The lyrical Democrat: Guardian UK

Quoted via Guardian UK:

We all have poems hidden away somewhere that we wrote when we were 19. It's a rite of passage, the teenage poem, like the first pint or the first kiss. And like the first pint or the first kiss, teenage poems are often sloppy and lukewarm and not as satisfying as they ought to be.

Two of Barack Obama's poems were found in a literary review published in spring 1982 by Occidental College, a Los Angeles seat of learning that Obama briefly attended. The magazine was called Feast, because student literary magazines are always called things like that. Unless they're called something like Ashes, or something like Trombone Eggs. more

Pop by Barack Obama

Sitting in his seat, a seat broad and broken

In, sprinkled with ashes,

Pop switches channels, takes another

Shot of Seagrams, neat, and asks

What to do with me, a green young man

Who fails to consider the

Flim and flam of the world, since

Things have been easy for me;

I stare hard at his face, a stare

That deflects off his brow;

I'm sure he's unaware of his

Dark, watery eyes, that

Glance in different directions,

And his slow, unwelcome twitches,

Fail to pass.

I listen, nod,

Listen, open, till I cling to his pale,

Beige T-shirt, yelling,

Yelling in his ears, that hang

With heavy lobes, but he's still telling

His joke, so I ask why

He's so unhappy, to which he replies . . .

But I don't care anymore, cause

He took too damn long, and from

Under my seat, I pull out the

Mirror I've been saving; I'm laughing,

Laughing loud, the blood rushing from

his face

To mine, as he grows small,

A spot in my brain, something

That may be squeezed out, like a

Watermelon seed between

Two fingers.

Pop takes another shot, neat,

Points out the same amber

Stain on his shorts that I've got on mine,

and

Makes me smell his smell, coming

From me; he switches channels, recites

an old poem

He wrote before his mother died,

Stands, shouts, and asks

For a hug, as I shink, my

Arms barely reaching around

His thick, oily neck, and his broad back;

'cause

I see my face, framed within

Pop's black-framed glasses

And know he's laughing too.

Underground

Under water grottos, caverns

Filled with apes

That eat figs.

Stepping on the figs

That the apes

Eat, they crunch.

The apes howl, bare

Their fangs, dance,

Tumble in the

Rushing water,

Musty, wet pelts

Glistening in the blue.