My father recently gave me a box of my old school books, and it had a pair of spiral notebooks in it, and one of them is replete with awful teen poetry!!
Since I’m about to be on staff for a teen writing workshop next week, I thought I should give them, and you, all the rare joy of mocking past me. Alas, I couldn’t find anything dripping with Roses Are Love, but there is a singsong rhyme, a lovesick lament, and ooo an angsty blood-and-death poem!
Advice to the youts: Do not let your poetry notebook fall into future-you’s hands.
Lament #1
Arithmetic hates me.
Algebra despises me.
Trig wants me dead.
Chem wants my head.
What did I do wrong
To be tortured so long
By numbers that hate
And won’t add up straight?
[Boy’s name as title redacted (He was trash.)]
For your quaintness, you deserve a poem —
A poem that rhymes. But I won’t write it.
I’m no troubadour to cry to you,
My unobtainable love.
I never write of love. It’s not my style.
I care not for Care-bears;
Hallmark only sickens me.
(Ah, but those eyes of yours!)
Your eyes trapped me in gentlemanly fashion,
You gave me pain.
You made my strong arms into limp spaghetti.
You made my words
–Old friends of mine–
Turn against me.
Pages and pages of words that sprawl.
Poems
That just won’t work.
It’s no fair. I can’t describe you.
(Redacted [12 boring “won’t you look at me” lines])
(also [19 “you are so pretty” lines])
What have you built?
An ivory tower, my quaint love?
To drive me crazy?
To ruin my poetry?
Surrender, fair knight!
One of us must.
For, as I said,
I’m no troubadour,
I won’t stay here,
Under your tower for long.
I have other poems I need to write.
Poetic Justice
Blood, congealing in its pool like pudding jello mud rancid gravy.
A face frozen forever in surprise.
This person corpse once ate bean sprouts.
This pile of bones and flesh watched cartoons.
He had a quick temper,
And a most peculiar laugh.
He gave a decent back rub. Played video games.
[whole line heavily loop-de-looped out]This man thing on the ground.
Generally, I’m disappointed how prosaic teen-me was in her approach to poetry. Most of the stuff in the book is just descriptions of Something Pretty or An Event That Made Me Feel, with line breaks and repetition.
Okay now here are two that are actually pretty good, to soothe teen-me’s ego:
Mother’s Day
No cards came in the mail today.
What did you expect?
The nazis want the druggies in the postal service to withhold your real mail,
Leaving you with resident coupons and hype.
You light some fires around the trailer,
Try to find the cat. He needs to be anointed.
Bob will bring a piano, if the government doesn’t kill him on the way.
You need a piano. They’ve been keeping your from piano. The men. The psychiatrists.
All the people who keep a woman
From getting her mail
On mother’s day.
Kentucky – Week One
Taste the shape of the delicious words:
Castlerock conglomerate
Like peanut brittle.
Cowbelle formation
Fresh cut wood.
Late Ordovician.
A winding serpent of black
Dotted with shacks.
Old cinderblock church.
Sheer sandstone the color of sunset, tangerine, flesh
An elbow rising out of green wool
Race to the top.
Jeannie tries to fly.
Nylon pocket flaps a parachute
So beautiful, not to live inside a buffer.
Chickenwire, barbed wire.
Rock hammers at our hips.
Half an inch from falling.
The blue horizon. The world is so big.
She says she feels she is flying.
