Today we are featuring Inklings Book Contest 2020 finalist, Sophia Johnsen! Sophia finished 7th grade this past school year. The poem she submitted is called “Face Down”  Sophia said that what she likes most about her poem is the way she was able to express things that are going on in her life and in many of our lives right now.

My thoughts are mismatched, blurred, and torn
I try to dampen all my scorn
And focus on the brightest morn
That ever kept me waiting.

Hand in hand, we rode the tide
With feelings hidden deep inside
Come out in the mayhem astride
The crowd of fear inflating.

Spoken words are not controlled
The action made, the bell has tolled
Revealing the once-silent gold
Which guides us in our slumber.

What are we supposed to do?
With politics hidden from view
There’s no logic, that much is true
In treating souls like lumber.

A riot and a prayer befell
The would-be tyrant come to tell
Of many tales in glossy shell
It’s just a trick of lighting.

What will happen now, we think?
When fall of age sits on the brink
While hands increase, but voices shrink
To whispers in the writing.

Harvest reaped too late, my friend,
You had your chance, it now must end
While panic and know-how contend
For top spot in the making.

Speech the tyrant gives, but know
No accident has sunk so low
As now when we should never show
Our riches for the taking.

Although now our lives are slain,
We can’t fall deeply in the pain
The golden ships, the purest rain
Cannot save us by winking.

Million dreams and thousand eyes
All shatter under silver skies
As feelings drown and words revise
Themselves through wishful thinking

Different feelings, made aware
Walk up to open and repair
A person’s rights to equal share
When hope is scarce and scrappy.

With that I know, I will not fail
To walk the war’s unending trail
And ride it through, for sure prevail
Abandon and be happy.

Though the throne may someday fall
For now it stands up straight and tall
To bring beauty and joy for all
Light to lead us through the pain.

For one day all will break free
And find a person we agree
Should be the one on the marquee
And we all will see again.