What was your first poem?

[just mercedes]

I hadn't written since leaving school, and started again in 2007 when words started coming in time to my feet on my morning walks. This is the first I wrote down.


Morning Glory


Morning magpie calling
Music to my heart,
Silver cascade falling
As a new day starts.

Wombat nosing homeward,
Drinking kangaroo
Pause to see the dawning.
Every day is new.

Put away the night thoughts,
Nothing dies in vain.
Turn to mirth as Mother Earth
Turns to life again.

[Leanne]

I don't remember any of my really early poems, and there was the unpleasant episode of having all my writing burned by a vengeful narcissist, but this was the first poem I ever posted on the internet, back in 2002. It's a bit painful to recall. Note the caps at the start of every line -- I, too, once thought that was how things were always done...

Baby

Peanut, pelvic invader, grew
Tail and all, webbed fingers, strange
An image on a green screen, you
Were no bigger than an orange
A jellybean mutant, a parasite
Played organ pinball, bladder
Football, wandered one night
A ribcage for your ladder
And set up camp, burning heart
Awaiting final descent
In darkness did the onslaught start
That terrible main event
Splitting, squelching, writhing pain
Dignity stripped, forgotten
Out! In flooding bloody stain
You came, and I had gotten
Wrinkled, red and slimy you
Still we weren't apart
Opened eyes of cloudy blue
And took hold of my heart

[billy]

i was at least 45 when i wrote that and i still feel ashamed over it

All you talented smarties.  Writing creatively so young.  Envy.  I don't think I wrote a creative and original word till I was in my 30's.  In fact I know so.  Kiss, kiss...

[NobodyNothing]

I hate Leanne because she's very good, and she damn well knows what she's talking about.

As for you, Billy...hmm...I'm still thinking....

[billy]

i can be loved by all, i'm a semi shite poet

[ellajam]

i can be loved by all, i'm a semi shite poet

I knew we had something in common.

[Todd]

Geez, the first poem I wrote at 15 for a class. First poem I set down to write was a sestina and I can't find it (it's here somewhere on paper). I did find something that was probably the first free verse poem I wrote. It pains me to share it, but what the hell (punctuation must have just been optional little dots to me during that period):

Drizzle

The garden at dawn
Flowers cut
Poppies and irises
Lay scattered orange and violet
at our feet

The breeze calm,
Belying the tension, the heat,
The dew's sizzle.

The caress of leaves, grass
The touch
Rising, Falling, Beating
To the heart
To the rhythm

Dripping from our skin
Like a fine sheen
Of moist, humid
Rain

[Animal Riots Activist]

I'm really glad this thread exists.

First poem ever (written in Kindergarten):

Untitled

"Boom, boom!" goes the Cheetah.
The submarine left without him.

First poem ever when I started writing in earnest (Junior or Senior in high school):

The Freeze

This morning, the earth spun away from the sun.
The grass was frozen into upright pinpoints
pointing upward, threatening the overcast sky.
Even the normally stretching, swaying redwoods
became stiff, brittle, and taut when the freeze came around.
And all around the planet,
a siren called nature screamed in hypothermic agony.

Last I saw of outside was water droplets
slowly drip down a fogged glass bathroom window.
Now, tiny icicle spiders weave webs of frost on my sill.
Now, the ground is encumbered with an oppressive snow,
the kind that crushes the earth like an aluminum soda can;
the kind envelopes men
and waits, time keeping beat by the shallowness of his breath.  

Tomorrow is nothing but an uncertain thought.
Chaos may ensue, building and destroying societies,
or nothing at all, a white desert of frozen ambition.
I am drastically over thinking my situation.  
The world has stopped moving, should we not follow suit?
Cold finally reaches me,
And with frigid feet, the spiders begin climbing my body.

Yet stagnant men freeze before their time is up.
The feeling that a larger cataclysm
Is rocketing toward me becomes pervasive.
Man must stay in motion, anticipating
troubles, even when passing under their glare
Happy to be warm, I will laugh aloud,
Rabid biting winds carrying the sound of the last comfortable nap.

[NobodyNothing]

Geez, the first poem I wrote at 15 for a class. First poem I set down to write was a sestina and I can't find it (it's here somewhere on paper). I did find something that was probably the first free verse poem I wrote. It pains me to share it, but what the hell (punctuation must have just been optional little dots to me during that period):

Drizzle

The garden at dawn
Flowers cut
Poppies and irises
Lay scattered orange and violet
at our feet

The breeze calm,
Belying the tension, the heat,
The dew's sizzle.

The caress of leaves, grass
The touch
Rising, Falling, Beating
To the heart
To the rhythm

Dripping from our skin
Like a fine sheen
Of moist, humid
Rain

Jesus...you had that kind of poetic control at such a young age?  (I hate you too)

[Lizzie]

My first poem was pretentious, mawkish, filled with love clichés,
inaccurate references to Greek gods, and childish assumptions
about life; all of it scrawled in unpunctuated lower case and
faultlessly executed in iampestic errameter and lost to the ages
in an unlabeled box of highschool memorabilia which my mom left
in the attic of our first house in Kinzua, Pennsylvania which
is now located in the slightly picturesque Allegheny Reservoir
under sixty-eight feet of water.

I also am a fan of writing in iampestic errameter.

I'm TOTALLY going to try and dig up some treasures for this thread.....

[Todd]

The larger question may be how many poems did you write before one of them was remotely good?

[QDeathstar]

I can't remember the entire poem but it went something like

As I turn around and see
I wonder where dreams end
And reality begins.

//acouple of those

As I turn around
I see. //fin

It was for a literary contest in high

[nibbed]

I don't remember any of my really early poems, and there was the unpleasant episode of having all my writing burned by a vengeful narcissist, but this was the first poem I ever posted on the internet, back in 2002.  It's a bit painful to recall.  Note the caps at the start of every line -- I, too, once thought that was how things were always done...

Baby

Peanut, pelvic invader, grew
Tail and all, webbed fingers, strange
An image on a green screen, you
Were no bigger than an orange
A jellybean mutant, a parasite
Played organ pinball, bladder
Football, wandered one night
A ribcage for your ladder
And set up camp, burning heart
Awaiting final descent
In darkness did the onslaught start
That terrible main event
Splitting, squelching, writhing pain
Dignity stripped, forgotten
Out! In flooding bloody stain
You came, and I had gotten
Wrinkled, red and slimy you
Still we weren't apart
Opened eyes of cloudy blue
And took hold of my heart

that's precious.

---

I burned all my early works,
when I was a much better, crazier, poet.
Streams of their phrases ribbon
in and out through my memory.
I'm not sure I can recollect them wholly.
Strangely, I don't regret burning them.
It was needful at the time.
Likely I will burn more of my poems,
if I ever get good enough again.


sorry...I thought I made a new reply.

[vagabond]

I burned all my early works,
when I was a much better, crazier, poet.
Streams of their phrases ribbon
in and out through my memory.
I'm not sure I can recollect them wholly.
Strangely, I don't regret burning them.
It was needful at the time.
Likely I will burn more of my poems,
if I ever get good enough again.

hey, this is a good poem. just lacks a title

[just mercedes]

First poem - published in my school magazine in 1965. I hadn't written again for more than forty years. I have a pic of it somewhere - it was illustrated by Gaelene Preston who went on to become NZ's top female film maker (who sort of discovered Sam Neill)


Emmy the Trog

Now Emmy was a trog.
Yea verily, he was a trog.
But Emmy was no ordinary trog.
Emmy marracced muchly.

(forgotten bits)

(grand finale)
singing and dancing through the dead cows
that were coming home.

[Leanne]

Thank heavens, I was so worried those dead cows would never return for Emmy to marrac in his troggy fashion.

[just mercedes]

I was very influenced by the newly-released In His Own Write by John Lennon.

[dukealien]

There were surely earlier, but the first memorable was 9th grade English (1964) - choice lay between a "short" story of daunting length and an "epic" poem of at least 100 lines.  My poem [sounded much easier] was about the Battle of Agincourt in (approximate) alexandrines, with end-rhymes.  I remember the first couple of lines; it gallumphed.

[just mercedes]

Where are they?