Poems You Wrote When You Were 15

The Man With the Tree

He stands in the street,
With his best friend the tree,
He stands and he watches,
He's looking at me.

As he stares I walk faster,
His eyes follow mine,
I try to avoid him,
And his potted Scots Pine.

But still he is gazing,
I cannot escape,
For he is a madman,
The king of his trade.

I'm starting to panic,
I'm trying to flee,
I get round the corner,
I'm finally free.

I notice that Marcello has yet to volunteer any of his own though.

I wrote a political poem called - oh god - "The Dole Boys" and it got sent by my English teacher to a national poetry competition. Curiously it didn't win. I was 14 though so you don't have to see it.

Rabbits like to eat carrots,
Talking birds are called parrots,
Hedgehogs like delicious slugs,
I'm quite scared of vicious rugs.

Bricks aren't round or good to eat,
I once met a bloke called Pete,
Tables mostly have four legs,
Coats are hung on hooks or pegs.

Could I be killed by rancid peas?
Or beaten up by purple cheese?
What if blue looked just like red?
A shed for bikes is called a bike shed.

Living fish are usually wet,
I haven't eaten Muesli yet,
Trees are made from lots of sticks,
Have you had your Weetabix?

My mum still uses it occasionally, almost always sarcastically.

people walk slower when talking (we used to fill the world with sound.) footsteps in low distance on concrete marked with time (they will build it over and over agin. like the friendship we let slide. wednesdays.)(they all have days of the week. yours is tuesday. lucky you.) the importance of time is ever dwindling the footprints turn to jelly (mud.) (and you face looks more your own every year.) (her face. not you.)

--

i was just barely 16. and reading too much alice notley. i forgot i had these books until today. oh my.

Old people sit in fetid rows
Yellow skin and fat jowls
A rotting cross upon the wall ...
The shreds of individuality hang
Torn apart for the love of a drug
Called God ... etc

(A cross between Pink Floyd lyrics and the communist manifesto? But forgive me, love me anyway.)

'Humorous verse':

Some nights the moon is all crescenty
Like a croissant in the sky
Oh my sweet, I want to meet you
I want to eat you
We can have greasy food at cheap
Takeaways because you're cheap, loved one
And I'm too good for you.
When the bones of Dylan on a valium dream
Sing to me, I think of you, corpse,
And killing you with a pig sticking fork
But when you lie dying, I'll despair,
Over your illiterate will with dead heirs
I'll cry at your funeral pyre, I'll throw
Petorl on it. The flames lick, fucking fingers
As sexual as you were not: oh let me be
A pilot, that I could bomb you
Or a greenkeeper, that I could mow you.
Let me show you something: the sweet
agony of my love has make me sick
See, that's my vomit on you.
Oh, how I love you, more so
If you die quick.
ly.

'Love poetry':

Oh Achilles heart, he severed!
His face perfect as diamond, harder too
when he said
I love
but not you.
There's loads of this. I deserve millions of dollars for admitting this even to myself.

Marginal graffiti:

I am going out to buy you something
You are my best friend
And I have known you
Quite a long time
So get fucked.

I didn't lie and I didn't edit but I won't admit it either!

Your lil head was clean as a babies whistle
but
werecaughtinatrapwecantwalkout
because
i love you 2 much 'baby'

when you were in the middle of
the road an island in my head
opened i sucked my breathy
thoughts in and so now
bathed no shredded with white
stinging light detergent in my eyes
that day i'd print that day
and sell it to you but you
are the richest those days are everymilliday

No more sickening love poetry 'honey'

Child 1: When what used to excite you does not
Chile 2: and your life is dull like you have no passion anymore
Child 3: Turn to sadism
Children: Sadism, cheap and sometimes
I want to take you in my arms
To crush you.

what i thought was me is my soul and when they ring my funeral bell i will leave me stiff and cold what is my soul? A lump of meat? that's all that's left when life's complete? but still i make myself repeat death can't be bad, it smells so sweet.

p-r-o-f-o-u-n-d

NEW SKIN Full moon, cold stars, pale clouds drifting,
And I found my lover, shape-shifting

She was standing, ah, naked
And grinning her grin
And her outline keeps changing
This bitch is a changeling [hmmm, < /wigga >, surely]

By the body of a monkey, three parts dead
and the spiders fiarly spouting from the hole in its head
Sitting in the only patch that still wasn't red
She shurgged, she sighed, she smiled, she said

All night to think of all I've missed
And all the lips I've never kissed
So move like a shadow, slink like a whisper
As silent as knives and relentless as winter [to be fair i was unhappy w. this couplet at the time]

Because stuck on my back I had time to relax
The pressure that press us at last off my back [< / fine line between clevah and stupid >]
I'm different, I'm better, I've grown new skin
You'll never believe the shape I'm in

More as cupboard clearance progresses. Note early emergence of "funfur" motif.

The Servant

The things I say and do
Are not from my own mind
I'm just a selfless mannequin
My life I've left behind

By you I am controlled
Every night and every day
Existing to fulfil your dreams
I get no time away

So sir, shall I take your coat?
Kidneys for breakfast today?
I feel that 'tis my duty to serve.
Until my dying day.

It moved my English teacher to tears..... :)

http://www.poetrymagazine.com/archives/1998/feb/saltzman.htm

Josh Saltzman

Inside The Yellow Ribbon

On the vacant playground
Swings sway with ghost riders
See-saws creak
shattered glass
spilt sand
and spattered red paint
lie around the sandbox
by the broken school window
The wind hushes
to let the chalk-children
sleep, sprawled across the concrete

Ha! Similar story with me and the one that I posted, as well as a few other pieces like "Funeral For Autumn", "A Dear Farewell", and another one whose title I can't remember although I can see the layout (six lines per verse, three verses, ten syllables per line) right in front of me.

We are the people that are outraged!
We are the people who are caged!
We are the Martians that are insane!
We are the people who have no brains

[...] Go crazy! [...]
We're your neighbours, starting riots...
Our city's gone mad! Boy, isn't it sad?

In retrospect, it's probably better than half of all punk lyrics and surely better than any Hanson song.

This one's ok considering I write it at 16 tho:

"A Poem of Ordinary Moments"

Her shoes stood next to the radiator
Still wet, emitting steam
And the stench of damp canvas.
I sit and listen to the rain
While a sense of guilt within
Keeps nagging me.
I didn't want the autumn day
That kept turning into evening!
I didn't want a return to the values
I'd done all to escape!
I'd come here, new, yet worn,
And tried to dry like the shoes
But only gave off steam.
"What have I done...?"
Is all I can think to say.
The rain grows louder.
My head is pounding with rain; rain,
And thoughts of rain,
And guilt washed down from the head
To the heart, and down
To my own wet shoes.
I shake my mind dry
And it only soaks my body below.
I reach into scared-black corners
To grasp old comfort from
Better days. Thoughts get obscured.
The window, as I look up,
Is misted over. I draw circles
In an absent way, and I hope
That winters sterile soils
Will soon emerge, and freeze
My thoughts into ice -
I won't have enough guilt left to care.

Man - my linebreaks were so totally arbitrary. And all those exclamation marks, ugh. Too much Plath. Still, I like the "guilt washed down/from my head to my heart" bit. Nice.

I kind of dig the exclamation points.

I took poetry writing pretty seriously for a while in my mid 20s, esp while studying profesional writing, and have ha d a few bits published. Then I kinda gave up, which makes me sad.

When I stand outside in a quiet snowfall
and stare straight up,
the snow is not falling down toward earth,
I am floating up, toward heaven

Trayce, 16-year-old me is in love with 16-year-old you.

gliding, gliding
hear me writing
see my soul come from thee
to see the endless sea
of existing heavenly bodies
colliding distantly to and fro
falling fast, falling hard see
my heart racing hard
harder then the hardest hardness
i have seen the sea
it compares darkly
to you and your beauty
hearts pound harder than
the hammer pounding scrap
into sword, sweat into sex
falling forth from grace
and death to beat at two souls
made one and pull the
hardest hearts together to see
a whimpering child
not made of me
not made of you
but made from us
run the dance, slam the
blade, feel the love, feel
the blistering feats of
fantastic imagination pour
forth for ecstacy in pure form.
when water and fire
come together to coexist harmoniously
for that moment, only to hope
for an eternity, and receive a spec
of the the measure of time,
only you can answer the riddle of the sphinx
that exists in our souls unending curiosity

only you...

m.

Standing alone on a hillside
Watching the days of youth slide by
Days stretching into years without end
Is this my golden youth?

Boredom, loneliness, anger, pain,
Are these the times that I will treasure?
Wanting only to get through
Nothing except the future to live for

Some far off day, I suppose
I too will look back and sigh
Everyone forgets the pain
Of youth the further they get away

(Hah!)

thread needs a revive but damned if i'm gonna dig out my old haiku for this

I've got a poem I wrote at age 13. I may dig it up. Then again... (mulls)

Oh dear god, why did I post that poem on this thread.

It's not bad!

I wrote a poem called "the k-mart warrior" about a bargain shopper who murders her competition. the only stanza I can remember is:

cart wheels skid
as she breaks to run
at aisle five
the report of a gun

i burned everything when i was 18 but i remember there was one in which i was medusa and my plan was that if you glanced carelessly in my direction i was going to entomb you eternally in my hostility.

i think that was from when i was 14 though.

preparing for ilx at an early age

<3

while visiting my parents recently i found an old book of poetry i had made in a creative writing class. i think i was 12 when i wrote it.

it was called "Metaphysics" and it had an alien drawn on the title page. one of the poems was about Mortal Kombat.

in other words, i could have written it last week

and hopefully twenty yesrs from now.

yessir