Humiliating Throwback Thursday: Greens

Well, it happened! Last night you helped me break 4,000 hits on this blog!

 Welcome to the first of many Throwback Thursday posts!

 Today I want to share with you a poem I wrote when I was fourteen or fifteen, and apparently aspiring to be Shel Silverstein. I am printing it here for the first time, in all of its authentic, un-edited glory. Enjoy the mis-spellings, awkward rhymes, and ridiculous imagery. I know I did!

No Greens 

Sally Threens

hated greens

with all her little heart.

And when those, feared,

on the table appeared,

the fit-throwing would start.

“Oh, give me squash

or rice

or beans

but don’t 

oh don’t 

make me eat greens!

I’ll eat steak

or twenty thousand

grapes

a ship’s sail,

or even a whale,

the seat of my jeans,

please, no,

oh, no,

no greens!

I’d eat China

or an elephant

a belgian beetle

or my mushacted aunt,

a porcelian cup,

stuff to make me 

throw up, 

twelve hundred japanese screens

but

I won’t

please don’t

mak Xe me

eat greens!

I’d eat my weight

in gold dubloons

basketballs

or pink baloons

a wastebasket

turkey bones

your old hair net

cheese if you’d please,

my bald baby doll...

but not the yuckiest thing of all!

I’ll eat ninety spleens!

but no

oh no

I won’t

please don’t

you can’t 

I shan’t

and NO ONE WILL MAKE ME

eat gree-!”

But her mother, taking advantage

of the open, screaming mouth,

held it open with a bandage,

and plunked those greens straight south.

“Eeew! Yuck!

Please pluck

my tonge out

I’ll scream and shout

they’re so nasty

they taste like floor

they...hmm.

Good!

May I have some more?”

This poem is, of course, dedicated to my sister Sarah, the only twelve year old alive who genuinely would have eaten an old hair net before she would have eaten anything green.

I hope you've enjoyed the embarrassing awfulness of this poem! Tune in again this time next week, for a chapter from the very first fiction piece I ever wrote!