Forgotten Decade-old Poems

A friend of mine's been encouraging me to get into poetry. I can't recall ever having been into it before. I own a copy of the complete works of Edgar Allen Poe so I've read a few of his but mostly skipped over the poetry section to get to the good stuff, his short stories. I once won an Android tablet in a poetry reading competition, but I don't remember the poem I read. It might've been by Sun Tzu. I've also been subjected to whatever "slam poetry" is. 

Since reading poetry is something I hardly do you might expect that writing it is something I never do. This was my expectation as well. I can't recall having ever written a poem. I can recall once stealing the lyrics to a song and handing them in as a poetry homework assignment. And I wrote a stage play in terrible iambic pentameter. That's the closest to it my memory comes.

Yet despite my poor memory I am a poet. I discovered hard proof of this. Two poems written by me about ten years ago today during the summer of 2013. This is according to the document's cover which titles it The Provocateurs. My poems appear alongside several other works by different young writers made for a summer camp's creative writing course. This document is likely the earliest record of my work bearing the name T.B. Johnson.

It makes me wonder how much I've already wrought that's entirely failed to penetrate my thick skull and dig into my long-term memory.

With no further ado- 

The artwork is not by me.

Seccom Masada + Madotsuki

T.B. Johnson

 

 Floating in space, so empty, so lone

An astronaut stands. The haunting tune

Of his massive piano serves as his

One, only companion.

A noise from the hatch, the dull

Eyed girl arrives. Pink is

Her shirt, but dark is her sentiment.

Masada is exceedingly animated.

Only too late he sees

The flash of cold death. He tries

To fall back, floating regressive

But is far too slow.

He screams, a terrible wail

As the sharp-edged evil enters him. 

Slowly fading from reality, he can think

Only one thought;

"I'm not alone"

Anthropophobia

T.B. Johnson

 

A boy so afraid

And yet, so brave.

Every day he goes outdoors

Shivering

Shaking

Crying

All inside

This is no ordinary fear, not close

Not snakes

Not spiders

Not heights

But people

He fears all one can do

To eat

To sleep

To talk

To be

All because of just one thing;

The people, always watching