According to the Internet, today is Throwback Thursday. Since this is also Fun a Day Reseda, I’m sharing a poem I wrote when I was a student at Reseda High School. It’s a typical cringe-worthy teenage poetry, but its subject is appropriate for a month dedicated to art. It’s called “Formal Application,” and it was published in our Buji creative writing magazine in 1979.

“For all those humans who want to become poets.”

I shall begin by learning to find
pleasure in the ordinary. To notice
a maple leaf everyone else ignores.

Then, I shall take this leaf and
levy upon it a plethora of symbols,
metaphors, similes, hyperboles

until the leaf is no longer a leaf,
but a symbol of all the world’s meanings,
and a reflection of my experiences.

I shall pour my leaf into new bottles
(as William Carlos Williams requires)
and give it to my friends to drink.

They’ll drink my ambrosia and become
intoxicated by the emotions and feelings
I had towards this ordinary leaf.

After they quaff my wine, they’ll
commend me on its taste and ponder
how such great drink could be fermented

from such unknown grapes. Only
a poet can squeeze out common experiences
and find uncommoness in them.

The most amazing fact of all
is that they came from a leaf
everyone else overlooked.