kota's 2020-2021 portfolio
Below you'll find a collection of pieces I've written for my Creative Writing classes. Any form of plagiarism will not be tolerated.
Constructive criticism is welcome.
these poems were written after i was given extremely specific prompts by my teacher. I am new to poetry, and do not know how to structure a poem yet. these were my first two revised poems i've ever written.
Elegy to Cameron Boyce
Content Warnings: Death of a loved one
On July 7th of 2019, Cameron Boyce died at 20 years.
In his room, on his bed
Sharing an apartment with his co-star, Karan Brar,
Who acted as his brother on T.V.
I thought about when we were younger,
And about every Sunday, while visiting my grandma,
where me and my sister, wearing our matching pink and blue church dresses,
would fight over the remote.
We only got cable T.V. when we visited our grandma,
Watching those shows was exciting.
The brother’s voices played onscreen,
Melting together in a brotherly mesh;
On July 7th, 2019, my sister sat on the end of my bed, with her legs crossed
Showing me the news
Our relationship had changed over the years,
We had split off into different rooms,
She had grown into the popular girl. The cheerleader.
I was quiet and queer. I felt outcast from the family
She decorated her room with plastic leaves, and photos of her and her friends,
I painted my walls dark grey, and hung up band posters.
We pass each other in the hallway, without taking a second glance.
On that day, I remember looking at the lake outside my window,
Probably observing the blooming flowers on our neighbor’s bushes
The clouds tried their hardest to hide the sun that day,
But the light still seeped into my window, casting shadows across her skin
I thought about Karan, who had found his brother
And how me and my sister were likely asleep.
Just like how they shared an L.A. apartment,
Me and her had shared a room.
In that moment, I had wondered how bad it would hurt to be Karan
And visualized how it would feel if I had fallen a similar fate to his, as I fell asleep.
My sister woke up fine
And I had looked up the weather for L.A., on July 7th of 2019,
And saw it was cloudy too.
Ballad at Stonewall Inn
Content warnings: homophobia, death, and police brutality
With the first rock thrown
a single match was lit
& dropped
& a red chain snapped
Women & Men & Both & None in holding cells
we had been stripped of clothes & rights & blood
sitting on the cold damp floor
misery spread like a fog
Marsha P. Johnson had hurled that stone
hands locked behind her back
She lit the match
that blew Stonewall Inn to shreds
The fire lit after the police raided
it started after they found us out
hidden under tables & behind counters
they wanted to lock us up for our crimes
Then after the fire & the jailbreak
before the ashes had a chance to settle
for fleeting moments we were free
and so we fought back against police
The parade lasted long past summer
hands of all colors sizes & cities clasped
Sisters & Brothers & Lovers fighting in the streets
for the right to love ourselves
We put down our roots in Manhattan
& news spread throughout the country
that a black transgender woman started the riot
demanding liberation for queer people of all kinds
& so, the first ever pride parade began
burning red & orange & purple & green & pink
organizations rose to give us homes
Queer crime syndicates pleading for love & peace
& soon everybody knew about our bloody noses leaking pink
our bruised arms & dead lovers & siblings
so it came as no surprise that after the bricks laid still
& Marsha was found washed up in the Hudson
That the parade marched on & the fire burned blue, pink & white
These two essays were written in my creative nonfiction essay writing classes. they are personal literary essays, and are not fiction pieces.
note: personal essays are an underated art form. essays can be a great way to tell a personal story, and are great reads. i'll link some personal essays i enjoy.
Originality is Dead
1666 words
Originality (noun)
orig·i·nal·ity
1. The quality of being original
2. Freshness of aspect, design, or style
3. The power of independent thought or constructive imagination
Creating, to me, is like climbing up a mountain. The peak is blanketed in clouds. I want to reach the top, so I work my way up. On my climb, I pass a bunch of rocks. They’re all the same, really, but I still take some and put them in my backpack. Sometimes I write my name on them to make them my rocks, instead of anyone else’s. Sometimes I turn my rocks over to see someone else has also written their own name on them. I have yet to reach the peak.
The Merriam-Webster definition of Originality has three variants. Three different definitions, all saying a similar thing. To be original, to be fresh, to think independently. The concept of being a truly original artist has always drawn me in. By 5th grade, everything started to blur together. I wanted to be the artist who created matter.
Back in middle school, I felt defeated about everything. My writing was bad, my grades were bad, my teachers were mean, and up in my English classroom was a poster showcasing middle school writers who had been published. Obviously, I was not standing dramatically among them. I had given up hope on finding my perfect, original idea. I remember walking with my friend, who drew really cool wolves. She was the perfect artist. I wanted to be the perfect artist, too. I wanted her to remember me. I walked her to the bus stop, and I told her about my favorite story. She asked me what I wrote. I didn’t want to admit that my story was based in a high school. Every story ever written was based in a high school, it seemed. So instead, I started ranting about how originality was unattainable. She walked onto her bus while I was still talking. I stood there, alone, talking to myself. Then, I walked back to my mom’s car.
I always saw concepts as a cycle of energy, reincarnating into the next story, and the next, and so on, until the end of days. Does reaching enlightenment mean you’ve formed a completely original, fresh, independent creation? Or does it mean that your creation is good despite being full of reused ideas?
1. The quality of being original
a. Original (adjective)
not secondary, derivative, or imitative
To seek inspiration is to pull ideas and feelings and concepts from somewhere else. To be inspired is to derive. All thoughts, ideas and concepts must originate from me, and me alone. I can’t have a backpack full of rocks. I can’t even look at them. I must make my own matter, alone on this mountain. I need to invent a new element and add it to my own table. I made these hiking boots myself, and I’ll use them to climb this mountain and reach the peak, and when I see what’s up there, it’s all mine and no one else can have it.
Obviously, this is ridiculous. I admire a person, so I look to the flowing sea oats rooted in sand, and I see their hair. Oh God, no. I’ve imitated sea oats.
It’s impossible to consume no ideas and then create a new idea. Often, I’m inspired unknowingly. When writing for a Dungeons & Dragons campaign I am hosting, I removed the sun from the world entirely. After writing, I remembered that this is a plot point from the first episode of My Little Pony, which I haven’t watched since I was twelve. Twilight Sparkle must venture through the dark woods to find the lost sun princess. I pulled an idea from a show I haven’t watched in four years. After writing, I played a video game called OneShot. In that game, the sun is a lightbulb that the main character, Niko, needs to return to the center of the world, to restore its life. So, what happened? My idea wasn’t original, I know that much.
2. Freshness of aspect, design, or style
Freshness as in refreshing or as in brand new? Is originality the fruit a plant you cultivated bears? Is originality a cold glass of water after you’ve been sitting under the same sweltering beams of sun all day? Or is originality a new smartphone, with a sleek design and even faster processing power, or an advertisement for the new brand-new triple bacon cheeseburger?
When My Little Pony featured that plot-point, I doubt they invented it. They had taken one of the rocks they saw while climbing the mountain, and it worked well. When I introduced that plot point, I had picked up this same rock, wrote my name on it, and then left it behind for the next creator to pick it up. To find who had first discovered this rock, I scoured the internet for a few minutes. I found a Greek Philosopher, (Heraclitus. The Sun is new every day, he believed.) a Britpop band (Supergrass. I want to live where the sun meets the sky), and religious texts (Joel 2:31 of the Bible says that on the great day of the rapture, The sun will be turned into darkness / And the moon into blood / Before the great and awesome day of the Lord comes.)
3. The power of independent thought or constructive imagination
I associate “thinking independently” with political conversations. Think freely. Form your own opinions, is something people commonly say when someone has a different opinion than them. So, if originality is being a free thinker, then I must think differently than everyone else. My ideas must be so extreme that no one has ever thought them before. There are billions of different story ideas, that it seems impossible to contribute another new thought.
Being original means finding a brand-new color. Even then, with human limitations, we also must rival against shrimp and hummingbirds, who’s special irises gave them a head-start. Not even Elon Musk can invent goggles to catch those elusive shrimp colors.
I find myself wondering if I’ve ever had an original thought in my life. Everything I’ve thought has been thought by someone else. When we adopted our black Labrador, I named her Raven. I went to a friend’s house. She also had a black lab named Raven. I’m drinking water out of a pink cup from Walmart, which has been distributed across the country. The cup likely has the same design as another cup, that was made by another person, who distributed it around another country. I get my medication from Publix on Cobblestone. I need to specify on Cobblestone to my doctor, because there are 817 other Publix’s in Florida alone.
In middle school, I was working on a book. Instead of forming a new story, in a setting other than generic high school, or admitting that maybe I was being a bit cliché, I argued that originality was dead, so I could do whatever I pleased, and no one can criticize it for being unoriginal.
So, then. Is originality dead?
No, but also yes.
How I see things, new stories are being told every day. There’s an infinite amount of American high school drama shows. Riverdale, Pretty Little Liars, Gossip Girl, Glee, The Vampire Diaries, Degrassi, etc etc. So, are all these shows the same idea? They feature the same setting, similar character tropes, relationships, and so on.
Riverdale places the cast of Archie Comics in the fictional American small-town of Riverdale, and puts them in an abundance of strange and dramatic situations. Glee takes a similar concept, but the main cast is the people in the Glee club and focuses more on the teenager’s individual conflicts instead of the town’s issues. Still, despite the two shows having similar character clichés, setting, and overall concept, they’re vastly different shows.
Plot ideas, such as the sun going missing, have all been done before. It is exceedingly difficult to find a single plot idea that hasn’t been used. In the same vein, most character ideas have been done before. But that doesn’t mean there’s a limited amount to choose from.
Here’s how I see it: I buy my unoriginal pink cup from unoriginal Walmart. I fill it full of unoriginal peppermint tea and place it on my unoriginal desk next to my unoriginal lamp and my unoriginal laptop, and I sit in my unoriginal red-and-black chair and watch an unoriginal cartoon about horses.
I am likely the only person in the world at this moment, who is drinking peppermint tea out of a pink cup from Walmart, sitting in a red-and-black chair in front of a desk with a lamp, watching a show about horses on my laptop.
A 2000’s sitcom titled How I Met Your Mother had a running gag that each main character had a Doppelgänger. In episodes 90, 150, 110, and 112, the main five characters end up running into identical versions of themselves, all around New York City. The main character, Ted Mosby, presented a theory: every single person who has ever lived has an identical version of themselves, and you’re bound to meet yourself eventually.
His theory is logical. I mean, isn’t everyone just the same DNA? Aren’t I just a crude jumble of my parents, and grandparents, and great-grandparents? Aren’t I just another descendant of Eve? And when we’re all descendants of Eve, nothing is new.
Well, Ted Mosby, “eventually” has come and past, and never in my life have I seen another version of myself.
When I go to create a story, there’s about a billion different characters I could chose to place in a billion different settings, with a billion different problems. So, I climb that mountain, I collect every rock that looks interesting, and then I reach the top. At the top is a basket to dump my rocks in. Only I could have selected this specific combination of rocks.