I wrote this one for an English assignment when I was fourteen. She was my favourite English teacher, and when she got my Haiku lamenting my current condition, she wrote with a little smiley face on my paper: “but not forever”:-)
Teeth behind tight bars
Sit wondering aimlessly—
What did they do wrong?
This poem has no special, life significance and I’m not going to pretend it does. One of my goofy word prompt poems, circa age 20. Have you noticed how much I love word prompts? I’m thinking of writing a dramatic poem based on phrases I’ve made with my Shakespeare Insult Generator (awesome souvenir from Bard on the Beach). Maybe I’ll even build a poem around the words my husband and I played in a recent game of Scrabble. Hey, just be glad I don’t write my novels this way…
We slick our steps in goo
Since just the other day
An unfriendly shoe or two
Came up that easy way
Our guests arrive,
Stamp their feet,
Though we lower ladder;
Climbing up that wretched thing
Is such an awful bother
“Coat those rungs, good goo!”
I cry, “If our pals fuss fun away,”
Really, what would they do
In our shoes and mayday?
This was for a contest to rewrite the lyrics of the song “Four Strong Winds.” I remember that my aunt Holly put me onto it. She’d heard about it on the radio or something, and since 
I was a writer in full contest mode at the time, she suggested that I enter. Judging by what I came up with, the objective was to make the song very Canadian. Probably a Canada Day contest. This was long before I actually did go to Prince Edward Island on my honeymoon. Anne of Green Gables was the major appeal of the place. I still love all of L.M. Montgomery’s fiction, perhaps more consistently than any other author’s work. Circa age twenty, here is my Canadian “Four Strong Winds” renamed “Gold Swirl Free.”
I’m a-goin’ cross the country
From B.C. to farthest shore
Got to see those forests
Stretching everywhere
You’ll pine for P.E. Island,
If I bring you some red sand,
Anne in her green gables
Born of beauty there
Gold swirl free from pan soil,
Rocky Mountains climb skies
Far as all tomorrow, what’s to be,
Beavers build homes in nickels
Prairie grass scratches ’n’ tickles,
I will show you if you venture forth with me.
This was one of my word prompt poems circa age 20. “Train” and “mouse” were two of the words. With most word prompt poems, step 1 for me was finding all the possible contexts for the random words I’d chosen. Step 2 was choosing my favourite idea; step 3 to build a poem around that idea. I guess this is one of my lazier pieces, because I didn’t move past step 1:
I asked for a train
From father, from mother,
A big train, a long train,
And that was not all.
I wanted a mouse;
A white mouse, a smart mouse,
A long-tailed, fun mouse
That felt good to touch.
I should have drawn pictures,
I realize too late,
Of locomotives and rodents;
They’d see what I said.
My dress doesn’t have wheels,
Though its train is real long
Mom trains me to curtsey without falling down
My train of thought runs wild round the rails
When dad trains cameras on me
And tells me to smile
As for the mouse, it’s a pet like no other
They gave me a white one for my computer.
Circa age 10-16, I loved to organize my little sisters’ birthday parties. My sister Angela often got just as obsessed with series fiction (whether books or TV) as I did. This meant I loved to organize themed birthday parties for her. There was a Harry Potter one once with lots of invented games and props. Before that, we had our Star Trek Voyager phase. I think this poem is pretty self-explanatory:
How eager and proud a big sister I was
When beloved little sister said, “Jenny, I need.”
I took it to the high command,
Craned my neck to meet high eyes:
“Mommy and Daddy, not Bubba Baloos. This year let’s give Angie her favourite Star Ship.”
I wrote invitations with crayons on paper. “Really they’re pads. You have to look harder.”
“Welcome aboard. Put on your com badge.” Sticky, white labels cut roughly triangular.
“Choose who to be,” I told the cadets. “Whatever you want, only Angie’s the captain.”
“To the Mess Hall for cake!” Dairy Queen ice cream.
An audio cassette to play “music on the Holodeck!”
“Tag, you’re it!” And “it” means Borg.
I made stickers and ribbons and wrote down the rules.
Parents picked up their Drones, Klingons and Vulcans;
The Borg Queen’s mother much amused,
“What a strange way to celebrate a little girl’s birthday.
Don’t encourage her, Jenny. Really, she’s crazy.”
Star Trek Voyager assimilated my sister. It got to me too.
Yes, red alert!
But resistance is futile.
Now for my drifted-away friend E. We went to the same schools. My family was close with her mother, who was a teacher with many creative outlets. E used to carpool to school with my family, and she’d always make me look bad by being ready to leave before I got out of bed. My dad really appreciated her, because she got all three of his daughters to hurry and get to school on time.
E had way more chores at home than I did, took on way more extracurricular activities (mostly dance classes), and had a much more practical skill set than I did (things like sewing and cooking). She played the trumpet in our high school band and was even willing to take on the role of Lumiere when I directed my friends in a play of “Beauty and the Beast”. I actually got so inspired by her example that I demanded my parents give me more chores. I wanted to be just as mature and responsible as her.
E was a wonderful friend, and it’s easier to remember that now. She basically found new friends after our first year in high school and didn’t talk to me anymore. After L (see Poem Portal #10), I think I had a different perspective on drifting friends and wrote E’s song with more finality: she’s over and this is just how it is. There is a hopeful note, but it’s mostly for the distant future.
Chorus: You were someone I knew,
Someone who knew me,
Yet when I see you now, it seems
You’re the stranger who was a friend
In the memory of a dream.
Verse: How did the mist between us come
To thicken into clouds?
Despite our flaws we had become
Friends who were allowed.
I guess now that’s no longer true;
Go your way and I’ll go mine.
Whether it helps us both or only you,
I hope it will work out this time.
Chorus:
Verse: When I look back on the fun that’s free
Of the strange chains which now bind,
Where resentment and uncertainty
Spent less time in our minds,
I know that I could start again
To be your friend through dark and doubt;
Without you will never be the same,
That’s what friendship’s all about.
Chorus:
Verse: Can’t say I know just what went wrong,
What triggered a change of heart;
I thought we’d been friends too long
For our lives to grow apart.
Estrangement filtered out with time,
Someday we’ll meet again as friends;
Whatever harm there was exchanged,
It won’t even matter then.
January 2008, I moved to the Lower Mainland to live with roommates, leaving my family behind in Prince George. Back then, the poems I wrote that were not about the writing life were usually about being homesick (or “people-sick” might be more accurate; I think I would have breezed right through if everyone had just moved to the Lower Mainland with me). This poem is for that transition between one home and the next:
Cry
Softly when our roads divide,
Hands apart, we stand, we go to
Family’s house and place my own,
Calling both names “home.”
A safe goodbye before the flight;
The only force opposed is
That of change,
Hurt, helping lives to
In sunlight times, it
Barely dawns,
But when the Sandman’s
Sprinkling yawns,
I wish for them so far away
Miss me little, little more,
Don’t miss too much.
I wrote this rondeau for an online poetry course circa age 20. Like many of my poems at that time, it was a protest against realistic choices that I felt would strand me in a realistic life (aka my writing career reduced to a hobby). I’m sure most artists — or even most people who set high goals — can relate.
One journey’s all we get to take,
Whole life long no time to fake.
Shoes hit rungs, loud, dull whacks,
Footpath confined as railway tracks,
Straight, rigid walk ’til feet awake.
Along twisting path the patterns fail,
Life’s lost and trying to find the trail.
No turning back, there’s just ahead.
One journey’s all.
Feet find the path they fear and want,
Up mountainside to high peak’s taunt:
“Only weaklings ride the train!”
I climb in spite of risk and strain,
For safe aground, potential haunt—
One journey’s all.
This one was a favour for a high school friend who played guitar. I don’t remember exactly why, but she wanted me to write a couple songs for her to play. She might have given me the prompts: one was supposed to be about an eagle and one about rain (I don’t know what crazy mood I was in, but the rain one turned out kind of morbid).
The eagle song turned out happy, probably inspired by my love of a certain red-tailed hawk in the Animorphs series. By the time I saw real birds of prey at a show on Grouse Mountain, I was a dignified adult and therefore not obsessed with—kidding! All I could think was “those birds must really be Animorphs on a mission”; my suspicion was confirmed when the bald eagle actually took off on its handlers, soaring far away over the mountaintops as the show went on. The handlers had to explain to the audience that they do sometimes lose their birds (uh-huh, yep, whenever they catch one that needs to demorph;-)
To fly like an eagle,
To soar through the sky,
To admire the world
Through a bird’s amber eye,
To glide through the air,
To bathe in the sun,
Closing in on the prey,
The day that’s begun,
Skitter and squeak,
Light spread and rise,
Good meal, good morn,
Routine’s no surprise.
Wake, eat and fly,
A good try!
This is a song I came up with to help me relax whenever I am suffering major anticipation/fear of disappointment over something. I mostly use it when agents ask to see the beginning of my novel, but occasionally when I’m waiting for the conclusion of a contest or even a day-job interview. I wrote this soothing verse circa age 20 (around the same time that sparse requests to see my work started):
Whether it’s something
Nothing
Or everything I need
Life will be nothing less something
Than what it’s always been
I still will do what I start
And sing from my heart
Forever me
All that I love will live in me and be free
Whether it’s something
Nothing
Or everything I need
Jennifer Lott - Author Website 
