Poetry of a 10-year-old

Confession time: I don't care much for poetic forms. I think they can often interfere with the message, especially in scenarios like the abecedarian forcing us to scour through the X section of the dictionary. It can feel forced. Unnatural.

That's one of the things that I think free verse does well: it gives us the room and autonomy to deliver the message however we see fit. Meter, rhythm, syllables, rhyme, form, and all other concerns of traditional poetry be damned.

Confession time (part 2): I had assumed up to now that "The Final Acrostic" was the only acrostic I had ever written. And to poke fun at just how much noise a challenge asking us to create acrostics from SILENCE had generated, no less.

In the midst of cleaning out old bins at the behest of my mom, I discovered I was wrong. Very wrong.

So allow me to correct the record and capture my actual first acrostic for perpetuity:

Untitled Acrostic

Sailing sea

Puppies playing outside

Red kites

Ice cream

Nest of baby birds

Good jaguar

Gotta admit, he really had me going until that ending line. Good jaguar? Did he mean the car? The cat? For case #1, is a good Jaguar an expensive Jaguar? Fast Jaguar? High gas mileage Jaguar?

For case #2, I can only assume a good jaguar is one that isn't killing anyone.

Still, for a 10-year-old, it's not bad. Even if my spelling did suck.

Up next, here's a hand-written entry to feast your eyes on:

Untitled Rumination on Winter

Winter is snowball fights.

Winter is sledding down hills.

Winter is snow and ice falling.

Man, if only I had found this sooner, I could have cleaned up in the Frosted Verse challenge. Those are all things that happen in winter! Enough said.

Assuming it snows, anyway.

And now we reach the last of the young artist's pieces from 2005. In all honesty, I'm not even sure this was written as a poem. But in the age of free verse, why can't it be a poem? That's the better question.

So, without further equivocation:

Untitled Ode to Skittles

I love my Skittle. It tastes like a ripe

cherry fresh from the tree. My Skittle is

shaped like a parakeet's eye. It is colored

like a yellow fall leaf. My Skittle is sticky

like maple syrup. When you chew it, it

sounds like eggs cracking in your mouth. I

think it smells like a ripe lemon. Actually

I like every kind of Skittle.

I'll admit, I didn't love every simile in there. Smells like a ripe lemon? For a cherry Skittle I've already established tastes just like the real thing? Maybe I've grown jaded in all my years since this was written, but I'm skeptical.

Also, yellow leaf? Did I get my Skittle flavors confused halfway through composing this?

Still, shaped like a parakeet's eye absolutely slaps. And "eggs cracking in your mouth" is one of those visceral sensory images that instantly paints the picture, even if it's not a particularly appealing picture.

And then that turn at the end where I surrender the supremacy of the cherry Skittle in favor of all Skittle-kind? That's a twist only a sugar-driven 10-year-old could dream up.

And, again, give Young Stephen some credit for parakeet's eye. I've got to use that in a future piece.

How have I not cleaned up in the Vocal poetry challenges after such a strong opening foray into the poetic world cataloged here?

Perhaps it has something to do with me not entering most of them...