Iraqi "Camouflaging the Chimera"

My English teacher has us writing our own versions of the Vietnam War poem, "Camouflaging the Chimera". The difference is that we had to use the war in Iraq or Afghanistan as a subject. And the fact that Mr. Komunyakaa was actually in battle and none of us were.

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We wore our stores like oxen.
Our faces coated in metal and
our bodies armored in plastic,

sand eroding our minds, blinding
our hearts. Protected by
steel dragons, we looked
through the eyes of our guns.

We crawled beneath walls and stood
atop dust, looking for the
rabbit holes in which our

serpents hid with mouths
agape. We stole their refuge
with grenades, but comrades
fled within, as well,

disappearing with familiar cries.
Our vision turned green when
flames lit the night, opening

windows to escape their masters.
We sneaked inside an
Iraqi store, ready to
attack our brethren.

- Brad Chambers [OGrilla]


Steel Dragon ^


Stealing the serpents' refuge ^

Drawings

Hello world. I haven't typed to you in a while!

Well, here's my first serious showing off of my artwork. Nothing fancy, mostly just doodles I do at school. Thus the lined papers on some.

Click the pictures to view them in a new window.

Wow! A Work Of Literature!

A story I am making up off the top of my head.
I think I'm going to do this a lot from now on......

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Every night, the jungle toad would climb atop it's moss-covered stone and watch the fireflies flit around the vines, looking for mates. It wanted to eat them, but that would have been sacreligious. Something of such beauty would be missed and the nymphs would tell it's masters. If only it had been born in the swamp!



The tree frogs would laugh at it while it hopped along the crocodile paths in search of crickets. It didn't like the frogs and it wished a green snake would swallow one of the bullies up, but that wasn't possible. The only reason the pests were able to tease all of the other animals about their imperfections was because they were poisonous, and none of the predators wanted to be coughing up blood for a week. Go figure.



After eating several ugly crickets, the toad decided to lounge about the pond near it's hole. There weren't many things to eat in the pond, due to the large amount of wooden powder floating on top. No insect wanted to lay their eggs in something that smelled worse than a sloth. The water was also very shiny and multi-colored, and it was confusing to look at.



A large moth flew overhead, but the toad's mouth wasn't wide enough, so it waited a little longer. Soon another moth flew by, this one much smaller. The toad's eyes locked up on the insect and it moved it's front legs very slowly, pointing toward it's prey. When the flying creature was only a few feet away, the amphibian leaped as far as it could from it's log, right into the moth's path, catching it between wide-open jaws.



As daylight crept in, the toad crawled toward an extremely thick tree trunk. It was in the middle of burrowing a new hole to spend the day when it noticed the area was darkening around it.
It thought, 'This doesn't make sense. It should be getting lighter right now."

It moved backwards a step, slowly turned around......



....and was promptly eaten by a very deformed lemur.

THE END