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matociquala's challenge to post our "awfullest, grottiest, ancientest piece of juvenilia." Since finding my handwritten high school papers would take an archeological excavation of my office, you'll have to make do with college strata. Which means strictly poetry. You have been warned.
oh gods this stuff is awful. Fortunately, I can simply simply declare that I'll post the poem with the oldest date, saving me the pain* of consciously picking this:
Written a few weeks before I turned 20. There's a couple older ones, but they were all revised later, so this counts as the ancientest. Over the next month, something clicked, and I wrote over a dozen poems nearly as ancient I thought good, or at least good enough to save. This is the awfullest & grottiest:
I'll stop now. Really.
* It also saves you the pain of reading the 150-line opening of my first attempt at a verse novel. Dear people, it was space opera -- in blank octosyllablics.
---L.
matociquala's challenge to post our "awfullest, grottiest, ancientest piece of juvenilia." Since finding my handwritten high school papers would take an archeological excavation of my office, you'll have to make do with college strata. Which means strictly poetry. You have been warned.oh gods this stuff is awful. Fortunately, I can simply simply declare that I'll post the poem with the oldest date, saving me the pain* of consciously picking this:
Dawn
There is a certain satisfaction
From knowing that the someone else,
In turn, wishes to be where you are.
But not at dawn.
I wake at the turning of the twilight,
The ebb-tide of the long flow of day,
To a room as dark as I. The clock says
That I must wait one hour before I light
And face the world. I groan, and roll over,
And look for someone who is still not here.
Yet again I clutch my pillow, but still
Foam is a poor excuse for human.
Especially when I'm at my weakest.
Especially at dawn.
Written a few weeks before I turned 20. There's a couple older ones, but they were all revised later, so this counts as the ancientest. Over the next month, something clicked, and I wrote over a dozen poems nearly as ancient I thought good, or at least good enough to save. This is the awfullest & grottiest:
Remember Me?
There are only so many ways that features
Can make up a face; there will be repetitions.
I know this, but that does not prevent a glance,
The corner of an eye, a quick blur
From showing a person who I see as her.
Why, when a spray of blonde flashed quickly by
The corner of a building today, did I
Follow in a hope against all knowledge and reason?
Once upon a sleepless night my father told me
That love can be a thing apart, an emotion
With only rhyme, and lacking reason. If so, then
I should not be surprised when mind and heart
Do not tell each other what they know, rather part
Ways, leaving me in startled confusion.
If this is true, then I could lose this self-derision,
And learn to face a world that's filled with yellow hair.
I'll stop now. Really.
* It also saves you the pain of reading the 150-line opening of my first attempt at a verse novel. Dear people, it was space opera -- in blank octosyllablics.
---L.