(I’ve been digging through all my old Word documents, which is why I’m posting about this seemingly random topic today)

When I was in junior high, there was some Moscow-wide teenage poetry contest thing going on. I entered a few poems because why the hell not.

Turns out both poems ended up winning (the poems were judged with the author’s names removed, and both of the winning poems in whatever category I was in happened to be mine).

So as evidence of the nonsensicality that was this contest, here are said winning poems:

I am Gray
I am a cloud.
I am a crowd.
I bring tears.
I shadow fears.
I have been torn.
I am the morn.
I am your heavy load.
I am the wind’s sorry ode.
I am the cold.
I am old.
I bring the night.
I am fright.
I am the way
I am gray.

Insignificant
What is this little black point of ink
that seems so insignificant?
What is this thing…it makes you think?
It
stops.
And lets you start again.
It’s in this sentence.
And this.
Maybe you’ve discovered its importance?
Maybe not.
But it’s there when you speak and
stop.
And start again.
It stops you.
And keeps you from running into infinity.
And if you’ve learned by the book,
this black point of ink will dance at the end.
Period.

I’m goddamn Walt Whitman.
(Apologies to Walt Whitman.)