The third-place winner of CHS’ Poem of the Month 2025-2026 competition is Phoenix Holland!
The theme was “time,” and Writers’ Circle members voted on their favorites from an anonymous pool (student judges do not know who wrote each poem).
Phoenix writes, “I am a student of CHS and I am in many clubs. I have always had a fascination for the creative process… I hope to continue to learn about many things.”
The Writers’ Circle meets every Thursday, after school, in Miss Hodge’s classroom. Here they share recent work, give each other feedback, and organize the poetry competition. This year, the Writers’ Circle will also be publishing a collection of the winning poems as a printed booklet.
Check back with The Sting for more information on the next Poem of the Month challenge, and be sure to enter the NEW Creative Quarterly – an art and writing contest open to CHS artists of all kinds.
“All the Faults of Time”
Time what a strange thing
Yet we are all its victims in the end
It all goes too fast
The hands on the clock going faster with every movement
Tears are shed for the loss of innocence, health, happiness
Childhood now gone with only hoping for it back
It felt like all a waste yet something to run back to
Then the reminder of the tomorrow
Smell the roses too much you will never succeed
And work to hard you burn into bitterness
The pressure to do the impossible
Get over the loss everything and everyone
And then perfectly both succeed and be happy
Time ticks and one day death will arrive
And one day no one will remember anything
Even if you are written in the history for holiness or blood you shed
One day death will come for all the universe will burn up all memories with it
Nothing matters
Something terrifying
Yet a melancholy comfort
Even time can’t escape it’s own one true end
Yet maybe time is at once the roses, the love, and the thorns at the same time
Tick… Tick… Tick…
Enter the October poetry competition here: October Poem of the Month Submissions
Check out The Creative Quarterly competition to enter ANY art or writing: Introducing the NEW “Creative Quarterly” Competition and Publication