When I Was A Teenager Poem by Gert Strydom

When I was a teenager
I typed my first story
and poems
on a old Rexel typing machine,
that had belonged to my dad

and I had a room
in a garden flat
outside of the house
where my step father
would come to the door
and tell me to stop
wasting my time.

He never read or heard
a single line
and told me
to stop the immature nonsense
and on what he based
his opinion
to this very day
I do not know.

When my first manuscript
was almost published
it came to him
like a shock
and to this day

I wonder if he convinced my mother
to keep that letter from me then.

[Reference: “Daddy please do mercy take and I will no more verses make.” Words by Isaac Watts.]