Mat White is an earnest young man at Bingham High School who writes poems about loss. His basic themes are the "pain of mortality," "grief" and "lost love."

If you say there are dozens of kids like him in the nation's high schools writing the same kind of poems, well, you'd be right.And wrong.

There's a spark of ambition and a jaunty self-confidence in Mat White that's rather uncommon. And refreshing.

To begin with he's written 40 books of poetry. And a fair share of those he's printed, bound by hand and sent into the stores.

"Each one is a limited edition of 50 copies and sells for $25," he says. "I have several for sale now."

His goal is to write another 50 books of poems.

As for the writing, it ranges from short, almost Oriental, lyrics to longer meditations.

"A lot of people seem to like them," he says. "I've done poems against drunken driving and being drunk, about how alcohol tears people part. The poem that's received the most comment is about both falling in love and the end of childhood. The key line in the poem is `loving her was like stroking a rabid dog.' "

He smiles.

"My parents want me to write happy poems, but I don't get much inspiration for them," he says.

A typical Mat White effort might be "Train," a poem about a single moment of insight, a moment of truth:

The horn on the train beckons me,

And I realize who I am.

I am what I have written.

The horn gives another lonely call.

All the train tracks are simply

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tear paths of when the earth cries

because of the wars we fight upon her.

When not writing, Mat enjoys listening to music, reading and other quiet pleasures. But between school and the word processor he doesn't have much free time.

Turning out 100 books of poetry keeps a boy pretty busy.

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