Some For All (Object Writing/Figurative Language)

To be honest, I can't quite remember the exact details of this grad school assignment but I do know that: after writing a stream of consciousness, I choose my favorite line and wrote a song about it. Snippets from my stream looked like this:

Mountains are what keep me here
City life infects all, consumes all
I am somewhere in between those places
Somewhere between a dream and a nightmare
I am the best thing that has happened to me
The fountains of mountains stand above all
I don’t want it all, I just want some
Soaring like eagles in the universe’s skies
Birds of a feather, fly together
A storm before the calm

I choose the line "I don't want it all, I just want some" and ended up writing the most political song I've ever written. I don’t know if I’ll ever record it for real, but here’s the assignment I turned in — recorded on my phone, sitting at my keyboard at home.

Some For All

Bells that never rang
Ships that never sank
Crowns that never gave me anything

Somewhere in this scheme
Stars and stripes don’t seem
Inviting ‘cause they’ve all stopped listening

I don’t want it all, I don’t want it all
I just want some, I just want some
I don’t want it all, I don’t want it all
I just want some, I just want some

Twilights never gleamed
Banners never streamed
No apology for a haunting history

I feel like I can’t breathe
I’m not holding a thing
Don’t shoot me I am only seventeen

They tell us to go back
To the red, green and black
Can’t save us from a life of tyranny

So I will hold them close
Everything I love most
Continue opening each door they close

I don’t want it all, I don’t want it all
I just want some, I just want some
I don’t want it all, I don’t want it all
I just want some, I just want some

Happy Friday Anomalies!

—The Anomaly