“Camp Bratville” is one of my earlier poems I wrote while I was in high school. I thought it was worthy of posting here for showcasing some of my early works but now that I think about it, posting it may have been a mistake.
As I was transcribing the poem into this blog, I began to have some very mixed feelings about the story. During the course of the poem, the campmaster calls in love with one of the campers. I intended this romance to be comical, but there’s really nothing funny about it now, not with some of the news headlines we see nowadays.
Then there’s the part where the campmaster actually visits the camper at night and suggests that he do something good. I intended that line to serve as a little encouragement for this camper to behave himself for a change. I worry that this may be misinterpreted as something way less appropriate, which would completely defeat the purpose of the camp. What saved the poem was the camper’s decision to throw the campmaster out before anything else could happen. Still, I worry that this poem may get my blog flagged for removal because of its somewhat controversial content. The strange thing is that when I first wrote the poem, I didn’t see anything inappropriate about it. Maybe there really isn’t, but in any case, there are better poems among my early works than this one.
Apologies if anyone was offended by “Camp Bratville”.
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