Sophomore, Arianna Larsen, won third place in the Peace Arts Contest for her poem, "Peace Within Ashes."Open to all Lancaster County, PA area high school students (public, private or home school) from grades 9-12. This Year's Topic: "PEACE BEGINS WITH ME."Peace, Within Ashes
If only the people could see their glazed over eyes through the view of the betrayed, would they change their minds?
If the screams rang out loud and trumpeting
would the world auscultate the sounds of suffering?
From the brittle hands of children in the barren lands
To the swollen eyes of those feeling the darkness of their minds eating them from the inside out,
Where can you visualize peace?
To the suffering servant, bound by the ropes of the fallen world
do they know what you've experienced?
To the poverty ridden hearts full of nothing but pennies
where will you be when the world comes to its senses?
What if the people could find truth in themselves
Turning prescription into candy and noose into jump ropes
Loss of innocence eaten by society
Could society glisten into glitter
Or are glitters not gold?
Where is the sense of imagination within hearts of children, with their playgrounds made into battlefields and their school into a shooting range
Suddenly, seeing their classmates become targets turn as ordinary as a textbook
Where is their peace?
Multicolored hands reach out for hollowed souls of others
While sophisticated men breathe into the depths of the poisonous legal tender
Blanketing the goodness of the forlorn heart belonging to the generous spender
Envy turns green and reflection turns the color of vanity
Veins run dry from past addictions
Little white lies stain crimson cells
Maybe peace is engraved not within stone tablets of the past
but engraved on cement hearts
Hearts discovered only through the willingness of others
Looking for a safety net
Maybe peace is hiding in those we love, under skin and bone that make us all human
All bone is white, and blood red
We are all human
Maybe peace is found domestically
Peace is breath
Peace is life
Peace is she, he, it, them
You
Peace is the unexplainable
There will be nothing greater of a sense of unity,
Until that peace
begins with me.