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Madeline Sugiarto is participating in the 5th International Literary Creation Competition from Surabaya, Indonesia and is 16 years old. She is a student at Surabaya Cambridge School. We thank for the participation and wish her success.

Poem #1: Humanity’s Fondness

What is it to be human?
Every soul would yearn for remembrance,
immortality bigger than the sky and stars
from something so small.

Something so intimate, 
fingers gently gliding over moist clay;
a lover’s touch, for its creation.,
fingerprints etched for millennia.

Something so gruesome, 
pens riddled with pain over ragged paper,
where words pour out of open scars
for eyes to judge such vulnerability.

Something so delicate,
soft strokes across the rocky canvas,
a luminous journey through hues of love;
a time to be frozen onto worn cloth.

Something to pretend,
to manipulate a stage with fake conscience;
agonizing screams in someone else’s body,
to steal one’s life, alive in front of an audience
engraved in their minds for what’s to come.

The embodiment of humanity itself is,
of course, the hands that decide its fate,
and the hands that create life for its beauty;
for purity and not for sight only.


Poem #2: Infinite Ouroboros 

Remembrance can’t be achieved
Even with such achievements
As it shall be buried under the
Clutter left by generations of changes;
Hold onto the last bits of life.
For the world shall drown you into
Oblivion, where cries follow into the
Rushing river of demise, thus an end.
Impossible for us to empathize with the ignorant, 
Maybe, it is the curse of knowledge, 
Moving onwards for the gem of hope,
Only to sacrifice the worthiness of life;
Remember how it is worth living of time?
Time is just a fallacy, 
According to those who prevail in
Life, yet why do many deem
Indefinite time as precious as one’s love?
Tally all those you have lost, 
Yearning their presence to be eternal. 
Never has there been one to attempt
On the fabric of life, 
Where one can cheat death.

Now we ask of you:
what truly is our cage, life or time itself?
Should you truly reach for immortality
in this brook of creation?


Poem #3: Carnations for Rushing Brooks

The sun’s streaks of golden light corralled 
together in a pool of rustled foliage;
for the world to exist there shall be a cycle,
at which every soul has gone through.

It is beautiful to know how
every being from past and future have walked
under the very same sky and stars. 
Even as the sky laments and cries, 
then shall every soul repent for carmine stains.

The sunlight dappled the brook’s cascade,
enticing bleeding carnations to take away breaths.
Shall they plummet into the raging waters,
or bask in the tenderness of the sun;
of course, till the moon arrives.

Known to many, it is the cycle of eons,
the change in ambience, in beauty.
Quite orthodox, even as the moon seethes
from the unwelcoming audience,
none shall deem a quietus such credence. 

Now ought the carnations wilt, 
a thud to the soft, embracing floor of earth,
the weeping wind soon caressing the limp figure;
like a mother embosoming her child from the cold,
her warm fingers drifting across a sleeping face.

Soon the cold and faded beauty joined the stream
of rhythmic waters with a changed flow,
as if the petals were too delicate to move;
ergo it is alike the human soul.

It is unbeknownst to many where they all end up;
was it the abyss? Or a heaven?
Would they arrive in an endless void of sentience,
or would it have enough stars to be a heaven?
My dear, shall we embrace as the sky crumbles upon us.