actual teenage poetry. enter at risk of angst.
epitaph
.i.
i bathe
in honeyed sunlight
& am not cleansed
but coated, obscured,
& left to the night
as twilight gathers round me
alone with desire
in the heat
i wait
poised for flight
& yet move
with the moon
·
downward
·
.ii.
long past
midnight,
citylit clouds
animate the mindset &
reveal every promise ever
whispered & every
reason & i
believed
·
& all these things
were more than
words, & all
were gone
when dawn took the night
unrequited passions
lost in the light
·
.iii.
turning away
from the rising sun
i run back
toward the night
·
·
.iv.
the epitaph read:
·
died
trying
to stop
time
·
·
-(me)
1977
that's correct, nineteen seventy-seven. edited slightly but the concept is completely intact.
· · · · · · · · · · · ·
farewell angel
night plummeted down, tumbled down
through the dry leaves
of the street trees;
moonlight sprinkled shadows
& sparkled on tears...
fallen angel at midnight
in a parked car
found no softness in the night
no salvation in the dawn
nothing new
in an old life; twenty years
prematurely grayed in memory
& a future
falling off steeply
& turning out of sight;
& night continued to fall
on the fallen eyes...
o angel in the mirror,
i was conceived within you
& then born
into tomorrow, delivered
from your pain
& grew &
learned to live, to
live; farewell angel,
farewell.
-(me)
1979 (i wasn't yet twenty but already in the habit of writing my life & then living it)
I was full of angsty poetry in jr high and high school. Someone I know STILL has a copy of something I write back then , and pulled it out to show me a few months ago. *cringe*
Wow. I didn't write any poetry until I was about 25. I went through a depressed phase later than most. At the end of the 1970's all I could think about were Star Wars action figures and baseball players (Steve Garvey from the Dodgers was my hero).
Wow, you were much more than I was as a teenager. I must have had a smaller/different level of angst. Those are much better than anything I could try to write now :)
I still haven't written any poetry. But I like yours.
there are whole copies of my jr. high school poetry annual i could be seriously blackmailed with, y'know? i was writing two or three of 'em a day, (i think maybe the few i've kept are like, along the lines of the fifty thousand chimpanzees at fifty thousand typewriters theory - more or less accidental).
i had at least twenty horrendous little compositions in one, i mean, not even bad in a good way.
I don't even think this is terribly bad...melodramatic and grave, maybe. You were young and angst looks good on the young!
thanks for sharing with me! my teen poetry is putrid compared with yours.