Teach-in at the Youth Club...my FIRST ever poem.

[tectak]

Tectak,
Thank you!!! This is encouragement is well timed.  If I had known that posting poetry could give a person stage fright and writer's remorse at the same time, I  would never have had the courage to join in the first place.  However, I am here because I want to learn and, you are right, deleting my account in a massive panic is not going to accomplish that.  

So, even though your first ever poem is still intimidatingly better than anything I have written, or am likely to write for a long while yet, I will soldier on.  I will quiet the nagging voice in my head that whispers that my words are a crime and my only option is to wipe the scene for fingerprints and get out.  I will instead continue to regale you all with stumbling meter, obnoxious rhymes, and melodramatic angst ... not intentionally to torture you, but it just seems to be the growing process.    

I've been reading through the halls here of poems past, and I just about died that I asked people who can write like that to look at my paltry attempt to knit together a few words.  It's like asking Picaso how he likes my stick figure.  *cue crushing mortification*  I never had delusions of grandure, I have no desire to be published or amazing.  I just want to play on the plaground for as long as the big kids will let me.



So, on behalf of all us struggling newbies, thank you all for taking the time to give support, advice, and encouragement.  I'm certain that without that there would be a much higher poem mortality rate.    

Confidence is a strange commodity when you start out. Without it you are crippled by shame and write not a lot but some of it may be worthy...with it you write a whole load of shite but some of it may be worthy. Moral? Read the work of others and try to determine which group is right for you.
Nobody gives a damn which group you are in...after all, it's unlikely you will stay in either group for long.
Best,
tectak