Less | An Original Poem

And to go with my poem: A picture of my car (the blue Equinox,) which came this close to being totalled a couple of days ago. The truck that hit it totalled 2 other vehicles, but my car got away without a scratch. Someone was watching over me that night!

Here’s a little poem I wrote a while back. Thought you might enjoy it:

Less

I wish I had less,

could pack everything I own

in the back of my car

at a moment’s notice,

blocking the rearview mirror

so there’s no looking back

as I drive away.

When we were kids, we bounced

We weren’t afraid to fall.

We Bounced

When we were kids,
we were made of rubber.
We just bounced when we hit the floor.
The harder we hit,
the higher we bounced.

We fall down now,
and we just break.

By Mandy Webster

Poetry Friday: Insomnia

Image via Wikipedia

I wrote this poem in the middle of the night. I’m sure you can deduce what I was doing at the time from the poem.

Dear Brain

Please shut up so I
can sleep.

A poem for Sweetest Day

Image by Miss Sydney Marie via Flickr

I’d never even heard of Sweetest Day before I moved to Wisconsin. So for years, I’ve largely ignored it. It’s always seemed to me like just another fake holiday developed by the jewelry and flower industries to generate revenue right before the big holiday push. This year, I am observing the day with my sweetest. However, likely without jewelry or flowers. And with that, here’s a little poem I hope will make you think twice before blowing your hard-earned cash on roses this year.

Bring Me Weeds

If you’re going
to bring me flowers,
bring me weeds.

How do you spell that sound?

Cover of A Poetry Handbook

Is it hot out this week, or what? I wrote another poem for my poetry class and was thinking I’d have to hang on to it for a few months since it has a summery feel to it. But with this weather, I’m thinking, “Why not share it now?”

I got the idea for this poem one morning while out on my morning walk. Our reading for the week, from Mary Oliver‘s A Poetry Handbook, was focused on sound. So, I was trying to decide how to start writing a sound poem.

While mulling this over, I began to think about the challenge of spelling out sounds without using the same old boring cliches. You know, “Boom!” “POW!” “THWACK!” That kind of thing.

Hiding from the Creeps

This semester, I’ve been taking a course on writing poetry for children and young adults. I’ve never really thought of myself as much of a poet, but I thought it would be good to push myself out of my comfort zone and give it a shot.

As it turns out, I’ve learned quite a bit about language and words that will probably help me in my other writing. I would recommend at least one poetry class for every aspiring author, poet or non.

And as long as I have to write a poem every week, I thought it might be fun to share my poems with you. So here’s a Halloween poem for you, inspired by my childhood fear of catching a glimpse of my own reflection in the window at night: