Your First (Poem)

lastlittlebird

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I was wondering if anyone would like to share the very first poem they ever wrote? Or, alternatively, the earliest poem you can remember writing/still have to hand?

I'll embarrass myself first :)

I wrote a song when I was 5 although I don't have it unfortunately.
The next time I can remember writing a poem was when I was around 11.

Dolphins

Mammals, but living in the sea
With language, but no words to speak
In danger, but still living free
Clowns that will never laugh
Dolphins, a beauty that will always be.


I know, I know, my fountain of talent was already gushing all over the place. Dolphins were swimming in it!

Anyone else?
 

sarrahhakim

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I wrote my first poem when I was five. I was inspired by Shel Silverstein's "The Acrobats."

Here it is, spelling mistakes and all:

Turtle

I have a little turtle
He is verry sweet
I thought it would be nice
To give him somthing to eat.
Then he got an invitation
To go to a celebration.
So when he came back
He had a dream
Abot a majic bean.

Not sure how I managed to spell words like "celebration" but not "about."
 

StarryEyes

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I remember writing poems when I was as young as 4-5 years old, but this one is the oldest I can find. I wrote it when I was 8 and leaving New Zealand (my homeland).


Goodbye

Goodbye for ever?
Goodbye for now!
I won't forget you
I don't even know how!

I have to leave you
On a plane
Staying there for a day and a half
Really drives me insane!

But do not worry
I'll see you again soon
I think next time
I'll come in a balloon!

Say goodbye to the kiwis
Goodbye to the zoo
Goodbye to the museum
And goodbye to you!
 
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lastlittlebird

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Was it Auckland or Wellington you were saying goodbye to (guessed because of the museum and zoo references)?
I hope you have managed to come back since then :) I love the passion in the first verse.
 

StarryEyes

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Was it Auckland or Wellington you were saying goodbye to (guessed because of the museum and zoo references)?
I hope you have managed to come back since then :) I love the passion in the first verse.

Wellington :) It's the city where I was born. I go back every year/two years, I hope to eventually stay!
 

lastlittlebird

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I was born there too!
I like Te Papa, but I still remember the old museum (now the Design college I think) and how much more museumy it was :) The zoo has most definitely improved with the years though.
 

Norman D Gutter

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The first I can think of was that one during junior year in high school. A good friend and I wrote it together. He's now a successful cardiologist in the old home town. It was a spoof of our physics class, working in all of our teacher's favorite expressions. Not knowing much about poetic techniques, we chose iambic/anapestic trimeter, with rhyming couplets. It was about 400 lines, if memory serves me correctly, doggerel at its worst. Rather than pull it out of the file, I'll just give the first four lines.

I Don't Get It

The first time I heard this here yarn
I was stopping by Robin Hood's barn.
There was an old timer in there
with the gray out all over his hair.
 

Norman D Gutter

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If anyone likes that last line, it's by chance, not design. The future cardiologist and I were both poetry haters at the time, knowing nothing about meter except what the ear could sense. So that line was tortured for rhyme and meter. Any imagery was purely by accident.

The best couplet in the poem had to do with a dropped ammeter that happened in another class. Except the teacher pronounced it ahmmeter, like most Rhode Islanders of his age group. That event found it's way into the poem with this couplet:

"Did you drop an arm-meter? Did you drop an arm-meter?"
"Yes sir I did. Do you need 'er?"

Junior year silliness. I'd best not say more lest I give the cardiologist a heart attack.
 

Magdalen

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If anyone likes that last line, it's by chance, not design.

"Did you drop an arm-meter? Did you drop an arm-meter?"
"Yes sir I did. Do you need 'er?"

Junior year silliness. I'd best not say more lest I give the cardiologist a heart attack.

Quite charming & clever, whatever you might say, I say!
Thanks for your contribution!!!