Poem from High School

Ahhahahaha! This is fabulous. I found all of these terrible poems I wrote in high school. And some of them are wonderful in their terribleness! First of all, I was feisty and angsty. Second of all, I LOVE that I was concerned with lettering even in high school.

I found this one poem about how I hate in class essays because they don't give you college-ruled paper and also the classrooms didn't have pencil sharpeners and I was told it was because of the budget, anyway, so I hated that as class wore on your in class essays would just get huge and messy because the lines were so big and your pencil got flatter and flatter.

THE POEM! (FROM HIGH SCHOOL -- DO NOT JUDGE ME)

Weight Gain

The lines, the letters,

once anorexic, are gaining weight,

little by little.

My eyes are their scale and

I cannot stand those extra pounds and quarter pounds

that tag along sentences

and paragraphs and whole papers.

By the end, the essay

is fat: a girth of thick letters

that can hardly squeeze

into abundantly-spaced school paper.

And all I wanted,

all I wanted from the very beginning

was a pencil sharpener in this classroom,

for this one paper, one poem, one essay,

so my hand could travel smoothly,

so my letters could be thin and buoyant,

so my words could pour from their yellow pitcher

with no thought of anything

but their purpose.