The Stupid Things People Write:
High School Poetry

Having recently passed the fifth anniversary of my high school graduation, I couldn’t help but reminisce about those largely forgettable four years. During this time, I discovered my old poetry booklet produced by the Creative Writing class I took during my senior year. Yes, it's just as bad as it sounds.

Basically, each student in the class contributed one page to the booklet filled with their “best” poetry that they had written for the class. The end result is an entire tome that serves as a testament to the combined craptacularity that is poetry and the creative output of the average high school student.

Join me as I look back upon the creative expression of my former 17-18 year old colleagues and make fun of it. For a school that prided itself on being diverse, the writings of its students were about as stereotypical as they come.

“Hey everybody, I Have Jewish Ancestry!”

Did you know that a lot of Jews died during World War II? Yes? Well, here’s your 1,236,946th reminder:

And to think, our teacher had tried to turn us on to poetry by emphasizing how much FUN it could be to write. Apparently, that message didn’t get through to Little Miss Holocaust over here. Way to bring everybody down.

“I'm black and I care deeply about the state of black people, because I'm black!”

You’re not allowed to be black if racial issues are not a central component of your existence. Honestly, I read it in a book somewhere.

Yeah, now that’s keepin’ it real, yo. Slavery, drugs, and violence are bad.

“Overachieving Asian Students – even our poetry is bland and boring!”

I know, that’s an unfair stereotype, but look at this:

My God, it’s like the PBS Network of poetry. This kid needed to stick with math, science, and always getting to class seven minutes early.

“Waah, it’s hard being a woman, waah!”

Aww, someone was struggling with heartbreak during poetry month.

And then, the day after this was published, she found a new boyfriend, and everything was fine.

“I’m an even bigger dork than the person writing this article!”

And that’s saying a lot!

MacBeth? You were allowed to write about anything fucking thing you wanted and you chose MacBeth? How can someone stare at a blank sheet of paper and say, “Hey, you know what would be cool? A Shakespeare poem! Oh what the hell, as long as I'm being corny, let's make it a haiku!” This person is hopeless.

“I’m a very strange person with a morbid sense of humor!”

Perhaps you’re wondering what I contributed to this creative travesty. I did a freestyle poem, because it doesn't require any rhyming, syllable measurements, or effort. As it turns out, I was pretty negative myself. I guess we were a school full of pessimists. You may recognize this from the previous article I wrote about poetry. Now you get to see the original version, complete with illustration: