Sensitivity and perception?

Recently while cleaning out some old boxes, I came across my scrapbook from high school. Yes...way, way before the scrap booking craze. No fancy borders or cutesy flowers. Just pictures, articles, programs, etc. scotch taped very haphazardly into a big ledger.

In my junior year the school started a creative writing class for handpicked students. I'm not sure what the criteria was for selection, but I was very excited to be chosen. It meant I would be in a class that was half seniors. In the day that was a very big deal.

It seems we had an assignment to write poetry and somehow a couple of my creations got published in the local newspaper. Reading back over them now, I've decided that I was a sad mixture of pretentious and weird.

Continuing with the theme of smiling (or laughing out loud), I'm offering up my early work to the blogosphere.

Life

Life is but a carousel
where the world seems to go around.
But it's not the world --
it's we.

Some of our riders are light
and easy to bear;
Others are heavy --
they burden us with grief.

We must carry our passengers
and appreciate our joys,
for soon the carousel will go
no more.


Death

I ride my pony swift and fast,
but I cannot escape
from savages who challenge me
and shoot and stab and rape.

My hour has come, and death I fear
will soon make dust of me.
It's closing in!
It's getting near!
Oh, God, help me to flee.

I fell it hit my body now;
it pierces swift and fast,
and where I see it clear --
the flag is at half mast.

It's very dark now where I am,
but do not mourn for me.
For fear has gone far, far away,
and I am finally free.
..................

Eeegads. It's even more mortifying when I type it out and reread it. Something about seeing it in newsprint made it appear less embarrassing. For what it's worth, here is what the paper said about the poems.

Pyzahn, a junior in the Creative Writing class, is one of the students who shows great promise. Her pair of poems, "Life" and "Death" exhibit sensitivity and perception as well as a competence in the use of words and phrases.

I swear the "critic" was not my mother.

Please feel free to share your poetic masterpieces here.