"Darkness is like a dark shadow"

In what was obviously a particularly profound moment in my youth, I wrote this poem:

Darkness

What is darkness?
Darkness is no light.
Darkness is like a dark shadow being cast over you.
It is not knowing what to do.
That is darkness.
Darkness is cruelty.
It is a strange creatures taking away your freedom.
That is darkness.

I wonder what was going on in my life to inspire this poem? As I've previously stated, I don't recall my early adolescence being that tortured. But I suppose this is a reminder that we all experience....the darkness!

Sappy Poems 2: Sappy Meets Angsty

By request of Kim, another "sappy poem," although this one also crosses into "teenage angst" territory. I'm not going to spend a bunch of time analyzing this one, just make of it what you will.

The New Girl

Ever since day one
The girl did not belong
Her shoes were strange, her hair was weird
Her style of dress was wrong

Her jeans were just a bit too tight
Her shirts were big and kinda bright
Although her appearance was rather rough
She seemed nice, but it wasn't enough

Everything she said or did
Was turned into a joke
Everytime a crack was made
She thought that she would choke

The kids just did not realize
How mean they really were
Until the teacher told them
The shocking news about her

She was found in the basement
A bullet in her head
For due to all the teasing
The new girl now was dead.

Sooo...I have no idea where this came from. Some poems I very vividly remember writing, others I do not and am surprised to stumble upon them. This is one of those. I mean, WTF....I promise I was a pretty happy kid, as far as tortured 7th graders go. Probably this was another Chicken Soup for the Teenage Soul-influenced poem. Pretty harrowing!

Why couldn't my poems ever have happy endings?

In a similar vein to Billy Fuzz, this next poem begins as a delightful tale about a lovable protagonist out on a mission to achieve greatness, but suddenly takes a dark, twisted turn at the end. Read on to find out what happened to poor Slappy the Salamander.

Slappy the Salamander and the Stir-Fry Crusade

Slappy was a salamander
Who was very keen indeed
She loved to eat Chinese food
And on stir-fry she would feed

One day she was walking by
In downtown New Orleans
When she came across a newstand
And bought a magazine

She opened up the magazine
to page one-oh-two
And there across the page
A headline read in blue:

"Stir-fry shortage sweeps the nation!"
It read, and with a gasp
Slappy sat down, for she was in shock
And needed something to grasp

"Stir-fry is my favorite food!
What will I do without it?
If I don't get some stir-fry soon,
I think I'll throw a fit!"

Slappy went for days
And soon the days turned into weeks
Not a single bit of stir-fry
Did Slappy have to eat!

Then one glorious day
Slappy went to the store
And what did she see before her eyes
But stir-fry, and stir-fry galore!

Slappy was so excited
She bought the whole display
She took it home in a semi-truck
And ate it by the very next day

Slappy gained 200 pounds
And soon became obese
She had to join a weight-loss program
And filled for bankruptcy the very next week.

Awww, poor Slappy the Salamander! She just loved stir-fry so much. Too much. My favorite part is when she buys a magazine, flips to the 102nd page (that's pretty way in the back, with the advertisments and whatnot) and discovers this huge headline about the shortage of stir-fry crisis.

Where it all began

Wow, there are just so many great poems I could be posting now, I really mean it. But most of them are going to have to wait for another day, because it wouldn't be appropriate to continue posting without first paying homage to the one that started it all. G and I wrote this poem together the very first time we hung out at my house in 7th grade (we knew we'd be soul mates from the moment we realized we were the only ones left at school wearing patterned leggings.)When we finished, we were so in love with ourselves over it that we had the poem framed. We also took folded up copies of the poem and slipped it into the lockers of all the popular kids at school, hoping to cause some sort of uproar in the locker bay over what we'd done (sadly, this never happened). It was also after this experience that I decided to make poem writing a habit. Anyway, without further ado, I present:

The Duck with Bad Luck

This is the story of a duck with bad luck:

This duck had bad luck. He was under the tire of a big red truck. What a schmuck.

Therefore, the duck who was a schmuck, was under the truck; obviously he had bad luck.

This proves that the schmucky ducky had bad lucky under the tire of a big red trucky.

Thus, the dumb duck, under the big red truck, must be a schmuck, with very bad luck.

This means that the duck with bad luck is a schmuck and is under the truck.

This concludes that the duckaly under the truckaly was a schmuckaly; he had very bad luckaly. Then the motor of the truck started, and smashed the duck with very bad luck. Boy what a schmuck!

Results: This duck had VERY bad luck.

Ok, so that was 10 times more weird and 20 times less cool that I remember it being, but whatever. It would be weird to hold back and pretend like The Duck with Bad Luck never happened, because it did. It's also a bit tragic that the duck had to die in the end. I wonder what those popular kids thought when they found it in their lockers...

The Ballad of Billy Fuzz

This is the first entry in "Volume II, Part II" of my poem books. It's a sobering tale, really. A dark story of greed and its consequences. And it goes a little somethin' like this:

Billy Fuzz

Once upon a time there was
A little boy named Billy Fuzz
Billy was in the 2nd grade,
and every week he would get paid
a dollar for him to get his chores done
And then he could have lots of fun

One day Billy decided to buy
a yummy looking apple pie
It only cost $1.10
But he only had a dollar to spend
Billy needed another dime
But a nickel was all that he could find

He roamed the streets and scavenged stores
For it was a dime that he adored
He roamed the streets with a copper pan
And begged until a nice old man
Walked up to him and gave him a penny
"Gee!" said Billy. "That's not that many!"

The man gave him an ugly scowl
And threw his penny at a spotted owl
The owl dropped dead on the cold city street
And soon there was nothing left to eat
The city had acquired an ugly buzz
All because of Billy Fuzz

Wow, I must have been having a particularly angsty-teenager week. Or maybe I was mad that my parents would not raise my allowance. Either way, the results are disturbing.