High school "poem"

[steuard]

During my senior year of high school, my English teacher required us to submit a story or poem to the school's literary magazine From the Depths. I thought the assignment was silly (and was probably pretty dismissive of the magazine, too), so I wrote a "poem" over lunch and handed it in. To the great amusement of everyone who was in on the joke, they published it. At long last, I've tracked down a copy, and I'll share it with you here:

The Myth

as I followed the stream
    down
from the mountaintop of
    which it sprang,
I knew then that my hidden
    town
was littered with the broken
    shards
of ice

cold, and colder
in the frigid dawn
    the birds flee
to their inner sanctuaries
    filled
with nothing greater than
    the sea


accord
bubbling pipes
crying out in unison
calling to the specks
hidden deep in the folds
of a wretched soul

paradoxical musings
flow relentlessly into
vortices of confusion
and fear

the fragile cup
is emptied of its tepid
    draught

Comments

[akjdg.livejournal.com]

In high school, the kids with an eye to college and funding filled out 'scholarship books' where we di a bunch of stuff for the various local scholarship giving entities. I got interviewed by the rotary club, and the interview committee was enthralled by the essay I wrote for them, and asked me what had inspired me to write it. Having written that essay (and countless others) months prior, I had to tell them I had no clue what I wrote or why.

I guess honesty was worth something in their minds, because they awarded me a scholarship regardless.