The last time I wrote poetry was when I was made to as part of a creative writing course I took in college back in 1989. This is a good thing because I’ve never been very good at writing poetry. I think this is for a couple of reasons. First, I see myself as a more meat and potatoes kind of writer and such a style does not lend itself to the carefully chosen wordplay of poems. Second, I’m too impatient to go through the process of carefully choosing individual words and weighing them in the context of a poem, which may also explain why I’m a meat and potatoes kind of writer to begin with.
I have looked over a few poems that I wrote back then and am putting them up here for public appraisal/mockery. I may rewrite them to show what I’d change if I was still writing poetry today.
Snake in the pond
Gently, go then
and swim in the
pond
Do not float or not move
There be snakes
in the pond
They are green
and yellow and black
and very pretty
You remember laughter
and scream
It’s in your trunks now
Gales of laughter
Swim with the colors
Slither and dive
You were so young then
You’ll never swim here
again
The Ride (number one)
The crowd waits in the rain
Umbrellas blossomed like black flowers
Gathered as if for a funeral
They wait for the familiar lights
He sees the lights and watches
as they resolve into the shape of the bus
Ritually, the umbrellas fold up
and the people move, not unlike
the poor and huddled masses, he thinks.
Everyone wants to be first
He is swept through the crush of bodies
into the smothering warmth
The smell of damp clothes and musty hair
mingled with an old woman’s odor
(two or three liters, perhaps)
is unavoidable as he inches down the aisle,
a cow in a cattlecar.
Clinging to a metal bar, umbrella soaking into
his side,
he gulps as a titanic shape approaches,
fold upon fold rippling through the trenchcoat
like waves on a rising ocean
He grimaces and is pressed
like luncheon meat as the
woman docks, staring out the window
with a pre-determined expression
He cannot see the window
It is too warm and the
fluorescent lights are
too harsh
The bus moves,
taking him on the most
exciting journey of his life.
Again.
