Okay, okay, Elliot nudged me, so I'll post.  Don't really need critique on this: it's so short, there's not much I could have messed up; nor is it originally worded enough to be one of those good short poems.  But yeah.  Fourteen words (seventeen, counting the title) for Ellito.  And for its mutilated, semi-readable subject; which was never very good either.

“My Old Poem”

It was thrice-washed.
Its black ink, rinsed
To violet:
An old warning,
Faded
         at last.

Poetry class was tough. It was an ORDEAL in all caps, but I'm glad to have taken it, because it really, really helped. I actually liked the last week of it. And now, I present a little bit of poetry that doesn't suck!

Dormitory

This place is barren and sad.

The walls are white;

The ceiling even more so.

The top metal shelf

Is empty; below it

On a smaller shelf

3 boxes of granola

Bars and some cookies.

Also there are crackers,

Unopened.

My piles of cleaning detritus

(For cleaning me,

I can’t stand housework)

Make this seem

More like a home.

But it’s missing color and a cat

At the foot of my bed.

Outside the windows I could see

A weeping willow, grass,

And the Family Courthouse.

But now it is dark.

My eyes have to adjust

Before I see anything.

Beside me, on my left

In her own lonely bunk bed

A girl fills the hole in her world

Via the telephone. Just

Two days ago she wouldn’t

Say a word to me.

I miss the friends who love me;

Those whom I left at home.

But they are all asleep, and

My phone is charging.

Behind our mirror a medicine cabinet

Stands unused, grimy with questionable

Substances and rust. I do not

Use it; I doubt she knows

It exists. It doesn’t matter—

I take up more room on

Our shelf.

My desk lamp is purple, hers silver

(she wanted pink). The desks

Themselves: identical as salt water

And tears.

Up and down the hall outside

Are other rooms like ours

Full of tension and furniture.

The people they contain are talented

And annoying. I only hug my parents,

Beloved friends, and

My cat and dog—I haven’t

Had a hug in a week.

This place is barren and sad.

It begs for love.

Birthday Cakes

My mother’s birthday

Cake

Dense black  chocolate

Baked in a round floured pan.

Humming beaters

Combine the batter

Boiling water moistens

Without the thickness of oil

She got the recipe

From the back of a cocoa tin

Everyday, unexotic Hershey’s—

I think it’s still there

You can go and look

If you want                  but tell me

It was Daddy’s birthday

At the lake once

He loves that lake. She doesn’t.

I don’t remember the cake

Or if there was one.

We have a photograph of chocolate

With full yellow roses

That wasn’t the cake but it was still

His                              once.

Long ago                    when she was still

Mama

Or before

She took a class

Learned to decorate those cakes right.

Mama liked to do

Loving things right.

I remember.

And there were cakes for every birthday

And in between                     (Big Pop’s trip

to europe,                               Dad’s degree)

Now                she bakes cakes

On my birthday only when I ask.

She is so tired.

Twice-Baked Spaghetti

I stood amid a crumple of city noise:

Too many lives woven into one space

To make more sound than radio static.

Mica flashed white in the city street;

White paint grafted to rubber and the filth of brakes.

Taste of heavy metals back of my throat

Miasma of simmering trash in the municipal pot.

Remember the shimmering heat

Warring with great glass windows?

Watch too long and your eyes are drawn into the fray.

Nervous mother clasps wild-haired children’s

Fatty fingers. Spaghetti and Lake Michigan boil

Beneath sweat-speckled skin.

Blue lights, footsteps, a massive heave—

Noodley orange emigrants bake on a black-paved street.

Fireflies

Fireflies are outside the window

Two stories below me

Among the swaying branches

Of a willow tree.

It ruffles in the warm night air

Like a skirt—my skirt,

Three tiered, always skimming over my feet.

That skirt. It flits about

My ankles

As I leap down stairs.

Up the stairs: pale legs flash

Strong but stumbling.

This assurance is fleeting.

I trap it:

Firefly between

My wrinkled palms.

Sometimes I can show it

To someone else:

My friends, Mom, my brother--

I lift my top hand

Let it clamber through the gap

Between my thumbs.

Its light makes my hands

A rose-paper Chinese lantern

I smile and let it go

Before it dies.

Twice-Baked Spaghetti is about the time my brother puked in the middle of the street in Chicago. Isn't it gross? Hahahahaha!

Continuing the description series with Melody, my oldest friend. We were in the same class in fourth grade and carpooled to ARMES dance every year in fifth grade. If I hadn't been entirely stupid, she would have clued me in that I was more of a crazy dork than popularity material, and fifth and sixth grades might not have been so hellish.

Melody

 Two summers ago, I thought it would be cool and punk to threaten one of Melody’s friends, a boy-crazy “prep” when went to the same school as I did, online. I didn’t think she’d know it was me. I didn’t realize that the police can trace your IP address; so I didn’t think there’d be much in the way of consequences. Biggest mistake of my life: I was grounded for a month; after explaining tearfully to Casey, her mother, my mother, Melody, and her mother that I hadn’t been serious. But before all that, when the shit had yet to hit the fan, I swore up and down to my mother and everyone else that it wasn’t me. I was (and am) a good kid. Everyone trusted me, with the result that Melody’s mother blamed her instead.
 I can see it clearly if I concentrate: Melody perched on the end of my mother’s bed, crying because she’d been there and knew what I’d done. She was taking my blame; not bothering to correct her mother’s mistake through ages of shrill berating and threats of grounding for the rest of her natural life. But the stupidity of my mistake isn’t the point here, nor is it really Melody’s loyalty—it’s what my mother said to her as she cried. Sitting heavily (she can’t exactly perch anywhere) next to Melody, she tried to comfort her as she cried. The king-sized mattress sagged and groaned under her concentrated weight. Nothing she said pacified Melody in the least. Finally, she stared at Melody sadly.
 “It’s not fair,” she said. “You even look pretty when you cry.”
 It wasn’t fair, and it was true! When I cry, my face turns blotchy and my eyes puff up; I look hideous. It’s a large part of the reason I rarely cry in anyone’s presence. But crying might have even improved Melody’s looks: her eyelids turned a delicate mauve, and her cheeks flushed prettily. Her mouth didn’t contort, and her eyes didn’t swell. I was so jealous.
 That was the summer after seventh grade, when Melody’s hair was usually tangled and she didn’t yet wear makeup—we were lucky if she showered every day. She had a quirky, interesting face which was pretty when she cried.
Now Melody is five feet and eleven inches tall. Her skin is perfect and her blonde hair is as long as mine. She lines her pretty green eyes and glosses her lips, and her legs are so long her knees reach her ears if she hugs them when she sits. My mother says she looks just like Uma Thurman. Jealous people tell her to use her height, so she signed up for basketball one year, but hated it; now she’s become a model.
Yet Melody is proof that meeting our culture’s strange requirements for beauty doesn’t make anyone perfect or even happy. She’s the most insecure model you’ll ever meet. She avoids miniskirts like the plague even though she’s probably the only person in Greenville who’d look good in one. She has to buy extra-extra long jeans, which means they have to come from Buckle and are very expensive. It bothers her; she complains. People at school make snide comments if they see her eating--and she does eat like a normal human being. She hasn’t many friends because everyone is so jealous of her. In short, her beauty hasn’t made her life wonderful.
Melody can’t do anything about the fact that she’s a blonde-headed beanpole. Her hair is very fine, she’s had braces twice, and she’s not flexible enough for dance class. Her feet are rather large and she hates that, too. Her soulless modeling agency, Elite, has told her to lose an inch in her hips, so she’s attempting to abstain from white carbs. Melody loves junk food and baguettes; it isn’t easy to give them up. She’s normal!
Melody’s biggest talent is for art. When Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix came out, she drew several scenes from it to hang on my wall; two years later, they’re still there. She goes to the Fine Arts Center for half the day—but people are mean to her there, too. She dresses like a normal teenager, in American Eagle and Hollister (but rarely Abercrombie). Most kids at the Fine Arts Center are into vintage clothes and the whole artistic look, mismatched plaids and all. They consider it their duty to dress that way—do they think it’s an artist’s uniform? Melody gets snubbed because that’s not her taste. However, she can still draw like nobody’s business: she makes it obvious that clothing has no effect on talent.
Melody has had a rough year. A normal teenager, she doesn’t quite know where she fits in and where she doesn’t. Her strengths are unappreciated and her weaknesses are criticized endlessly. She worries about what other people think about her and can’t figure out what to think of herself.
What I think is that she’s been a great friend since fourth grade. She’s funny and a good artist. Like every other girl in the world, she’s beautiful no matter what a modeling agency says.