A Blast From The Past

I love writing poems and have written many over the years.  If you’ve read all my posts so far on this blog, you’ll have worked that out already!

When the inspiration for a poem strikes me, I just go with it and write until I can’t write anymore.  Then there are the times that I choose to write a poem about a particular subject, so I’ll put my thinking cap on and come up with as many words and ideas around the subject as I can, then go from there.

I’ve even written a wedding invitation for one of my dear friends as a poem, an 80th birthday invitation for that same friend’s mother, then last year, I wrote my own 40th birthday party invitations as a poem!

Anyway, a few days ago, I came across a poem that I wrote when I was 18 years old!  I’d forgotten all about it but the moment I saw the piece of paper, I knew what I’d found.

I’d typed it out on Mum’s old manual typewriter on the red section of the typing ribbon which I thought looked just wonderful at the time – now I think it’s just plain funny that I thought it looked so terrific!

** It was a bit of a novelty to use the red ribbon instead of the black. ** 

These days, when I write a poem, I like each verse to contain four lines, and for the last word in the second line and the fourth line to rhyme.  Using this particular format for my poems gives them a bouncy, almost musical quality.

I absolutely adore music and having fun … and having fun playing music! … so this combination works well for me.

Of course, there are many other combinations of rhyming that can be used when writing poetry, however, this happens to be my first preference.  Others choose to write non-rhyming poetry too.  In fact, there are many styles of poetry to choose from.

It had been such a long time (many years) since I’d read, or even thought about, this particular poem that I found, so I was quite surprised to find that the style I use now, is exactly the same as I used all those years ago! (8th May 1987 to be precise).

I’d become very sick about a week prior to writing this poem, and was put in hospital.  I wrote the poem the night before I went home (every verse is 100% true, by the way).

So here is it, exactly as it was written just over 23 years ago!  I hope you enjoy it and get a giggle from it.

ENOUGH TO MAKE YOU SICK

I’ve been in here since Monday night,
I can’t say it’s been fun,
But I s’pose it hasn’t been that bad,
When all is said and done.

The Sisters are real nice to me,
All things considered, the doctors too,
My favourite Sister’s name is Carol,
and Elly … I like her too.

It isn’t a very big hospital,
There aren’t many patients other than me,
In fact, there’s an old man and lady here too,
Making a grand total of three!

The worst part about being in hospital,
Is that I am easily bored,
So I spent most of the time sleeping,
So that the boredom could be ignored.

The food is pretty good in here,
I’ve really been well treated,
With ham steak, vegies and icecream too,
Pity I felt too sick to eat it!

I’m really scared of needles,
I know that sounds real dumb,
But I really hate them ever so much,
Especially in the bum!

But as my luck would have it,
In the bum those needles went,
Nine rotten penicillin ones,
That was a nasty event!

But I was very brave, you know,
I only cried for two,
They hurt so much the tears escaped,
There wasn’t much else I could do.

I buried my head and gritted my teeth,
And hung on to my pillow real tight,
To try and forget the pain in my bum,
I tried with all my might.

But these things are hard to ignore, you know,
It’s really hard to defeat it,
I tried to by biting my pillow,
It’s a wonder I didn’t eat it!

The people who came to visit me,
Brought me lovely cards and flowers,
I really enjoyed those times of the day,
They helped fill in the hours.

One night I had a high temperature,
And when I say high, I mean high,
It was very close to 40oC,
I felt like I was going to die!

But obviously, I didn’t,
If I did, I wouldn’t be writing this poem,
And now that I’m back to normal again,
I simply can’t wait to go ho-em!

I’m going home tomorrow,
Completely better, but rather sore,
A good way to describe what I feel like is …
A very used dartboard!

I hope I never come back here,
That’s a reasonable statement to make,
But then again, you never know,
Of that, make no mistake!

by Kylie Tyrer
Written 8th May 1987 at Winchelsea Hospital (Victoria, Australia)

So there you have it.  What did you think?  Do you have a favourite style of poetry?  Do you write poetry too?  If you do, I’d love to read some of it.

If you enjoyed this post, then I would appreciate you sharing it with your friends and followers.  Thank you.

Tagged as: a blast from the past, rhyming poetry, writing poetry