Saltus Grammar School - Yearbook (Hamilton, Bermuda)

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' Front Street ' by DAVID BENEVIDES 4M The Cave I picked my way down the spiraling, winding passage. My heavy boots continually kept slipping on the smooth, treacherous rock. I pushed myself through the miniature entrance, and then stumbled out into the cave. The sheer size of the thing was enough to make the bravest quail. Thousands of stalagtites and stalagmites, of various sizes, formed complex and bizzare patterns, and completely filled the cave. An underground waterfall cascaded and gurgled down the rocks to my right, and formed a small stream which twisted its way crazily around the pinnacles, disappearing into the distance. The air was damp and chilly, and unnaturally clean. I walked over to the crystal clear stream and idly touched it with my hand. I quickly withdrew it. The water was cold enough to bum. I yelled. Every nook and cranny echoed my cry. In a hundred voices did my sound return to me. Every sound seemed to stand out in that complete, utter stillness; the gurgling of the waterfall, the crunching of my boots as I struggled against the cold, and even my own heartbeat, which I would hardly have noticed in normal circumstances. All these things stood out. In that cave, one could have heard a pin drop. I stood there, awestruck by all of these wonders which had unfolded before my eyes. Suddenly, as I turned to go, it dawned upon me. Man, in all his wisdom and folly, cannot create anything as beautiful or intricate as the architecture of nature. Peter Garrod S2P Wonderworld The sharp point of the needle hit my arm and perfor- ated the skin, the liquid oozed through my veins. It seemed to have no effect. My friends ' grinning faces stared at me to see my bewildered features. Soon, Charlie started growing homs and I could see him ridiculing me. His red skin vibrated and he poked me with his pointy fork. Looking for the wound, I found I was not there. This made the voices around me laugh in a mocking way. They echoed in my head. But where was my head. The echoes didn ' t seem to be coming from over my neck. I decided to search for it, following the hilarious guffaws. Walking through a wall, I found an escalator going downwards. I stumbled onto it and fell flat on my — no, not my face — it must have been my chest. Well, anyway, it hurt. Arriving at the bottom, I found that the ground above me was glass. This was all very sensible to me. There seemed to be a bathroom above and I saw three boys, two of whom were combing their teeth and the other was flossing his hair. Seeing nothing unusual there, I moved under the next room where a remote control colour TV. was changing this head ' s channels. That head looked familiar. It had those bloodshot eyes and that blank expression. It had to be mine! Immediately, I reflected myself into the room and saved my head from being switched to channel 14. Yuch! As my body was being capitated I felt warm blood pump through my systems. I heard cheering as I entered reality, and as my systems cleared I realized what my body was telling me. Anyone who takes a trip on acid has lost their head. Erik Jackson S3H ' Ghoul Queen ' (Frazetta reproduction)KEES VAN BEELEN 5F

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. IN WORDS AND PICTURES Night Flight ' Surrealist PortraU by LISA QUINN, Senior Year. POEMS Crabs The plated army marched sideways Pinchers as sharp as their clawing wits Ready for the kill. George Jones SIB Haiicu Poems The strong wind hits the struggling ant, and steals its crumb like a thief. Bruce Lattyaii SIB Haiku Horrible white kernels slobbered onto my plate with their ancient Chinese look. Liam McKittrick S3H Storm The thundering hurricane cripples, Like a spasm in the back. But the aftermath is calm. Gareth Cooper S3H I ' m riding down Kingsley just killing time. I sit at the light until it changes to green and off I scream into the night. Thie circuits are lined and jammed with chrome invaders. 1 turn up the radio so I don ' t have to think, but the music can ' t hide the sound of the whole damn city crying. I take her to the floor looking for a moment that seems right, and I try once again to escape the stealing, the cheating, and the lying. But not tonight, for it ' s a love in chains and we ' ll never get out now. For in Newark nothing is forgotten or forgiven. It ' ll always remain the same; you know it ' s never over; it ' s relent- less as the rain. The lonely riders huddle against the boarded up, broken down seven-eleven store and pass a fouJ smelling bottle back and forth and try to hide from day. Hide in their drunken dreams, and somehow survive till the night. In the day they sweat it out on the streets of a runaway American dream, and ride through mansions of glory on suicide machines. But it ' s all lies. They ' re strung out on the wire, and the dogs of main street howl ' cause they understand. All these men are really just kids trying to breathe the fire they were bom in: all just boys trying in vain to be men. At four in the morning the metal dragons awaken and spit serpents of smoke from their black lips. This foul smoke is forever hanging above the city making your eyes water. It chokes all life except those bom in this mad jungle. The factory whistles cry at six sharp. Men walk through the gates with death in their eyes. The factories take their hearing, the factories give them life. Your eyes go blind and your blood runs cold, till you just give up living and start dying little by little. But some guys get home from work and wash up. then go racing in the street. They ride sad and free until cill they can see is the night. It ' s a city from the dark heart of a dream: it ' s a place where a knife speaks and truth means little. People ride by the city and look at it without seeing. They roll up their windows against the decadent smell and drive on. To them it ' s just another dirty city, but they don ' t live there. To the inhabitants it ' s a nightmare where lives are on the line and dreams are found and lost. They ' re all just prisoners of their dreams, running burned and blind chasing something in the night, running on them backstreets until the end. Greg Scaff S4K Landscape after Frazeua by GREG SCAFF 4K

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The Deserted House Glory for the Mother Land, the Red Army, and the great Russian people , the commissar had exhorted. Vladimir Vyshinsky had learned to disregard the commissar ' s speeches and to remember instead the Red Army soldier ' s Golden Rule; Fight, and fight bravely. Indeed, if he didn ' t, he had two options, be captured and be worked to death by the Germans, or be shot by the political police if he retreated. However, you cannot fight an invisible enemy, and this was what faced Vladimir ' s platoon as they searched for stragglers from the retreating Wehrmacht in Vladimir ' s home town of Kursh The platoon, already depleted by sniper fire, was cautiously advancing through an open field toward a deserted looking house. There was a sudden din of machinegun fire, and before Vladimir ' s grenade had removed the gun, ten of the eleven Russians had drowned under the waves of lead. Vladimir waited for nightfall to approach the house, lying amongst his dead comrades to escape German bullets. When the blanket of darkness had descended upon the landscape, the house ' s silhouette showed Vladimir that the house was indeed his own. Vladimir crawled across the grass between his comrades and the house, happy to be on such familiar ground. He slipped noiselessly through a window into the bathroom, the fallen plaster reminding him that a major battle had just ended here. Rifle at the ready, he slithered out of the bathroom door into the hallway. He warily entered the living-room, made sure it was deserted, and swept the room with his flashlight beam. He was saddened to see that shrapnel was embedded above the mantel, where he used to keep the family portrait. Then he remembered that German planes had strafed the refugee column from Kursh, killing his wife Anna, and his baby boy. Saddened by the memory of all that he had lot, and of his future which some trigger happy German pilot had destroyed, Vladimir wandered from room to room forgetting that there was a war on, and that he was a part of it. Vladimir remembered all the good times they had enjoyed in the house, when friends and family made the hard life bearable, even made it happy. But that was all in the past, before his world had been shattered. A past which seemed all the more Utopian and far-away, in this miserable, deserted shell of a house. He wandered on in a stupor of grief, until, too exhausted to dwell on his misfortunes any more, he halted at his bedroom. He opened the door and took a step over the threshold. A sudden movement in the dark brought him back to reality, but, before he could react, he felt something explode in his chest, before slipping into a final darkness. The house was not deserted after all. R. L. Scares S4K ' Daniel in the Lion ' s Den ' — ELWOOD FOX, Senior Year I) 1 c r Record Album design — GREG SCAFF, 4K Sweeney Talks to Vladimir for R.J.G. Death and the Rauen drift above and Sweeney; guards the horned gate. The lonely smoke of cigarettes Is wandering in the air. Each hand around the table holds A cocktail glass with drunken care. 5r The game of cards is over now. But no one can recall who ' s won. The cards upon the table scattered; An unseen image on each one. Our friend, with great good humor, Picks up the cards to do a trick. The hand is quicker than the eye But the tortured mind is twice as quick. I turn and see you smiling up. Upon your eyes a distant stare. Self -Portrait by ELWOOD FOX, Senior Year. Across your face a veil of smoke Is wandering in the air. Exactly where your thoughts have gone I have no way to tell. Such are the terms of our confinement In this our air-conditioned helL And yet our minds go stumbling on Like dmnkards groping in the dark. Do you not see it Vladimir. ' ' That tree behind you. rising stark. It rises up with twisted limb To touch a long extinguished sun. The game of cards is over now But no one can recall who ' s won. John Mnlderig S.Y.