30 in 30: Day 1

Today I found this blog series called "30 Poems in 30 Days." The idea is obvious: to write 30 poems - one each day - in thirty days. The catch is that the author of the series announces a topic, prompt or guideline each day that you must follow. The series is annual, and it's already been concluded for this year, but I'm going to undertake it a month late, anyway. Call me out if I start to slack! I really want to do this.

Day 1's prompt is to "use the word Pattern in the first line and/or the last line of your poem."

Form: Free Verse

Patterns of a private campus,
Like muck, grimy and malodorous.
An infectious disease with the greatest of ease
Spreads the plague of uniform thinking.

In vain I left my coat at home,
My aegis from the sludge.
My boots, as well, sit in my room;
My body is a sponge.

Every day I tread the waters,
A straw in my mouth just in case.
I absorb the foreign manners of life
Unwillingly, but am sure to throw them up.

Be transformed! Renew your mind!
I hate what I see,
Such thoughtless thought.
Do not conform to the patterns of this world.