ON EARLIER ATTEMPTS AT CREATIVITY

When I was in high school, I was a weird kid. I know I've mentioned this before, so it should come as no surprise. But if you combine that weirdness with a statewide poetry contest...well, you get something like this beauty, appropriately titled:

"Love isn't just blind, it's stupid."

A cobra on my toilet seat
Reddened, raw and uncooked meat
With week-old fish, smelling so rank
Ignition wires in my gas tank
Some booby traps beside my bed
A guillotine above my head
A heavy weight above my door
That just missed me but broke my floor
Poisoned coffee ev'ry dawn
Land mines buried in my lawn
A necktie noose around my throat
A Killer Bee hive in my coat
My clothes are soaked in gasoline
A bomb inside my TV screen
A pillow in my face each night
And forty wild dogs that bite
Black widows wrap me with their silk
Ebola virus in my milk
Nuclear weapons in my room
That haven't quite yet gone Kaboom
I'm burning there in effigy
Why are you doing this to me?
You're killing me! Now this is true
But darling I'll always love you
And if you leave, I'll surely die
"Hey why did she say goodbye?"

Shel Silverstein-inspired closing line aside, this was pretty awful. It's nonsensical, it varies the level and intensity of murder attempts, it's ABOUT murder attempts.

For the competition, entrants had to submit three poems...and this was the best of the three. Yikes.

Needless to say, I did not win.