her back in Mom’s room
while we eat our dinner.
Yes, you read that right, and no, it isn’t a typo. Surviv is a third person shooter game, meaning you see your character from an overhead view. I’ve been told that it’s the 2-D version of Fortnight, but I can neither confirm nor deny that, seeing as I haven’t played Fortnight.
You destroy crates to get guns, ammo, grenades, melee weapons, outfits, medical supplies, and gear, which can also be found lying around sometimes. You may also find scopes, which increase your field of view. There are different types of ammo for the different types of guns (they’re color-coded), and different guns within each type. Everyone has their own preferences; I like the yellow-ammo weaponry because they tend to have large clips, and I’m not the most accurate shot.
Medical supplies are split into two groups, which I call “healing” and “adrenaline.” Healing supplies are bandages and med kits, which directly restore health. Adrenaline supplies are consumed, and then gradually give you health back until the adrenaline bar runs out. Gear is split into backpacks, helmets, and armor, each of which has three levels of possibility. Obviously, the higher the level, the better. Outfits are mostly useless, but there are a few that provide excellent camouflage.
The game has a “last one standing” premise to it. As the game progresses, the map gradually gets smaller as the “Red Zone” moves inwards. Standing in the Red Zone is possible, but your health decreases. You can see where the Red Zone will be moving to at any given time in the mini map, which is expandable if you hit “M.” How you survive is up to you – some people like to attack anything that comes near them until they’re the only one left, and some like to hide in bushes until they’re one of the last people left, and then they attack the remaining adversaries. It’s up to you!
You can also play “Squad,” either with random other players or with a group of friends. Let me tell you, it is an excellent experience to try and play this game with a group of teenagers in various, spread-out locations in the same room (*cough* passing period *cough*). It’s insane.
Squads are nice because you can communicate with your team to ask for certain supplies or ask them to go somewhere. You also don’t die immediately. Instead, you go to a slow and helpless crawl until one of your teammates revives you or you bleed out, which sounds awful, but it’s nice to get a second chance, and it rewards team members who stay with the rest of the squad by increasing their chances of revival.
It can take a little while to acclimate to the controls, but if you play enough it becomes automatic. Right click is communication/drop this item, left click is attack, , WASD are movement, 1-4 are selections of weapons (gun, gun, melee, grenade), F is to pick something up or open and close doors, and M is the map.
