Bio: Maxwell Baumbach is a young writer who attends Concordia University Chicago. He plans to major in Business Administration (Sports Management) with a minor in English. He has been writing since his freshmen year of high school, but did not take his craft that seriously until winning the Fine Arts Poetry contest at Timothy Christian High School. Since then, his work has been featured in various publications, both in print and on the internet.
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Attention-
Wearing a bright pink dress,
Her hair is done up nice.
Heels grace her feet,
Her make up is perfect.
She’ll turn the heads of many men,
They’ll vie for her attention.
She’ll never turn my head,
I’ll pay her no attention.
This girl thinks that she’s big league,
But I’m not impressed.
I look beyond the clothes she wears,
And never at her breasts.
A day will come when she can’t hide,
Her clothes and make up will mean nothing.
The world will pay her no attention,
And then I’ll give her a chance.
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Five Years Old-
He trots around the room
pretending to be a king.
Little does he know
that he will be but a
peasant
in this world.
He will grow to find
firefighter dreams
are lost
when reality takes its course.
Instead,
he will drop out of college
and work at the corner store,
where minutes are hours,
and hours are hell.
He will marry the woman
he thinks he loves.
Eventually
she will leave him
for a young,
wealthy man.
At that moment
he will decide that
nothing saves.
Fifty and alone,
a man with no faith
and a future
he forgot to live in.
With the knot
he will learn to tie perfectly
at boy scouts
in about three years,
he secures his goodbye thread.
With a leap from the chair
he will make that day
his grand finale.
But today
he trots around the room,
pretending to be a king.
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What Humans Have Become-
Waiting for the 6:55 AM
To Union Station
From Hinsdale, Illinois,
I watch on
As a man
No older than 35
Fills his lungs
With the many poisons
In his cigarette.
Another man,
Likely around 25 years,
Rips the cancer stick
From his hand,
Takes a drag,
And carelessly
Throws it to the
Concrete ground.
The victim
Yelled at the
Thief or Life Saver,
But took
No course of action.
If a cheetah
Stole prey
From another,
Surely,
Someone
Would have gotten
Their fucking head
Ripped off.
It is at
This moment
I know:
Humans
Have become
The weakest
Of the animals.
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Wounded Dog-
a broken beer bottle
laying in pieces on the floor
the wounded dog
bleeds before it's owner
vicious verbal abuse
tearing through the air
the scalded dog
keeps coming back for more.
some call him courageous
some call him a stupid son-of-a-bitch
he could be likened to a hero
he could be likened to a stubborn fool
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Imperfect-
It is all sunshine
except for those
heavy clouds
of makeup
the hide her face.
Powdered insecurity
covers up
her imperfect complexion.
It may disguise her blemish,
but it cannot contain
the ugliness
that dwells within her.
She is not as pretty
as she thinks she is.
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