When I was young, one of my first passions was poetry and songwriting. I'd write down all the words to my favorite Top-40 songs and write parodies of them, like I was Weird Al Yankovic. Then I started writing my own songs with a friend from high school, Craig Downie. We released a couple of albums under the band name Well, and, well, we're still writing songs today, 35 years later.
On the poetry-side I was always an admirer of how words could be chosen so carefully to fit into the various poetic forms, and how you can also use "poetic license" to convey how the poem is wished to be consumed. In college, I assembled my poems into a work I called First Edition - because it was a first publication for me and every copy I gave out was personally printed and delivered by me.
You can read First Edition here for free. Looking back at what I wrote when I was a teenager, I laugh or cringe at my own audacity and what I believed back then. You might cringe too. But I also marvel at some specific lines and whole poems and how I would never come up with those lines now.
I don't regret making it at all and that's why I'm sharing it. You might make it through the 52 poems and find a few you like. If so, I'd love to hear from you about what you liked and why.
Every time I read through them (which is about once every five years), I find something new. I laughed out loud the last time I read "What Martyrs Know."