Yesterday and today Ive spent some

Feb 11, 2008

Yesterday and today I’ve spent some time looking over old shit. What is the feeling you experience when you read things you wrote when you were a wee teen? Is it horror? Revulsion? Sympathy? Shame? Raucous amusement? I want to reach back ten years and pat myself on the head and tell myself that it’ll be all right. I also want to shake myself and tell that stupid girl that it’s ok if not everybody loves her, it’s ok if she has deep flaws because really everyone does and she’s not so special, that she really does have some good qualities and she shouldn’t let the things she’s not good at get her down. I want to tell her to look around and try to get out of her bubble. I want to tell her that she is too proud and too ignorant. I was also really horny all the time, judging by all these poems about wanting people to kiss me, and I want to tell this 15-year-old who’d have her first kiss two years later and be totally disappointed by it and detest the song “back at one” and herself for the rest of her life that it’s not really that big a deal and she should relax. I mean, I wrote a flimsy poem about the death of love. That’s pretty emo if you ask me. My mom says she showed it to a lady who was a kind of mentor to her in Taiwan who now lives in San Francisco and is actually a poet, and the lady said I had a special sense of humor and was a promising child. I keep forgetting to ask my mom who this lady was.

Comments (7)

mayamaia February 11, 2008 at 6:35 AM

I think the funniest old writing I've had was from fifth and sixth grade, when my writing skills were ahead of my thinking skills. Specifically amusing were a science project (in which we had to create a version of an animal that would survive after a great flood) and a belligerently pacifist poem.

But I also wrote a beautiful emo poem of which I'm still proud.

judytuna February 11, 2008 at 6:42 AM

At 16 I too wrote a pacifist poem, but it was whiny and helpless. It was like "I wish you could delete stuff in real life, like you can delete stuff from computers" and ended with the line "we will achieve peace one day." It's horrible.

After making this post, I found the only three poems I have written since 2000. They were for an assignment for this american poetry class I took with Robert Haas, who I love. Here they are:



I.

The River



is clear and it has carved out a home.

This aperture

     among the rocks, wrapped in stunted bush-growths each a caricature

of the next, dips as precipitously as

   the silhouettes of osprey bobbing for

     fish. 



They curve between the small boulders; one

	is left behind.

     Suspended in fractured, jagged glass, she “awaits her laconic

	Lancelot,” and quivers into a shadow.

	   Only the wordless villain obfuscates

     so.



Note.

“awaits her laconic Lancelot” Newsweek, June 22, 1998, from an article

titled “Decoding the X-Files”



[This poem imitates Marianne Moore’s style. It has some big words. It uses

a quotation that the author admires on a subject that the author really

admires. It adheres to some kind of syllabic constraint, line by line in

each stanza: 9, 4, 16, 11, 10, 1. Its last lines are really obscure.]



II.

The Parking Lot’s Grievance



The scored pavement is already quite shimmering with heat,

It is so late that the hunger growls in my stomach,

And I roll down the tinted window

And watch the students through the summer haze.



Note.

Parking lot, therefore some large institution; students, therefore a

school. Grievance, therefore there is something to complain of. Tinted

window, therefore a car, therefore a visiting lady, not a kid who

complains. Hunger and heat, therefore a missed lunch appointment.

Shimmering, therefore she has no excuse on account of weather. And the

person she’s waiting for is really late, since her stomach’s already

rumbling. 



[This poem imitates Ezra Pound translating Li Po’s poetry (“The Jewelled

Stairs’ Grievance,” in particular). Once in high school, a friend visiting

from college was going to take me out to lunch, but I missed school that

day and have felt guilty about it ever since.]



III.

Peerless Quality Three Generations of Quality



Where green and white are a same thing the brown is there, but not there;

it is inside. The squares have round. He sips sips sips Ips and whites the

wall wash.

Ip is short for Ipanema.

Green grape crates have feathers. Green feather blue feather green feather

blue feather it’s stupid. The enclose tinkles shifts and blinks peacocks

because it is so very very kind of clock to be a purple notebook wake.

Waken the burrito.



[This poem imitates the style of Gertrude Stein. The first two sentences

were written in class. And ok, the story that Professor Hass told in

lecture one day about his grandson (get it? Three Generations???) reminded

my friend and me about a mutual friend of ours whose logic about aesthetics

sometimes seems to follow along the same lines, so we speak of hating blue

feathers whenever arbitrary opinions come up in conversation.]

To tell you the unadulterated truth I'm really proud of these three. Like, really proud. Also I really, really love Marianne Moore, like, so much. zomg. Show me your kid-emo poem and I'll show you mine /titillated

heidi_wiggin February 12, 2008 at 2:49 AM

Hello old friend!

You found me on Xanga, so now I've found you on LJ.

I forget, were you the Empress, Queen, or Tsarina?

judytuna February 12, 2008 at 2:50 AM

ZOMGZOMGZOMGBBQZORSOMG!!!!!!!!!!

I think I was the Czarina. And Skank #2 and a half?

<3 <3 <3 <3 <3 I've missed you sooooo!!!!!

stephentyrone February 15, 2008 at 10:05 PM

Feb 9:

"At this juncture I would like to announce that I have pooed every day for a week..."

Feb 10:

"Yesterday and today I've spent some time looking over old shit."

Uh-huh.

judytuna February 21, 2008 at 7:30 AM

ROFL

HAHAHAHA

andeja February 12, 2008 at 3:21 AM (in reply to comment 2002)

I prefer sometimes to read letters that other people wrote to me. Cuz, at least it's not me writing it so i can't cringe as much, yet it still makes me remember being a teenager.

AAAAg, bad kid poetry is too embarrassing to reproduce!