A poem

In my English lesson yesterday, my teacher presented us with a box of random items, told us to choose one, and asked us to write a poem about it. We had about ten minutes to write it: most of which, as is evident from my half a page of crossings-out, was spent attempting terrible rhymes.

My item was a notebook; the first page was covered in phone numbers, the twenty-or-so following pages were filled with diary entries (which I didn't read!) and after that the pages were blank. This is what I wrote:

The space around the words
Filled in with white,
Sentences soar like birds
As her story takes flight.

A phone number here
Belonging to whom?
A tingling of fear;
Surroundings of doom.

A car, a child, a long look
Recorded in this little book.

I think it's safe to say that I'm never going to be a published poet, but I don't think I did too badly for the work of ten minutes. In particular, I like my first stanza, but the middle stanza was hurried and meaningless -- the "surroundings of doom" had nothing to do with anything, but I wanted to create a sense of adventure and I needed a rhyme for "whom".

If nothing else, I've learnt from this that it's very difficult to write poetry without inspiration and without a point you want to get across. But I guess that's the same with writing anything, really. Regardless, it was a fun exercise and I encourage you to try writing some poetry -- even if it's as bad as mine!