In our Live Online Poetry class, students are asked to write many styles of poetry including this free form poem written by Bruce Lorenzana. To learn more about our classes click HERE.

Futility

They work frenetic-like to pay their bills,

To eat their fills, to cure their ills then lose

Their job. They raise and rear their kids, but in

Some years, despite their groundings, lectures, all

Their efforts lose. They see their kids have razed

Themselves. They make their laws to cage their flaws

Inside the walls they deem as good. But still,

Their laws don’t fix their faults, or heal their hurts,

Preserve the peace, or gag their gripes. Two planes

Wreck towers, Wall Street crashes, shooters kill,

Men arm themselves to scourge each other’s lands,

The earth upheaves and swallows cities, storms

Rip through an island, surges rise and sink

The world. The closing of the day, there’s not

Much they can say except: “It’s gonna be

ok.” They are such woeful leaves: born on

The ground, uplifted by the wind—ign’rant

To north, or south, or east, or west. It still,

However, blows them down to mountain peaks,

High up to depths of trenches, into vast

Expanses of the outer space for no

Apparent reason but to drop them on

The ground again, expecting t’morrow’s wind.

Bruce Lorenzana is a 16-year-old sophomore and this is his fourth year at VSA. He enjoys eating Hispanic food, studying and writing poetry, and playing piano and cello. Bruce and his family currently live in Palm Coast, Florida.