Teen Poetry Collections
- Overview
- The Most Real I Feel
- My Backpack of Pain
- Nobody Knows My Name
- Until Life is Beautiful Once More...
- The Natural To My Beauty
- No Air At All
- I Feel Like That Bird That's Fallen
- Independent
- My Sister
- Abandoned
- Me and My Board
- Lost Girl
- Longing For Another Life
- Princess Adia'Zalika
- Capitol Hill
- Handcuffs
- Peace and Love From a Natural Born Thug
- The Pain
- Me A Hermit
- Finally Opening Doors
- A Gaining Loss
- Anger
- Do You Really Know Me?
- Not My Real Sandals
- Para Mi Mama y Para Mi Papa
- My Brother
- The Undefined
- Something Missing
- Pre-Summary of My Life
- Really Buttery Popcorn
- I'm Getting Out
- Physical Love
- Made Me Feel Like There's No World
- Wounded Healer
- Memories #3
- The Nightmare That Never Ended
- Dear Ex-Boyfriend
- My Whole World Stopped
- Dear Mom #2
- My Spaceship
- Just Lay It Out
- White Walls & Collect Calls
- Amazing Amanda
- Immigration
- Unwanted
- Worry
- My Life Story
- If God Were Looking at My Life #2
- Lying in My Bed at Night, I Think
- 144 Ways
- Freedom
- Missing My Family
- If Meth Wasn't in My Life
- Lonely
- My Stupid Boyfriend
- Oblivion
- The White Walls
- Life Is a Dream with No Bed
- Happy Birthday
- My Best Friend Was Murdered
- Why Are You Blue?
- We Came from Saudi Arabia
- The Days I Miss
- Dear Mom
- Brother and Sister
- A Good Day / A Bad Day
- My Dad #3
- Dear Family
- When My Brother Got Shot
- Nothing Will Bring Me Down
- Coyote Ridge
- Family #2
- Metal on Metal
- I'm Making a Moving Poem
- The Thunder Is in the Past
- There Had to Have Been Someone
- There Had to Have Been
- Memories
- I Like the Rain More than The Sun
- Finding Summer Again
- Every Guy
- When I Look in the Mirror
- Different Levels
- Worries for You
- The First and Last Day I Saw My Dad
- Changing My Life Around
- You Can't Be Mad Forever
- I Wonder
- Doors of Emotion
- Ice Cream Man
- Liquor Makes the World Violent
- The Coolest Dad
- Letter to Mom
- Virginity
- Black
- The Three Faces of My Monster
- Drowning
- Sides of Me
- The Love of My Life
- Monkey
- My Life
- What It's Like to Have a Headache
- [Preface]
- The Currents of My Emotion
- I Am As Angry As a Boomerang
- They Look Like a Heart, They Beat
- Love is Like All the Colors of the Doors in Juvie
- I Looked at the Butterflies on the Ceiling
- Family
- My Memory Poem
- My Life Is Like a PS2
- If Only You Knew
- What I Think About My Favorite Staff
- Life on Ketron Cottage
- My Sumo Cat
- Cancer Is
- Baby Blues
- Not Titled Because
- Why Me?
- Mom, The Story
- Living on the Streets
- My Mom
- Going to the Dentist
- Why I'm Short and Not Tall
- Conversations with My Eating Disorder
- Life Like a Cat
- I Miss the Way We Occasionally Got Along
- My Passion Leaps Out Toward the World
- I Am a Monster, But a Fairy, Too
- How Tucked in the Corner Was Sadness
- A Salty Longing
- See What Goes On Behind My Masks
- No More Me
- I Lost My Sense of Protection
- Because I Didnt Know the True Meaning of Love
- What Every Guy Tells Me
- Trapped in the Ghetto & The Other Piece of Me
- I Can't Imagine Myself Any Other Place
- The House on the Corner 2
- The House on the Corner
- Poems by Parents
Prosthetics
by a young man, age 15 Fake. Lifeless. Plastic.
I once knew a girl – this is true to life –
It was 1st or 2nd grade, I believe.
She had a prosthetic leg. I felt sorry for her,
but then again, she was able
to do almost anything.
She could run, jump,
hang upside down on a bar,
everything except swim.
Prosthetics. Dull. Lifeless, as in paper
which is fake – it just sits there.
The only thing we ever use it for
is to write. We write,
and that’s when it becomes something
and not fake.
Prosthetics. Paints, which are nothing
like the real thing. Like cartoons.
Although some paints look real.
The Mona Lisa. Cortez’s self portrait.
It has extreme depth—it looks like you
could walk right in and touch the person.
Prosthetics. Dreams are fake.
What you choose to do with them
to make them a reality
is up to you.
Prosthetics. My life of video games.
It’s my fake world where anything is possible.
I can jump off buildings and not get hurt.
The life of video games is the best place
I’ve ever been.
To die
and get reborn.