Student Oxymorons

Every week, our Week in Rap Shout-Out Contest gives students an opportunity to win a shout out for their school in the next Week in Rap. For this week’s contest, we challenged you to create original oxymorons. Oxymorons seem to contradict themselves, and this contradiction can be a powerful literary device. Phrases that seem nonsensical at first can force the reader to dig deeper to understand their meaning.

Our winner this week is Valley Center High School in Valley Center, CA, where Mrs. Fleck’s class sent in some incredible oxymoronic poems!

• A fruit that is bitterly sweet,
  Is just as good as vegetarians meat,
  Why, then, are people so deeply shallow,
  When confronted by people that don’t want to stay a while,
  It’s as if their hearts are fully empty,
  And their warmth is freezing inside them.
  Their mouths close and they listen to the deafening silence,
  That comes from the deaf man.
  They forget names and directions,
  To the lives they once had.
  — Alek, Brandon, Jett
• Oh, how displeasing wonderful it is,
  To see a bike full of shiny rust,
  But I can’t ride,
  Because of my flexibly stiff joints.
  Can the new become old,
  To make the old new?
  — Drew, Chris
• Rewrite an unwritten poem
  Quote someone who never lived
  Forget an unforgotten memory
  Tell about a peaceful war
  Conquer the unconquerable
  Let the woman with lethologica explain this to you.
  — Audrey
• Valentines Day is such a weirdly romantic day.
  Where you take the person that gives you joyful sadness
  Where you buy then awfully good chocolates
  Where you write them seriously funny poems
  And where you can be your idiot self alone together with them too.
  Out on a bitter sweet date.
  And pretty ugly roses.
  And share open secrets with them.
  — Diana
• A Healing Sickness
  She was like a seedless flower
  Who had a beatless heart,
  with breathless lungs
  In his eyes she’s a poor beauty.
  — Rovi, Emely, Caitlyn
• Fast turtle, burning ice.
  Slow running, rock water.
  Sky swimming, water flying.
  Snowy summer.
  The light in the darkness is as beautiful,
  As the icy heart in a midnight gloom.
  The coldness of the sun,
  Stings as the frozen rays cut my pierced skin.
  As the bird flies beneath the water,
  So does my soul fly with the fish of the sea.
  — Will

Thank you to everyone who entered this week! Don’t forget to enter this Friday’s Week In Rap Shout-Out Contest for a chance to win a shout out in the next Week in Rap!