bad teenage poetry day!

[ursula]

These are from my senior-year workshop portfolio. The basic themes are "I'm an ice queen - my friends are drama whores", "I hate suburban developments", and "I hate abstinence education". The really melodramatic stuff is prose, but there's plenty of doubtful poetry to go around.

***

Never to Have Been

Never-to-have-been--
I cut the threads out, wasting green.
I will not take these scissors to my life
For fear that I should leave myself in shreds.
For fear, for grief, for safe. For always safe.
I had my ends.
I thrust a needle through my life
And something bends.

***

Misheard II

Frequent falling.
In my dreams I am often too late.

I write my life through curtains, protesting--
How many times have I been
Too calm to scream?

The color of winter is white.
Is the rain white?

I am too asleep for anger.
I trip over air.
In my dreams I am often too late.

***

Health

Let us make a covenant
to remain in integrity.
What you put in is what you get out
and even the lost
can join the greater Responsible.

Let us all forget
that integrity is not a place.
Real people possess integrity, they don't live there.
Even when we enter
the House of Affirmation
bright white in a green suburban yard--
I want to burn it--
we can't live there.

No matter how disintegrated
let us assume enthusiasm
and try to hold on.

***

(For Bad Teenage Poetry Blogging Day)

Comments

[hankshiny.livejournal.com]

I'm not going to go so far as to say these are good, but they are much, much better than my teenage poetry was.

[ursula]

I'm sure there's far more embarrassing stuff that didn't make it into the portfolio. To say nothing of the thinly fictionalized accounts of high school drama with people who still read my friendslist.

[kazulrw.livejournal.com]

the whole second stanza in the last poem is hilarious. I love it.

[ursula]

My high school workshop loved the burning part! I bet they would've felt the same way about your soap.

[aryanhwy.livejournal.com]

Oh, boy, this sounds like fun! Unfortunately all my poetry is back home in Amsterdam. Maybe I'll have to participate late.

[belmanoir.livejournal.com]

this is AWESOME. oh, teenagers. i shudder to think of the crap i wrote. i also wrote some decent stuff, but none of it was poetry that is for damn sure. also,

"I'm an ice queen - my friends are drama whores"

yeah, that was kinda my self-image in hs too. ::sighs::

[ursula]

I am actually destroying my ENTIRE HIGH SCHOOL SELF IMAGE by getting engaged to somebody I went to high school with.

[belmanoir.livejournal.com]

lol! that is hilarious. hey, for your wedding---i just realized i never rsvped but you know i'm coming, right?