The lovely and talented Ali Isaac recently posted about trees. One thing led to another and we were chatting on about teen poetry. You know how that goes.
Anyway, she said something about writing a cringe-worthy poem about trees when she was sixteen. To which I replied something along the lines of:
“Pfft! My teen angst poetry kicks your teen poetry’s arse. It is SO bad. I won’t even share it online. In fact, I don’t know where it is. In fact, I never wrote it.”
To which she said how fun a teen angst poetry slam would be (sort of) which I took as a challenge. I attempted to reach back through the years, channeling my sixteen-year-old self, to recreate some teen angst poetry. I failed. But…here is an actual poem I wrote. I somehow remembered this verbatim from my first year at university. I was seventeen years old.
It smelled like chocolate lavender
Inside the house of clouds
And thoughts of tiny animals
Were clearly heard out loud
Vanilla rose smiled up at me
Then motioned toward the light
And as my feet sank in the clouds
The day gave way to night
Lemon Shark Reef 