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

[spoonless.livejournal.com]

Wow, I had a very similar experience in high school, although I spent even less time and it didn't get into any kind of publication.

I had forgotten to do the current week's assignment for english class, which was to write a "concrete imagery" poem (a poem where the shape of the text matches the content of the poem). So when she said "ok, everybody pass up your homework" I said "oh shit", and reached into my bag and pulled out a blank sheet of paper. Just as the person behind me was handing me theirs, I wrote my name at the top right corner and the words "The Empty Heart" at the top middle and put it in the stack.

I figured there was almost no chance I would get any credit for it, but at least I would get a smile out or a witty comment back. To my great surprise, I got it back the following week with a big red "A" at the top and the words "very clever!" written next to it.