10 Minute Poem Winners!

It was hard (and actually pretty arbitrary) to select winners for this years 10 Minute Poem Contest. We are not poetry experts by any means and with so many poems submitted on the blog, email, and MySpace, it was hard to pick a winner quickly, especially when the only criteria was to write a poem in about 10 minutes!

So here are the poems the WisdomWorks staff selected. Whimsy seems to have won the hearts of many a judge. It was close between many poems, so be sure to enter next time! (but don't let that stop ya from writing MORE poems just for fun! A good book to get you going is Poemcrazy, by Susan Goldsmith Wooldridge)

Winners will receive some PlanetWisdom gear and a signed copy of my latest book , Wisdom On Making Good Decisions. (Winners send me your shirt size!)

Mark

My Reflection
by Samantha

I met a girl
The other day
She was different from me
In many ways

I know I have met her
In the past
But I don’t know
If our friendship will last

Her hair is different
And she doesn’t dress the same as before
I felt like I didn’t know
Who she was anymore

She left her old friends
And joined a new crew
Once a cute guy came along,
She’d leave her new crew too.

Her old friends told her
She was being a fake
They didn’t know
How much they could take

They tried to prove a point to her
And she shed a tear
They told her to look
At herself in a mirror

When I saw all this happening I thought,
“How could this be?”
This new girl seemed
So opposite of me

But when I looked in the mirror,
What did I see?
My reflection! All along
This new girl was me!

Driving in the Night
By Stephanie

The rain slides under the wet wheels.
Lights pass fewer and fewer by the hour.
Nothing but the water falling from the heavens to keep our company.
Headlights from the following car is the only light that pours through our windows now.
The heat envelopes us,
comforting us.
My fingers still wander across the ice cold window,
Seeking the wetness on the other side.

Sleep is beckoning me but I try to resist it's powerful grip.
My eyes find a sleeping body next to me.
I smile as I see my sister dreaming in peace,
Away from the terror of the modern world around us.
My eyelids are weighted and begin to fall.
As much as I struggle,
Sleep slowly overcomes.
When I awake I wish to find that the light has saved us from our endless darkness.


The Blank Paper
by Kylie

The crisp white paper lays blank,
waiting to be filled with
numbers and symbols. Yet-
and yet it still stays
in it's purest nature.
My life is like the paper.
Simple and confusing, pure
and unknown--full of potential.
But like my life, the path
of equations is hard to follow.
It seems like all I can
do is make mistakes.
Mistakes that can transform
the entire outcome into
a plus or a minus-
a positive or a negative.
It is so easy to erase, to
forget what all I've done
to get where I am.
To forget who I am.
My mind gets jumbled, eraser
covers my desk. It is-
it is so easy to quit.
To quit my dreams and morals,
exponents and division,
myself, and God's plan for me.
But I will carry on.
I will carry on till I'm close to tears,
but full of pride-
and the answer is clear.
And just like my life, and
just like the paper,
the next equation begins.

Your Hair
by Anonymous

its your hair that eviscerates my resolve
not to look again
not to notice
not to be unshackled from my mission
to complete this tedious duty
to cross it off the list
to be done
but I see you see me notice
and with devastating intention you summon
the sun to dance in your auburn glory
and my industry surrenders
my diligence a victim of your conditioner