Juvenilia for Poetry Friday

Doing the journaling workshop with young writers was a great excuse for reading some of my own juvenilia. I have no idea what the one in the illustration was about...

And then there is the poem below, FOSSILS. It was before I discovered punctuation—and I have no idea why those line breaks are where they are. Subjectwise, I think I was having an identity crisis.

FOSSILS


The bottom of my foot is purple
a Doctor used it to rubber stamp
my birth certificate.


The first time I saw
that precious piece of paper
I drew dinosaurs on it.
One with three horns

Jama Rattigan's Alphabet Soup
who is hosting this week's
Poetry Friday.
Her post is about
J. Patrick Lewis, winner of the
2011 NCTE Award for
Excellence in Poetry for Children

One with a zillion teeth


Dinosaurs left their footprints
in mud. Now all the dinosaur mud
is rock.


At night I comb the rats
out of my hair
and put them in cages.


I turn them loose in the clerk
and recorders office.
They          eat all the names
and numbers while I walk
barefoot in mud.

Now there is this new community for young writers called Figment. I think I would have been too shy to be part of that, but my son is considering it. If you know a young writer, you might suggest they check it out.