My Teenage Poetry (everyone dies)
VERY PRIVATE
In 1995 I was 13, about to turn 14, and as you will soon find out, I liked writing heavy-handed poems which were either about LOVE (of course) or DEATH (also of course, because aren’t they the two most obvious drama-inducing subjects for any composer of literary works?)
I’d write my poetry in the back pages of my current diary, or sometimes in an extra notebook ear-marked just for my creative pursuits. I also wrote a lot of fiction at this age, so you can look forward to me sharing more of that as we go along.
(If you can’t wait, there’s an extract of a love story I made up in this newsletter here)
The two diaries/notebooks I’ve been revisiting to look at my poetry in particular are these two, the first one with its very serious warning:
Do not read! Or pay the penalty!
And this one below, which my partner said reminded him of the very 90s shop Athena, which sold grown-up stationary, greeting cards and posters (like that one of the man holding a baby). I think that’s a good assessment, this is definitely a classy notebook, and perfect for teenage Teresa to explore her creativity within its pages. Imagine, indeed.
“ISSUES”
As well as writing poems about love and death, I’ve found that I also liked to explore societal issues — like so many teenagers before and after me — witnessing and writing about the state of the world. In those poems I also try to make the reader feel guilty, so that’s nice of me.
There’s one in particular, which I’ll share in a future newsletter rather than today’s (because no one dies, and I’m just sharing poems today where someone dies) which lists all of the atrocities in the world then accuses the reader of caring more about their own hair style.
BUT, moving on to today.
We have three poems in which someone dies.
Let us begin.
TOMMY
This poem has five stanzas, and is very rhyme-y.
By the way, I’ve written the word ‘copy’ in the top corner, and that means: ‘Teresa, copy this into your Best Poems Notebook, because this is shit hot.’
Allow me to introduce you to Tommy.
Great start, vivid imagery, but I think all of us have a skeleton “frame”, rather than just Tommy?
But we know what you’re going for, 13-year old Teresa.
Let’s see her pile it on a bit thicker in the next two verses:
He looks like a pin????
That was obviously the only word I could think of that rhymed with thin, and as you can see, it was really essential that my poems rhymed, no matter the cost to any artistic merit they might have had a chance of flirting with.
And what an image: Tommy, crawling down the street like a snail, while people look on in disgrace!
Who are these people??? Bloody bastards, is all.
Okay, time for the final stanza.
It’s not looking good for Tommy, is it — especially as I gave you the spoiler already (everyone dies).
Brace yourself.
Goodbye, Tommy, we hardly knew ye.
I die in this one
This next one was written about 4 months later, when I was 14 and still enjoyed killing off the subjects of my poems, even when they were me.
Here’s how it starts:
So that’s me on my way into the afterlife, I believe.
Ooh hello, we’ve got company!
Now please ready yourself for, perhaps, a more forced rhyme than thin/pin:
Infact there’s eleven!!! Just so I could do a rhyme with heaven!!!!
Aaagh, is all.
Drifting, searching
Before I say anything else about this last poem in this collection, please take note of the list of words at the top of the page that rhyme with ‘grave’, just in case you had any doubts about this man’s fate.
Written a few months after the one where I died, we have this poem, about a lonely man with a lonely silhouette.
Has my style matured a bit here?
There’s less rhyming, but I can’t help but think I must have been learning about similes in English class at school:
Cold like an early frost / sad like an empty heart
(chef’s kiss).
Now, plot twist, it seems our lonely man is not truly alone, because someone else is about to enter the scene:
She’s having none of it.
Who or what is she, do you think? An angel or something? Doesn’t matter anyway, she wants nothing to do with our lonely man, and so he continues drifting down that open avenue. Then where will he go next?
From an avenue to a port!
And because I held back on the rhymes in this poem overall, that last one really hits home, doesn’t it?
I think that little doodle under ‘grave’ is evidence that I was pleased with myself and that ending.
It’s like: BOOM. Nailed it. Another heavy-handed and wrenching poem where the subject DIES. YES.
So there we have it. At least it’s nice that everyone in this collection goes to heaven, because I did write a poem about going to hell a few months later. So again, we’ve got that to look forward to.
I hope you enjoyed this edition, it was a bit different but fun, I think!
Please feel free to share this email with any of your friends who were once teenagers, or post about it on social media, or just stop by my Instagram and say hi. All of these things help the newsletter continue to grow in the lovely way that it is, albeit steadily.
I’ll be along again soon with more 90s teenage diary-ness.
Until then,
Teresa x
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Athena. A dreamer. Life couldn't be meaner.