Oh, helpful being, you let me speak freely, Your soft long bristles on your long stalk,

The friction on my body makes me tidy and clean.

Colors, any color at all,

Bright orange, grassy green, fluorescent pink, ocean blue, You take me away to where I long to
be, the seaside, the mountains, a fairytale world.

The fragrance I place upon you, Feels fresh on my flesh, And a tingling sensation, flows through
my body.

Your fragrance wouldn’t follow me, If I did not have you,

I would be a social outcast, Prevented from social conversation.

Most people long for you,

They respect your confident, poised stance,
Which is needed daily.

Although your job may not be pleasant, For the pungent odors you contact, You aid those who
have you.

Oh wonderful being,
I observe you as you rest, by the faucet, With the tiled wall behind you,
In your glass chamber,
Night and day.

Rationale
My poem is about a toothbrush; not a special toothbrush, but an ordinary toothbrush.

My poem is about trying to make the ordinary be special. Everyone has a toothbrush, and we
use it all the time, so we don’t admire it, and we don’t really think anything of it. By writing this
poem I was trying to shine light on the objects that don’t get as much credit as they should be
getting, because without them we couldn’t really function. The speaker of the poem is a woman
who is admiring her toothbrush. The speaker is also not a significant person but I was trying to
make her voice feel heard, making her significant. The audience is any person who doubts the
importance of a toothbrush. It is supposed to make them understand the toothbrushes
experience and realise its importance for us.

I achieved the meaning of my poem by using a lot of adjectives. The adjectives were used for
descriptions of the toothbrush. The adjectives were also used to describe the tasks a toothbrush
has to complete, trying to give the reader an idea of the horrible smells or the pretty colors a
toothbrush has, or has to endure. I used enjambment for the sentences in each stanza, but at
the end of each stanza there is a period. That is how I decided to split up the stanzas of the
poem, trying to connect and disconnect ideas.

I connected my poem to the Walt Whitman poem we did in class, Song of myself. Just as
Whitman talked about grass, an object of little significance, I chose to write about a toothbrush,
also an object of little significance. I would say my attempt was successful, because it makes
the reader think about the toothbrush and how it is important to themselves, which is what
happens in Walt Whitman's poem too. He starts to make you think that maybe grass is more
important than you thought, making you give it more admiration.

The mood of this poem switches of between serene and sympathetic. It is serene when I talk
about how the toothbrush takes you to any place you long to go, or when the different colors are
mentioned, because you chooses all of those things. It is sympathetic when I describe the
experiences a toothbrush has to go through for our benefit, like having to contact the pungent
odors of our mouths, or having to be in the same place and stance all the time.