Life Fragment - 1999

In 1999 i was in a creative writing class at my high school in Kalamazoo, MI. The same year, my dad got a new job in Louisiana and planned to move the whole family. Before i moved, my creative writing teacher had everyone in the class write a poem about me, which she compiled, and gave to me in a folder. Before i left, people read their poems to me. These are a few of them:

To The Visionary

The self-proclaimed visionary
Well, I say to you Bernhard, let me see
See? I saw, have seen and now know.
Some the shallow end, extending limb by limb to find
The wet permeates untouched.
You, Kurt, arouse the silt on the floor.
Head first into the mysterious muck below
Transcending as you go while shaping as you grow
Like the thoughts that shape the ridges on your brow
Flow, ramble and unscramble your ambled mind
And like a true vision, ascencion you will find.

- Mike McHugh (my teacher's assistant)

------

Kurt inhales the world and
breathes it out through his eyes.
Man-child with seeking on his mind
So full of dreams that trip his tongue
and dance, fantastic, across his page

Where will this journey take him,
he who has traveled so far...
I watch him go a world away,
poised on the edge of new
and leaving this life behind.

Striding to waiting doors he stops
and then moves quickly through.

- Sally Padley (my teacher)

------
I spot him down the hall
his individuality standing out amongst a
sea of conformity.
His words are heard.
His impressions made.
The complexities of his personality surface
and reveal a visionary.
One who embraces life

- Mary Townsend (a friend)