He’s read the book of Revelations
He’s memorized his favorite verses
And it shows up in his conversations
With his unsuspecting nurses
And when he takes his medications
He charitably doesn’t blame us
For the horrible decline of nations
He read about in Nostradamus
But other days, he hides his pills
His speech is clipped and sad and cryptic
His body wracked with pains and chills
His sermons are apocalyptic
The earth, a cup to hold decay
In which each sinner is awash
And chewed by demons night and day
As in some triptych out of Bosch
But he’s rarely quite that pessimistic
Most days he falls somewhere between
The hopeless and the optimistic
Ecclesiastes and St. Augustine

Man, I believe I wrote this Junior year in high school, and it’s been preserved on my hard drive ever since. I found it today, and while I’m not proud of the poem, I am proud of how clever I am in getting out of writing anything new.

Notice the lack of meter, inattention to syllables, and over all poor construction that marked me—even then!—as a literary badboy.