People write poetry in several ways. Some are just inspired and write whatever flows into their minds, others spend days, weeks, months, even minutes! pondering the right words to convey the right meaning. It's up to you to find what works best for you, but here we present a few methods that work for the beginner.

For the word-challenged
For the poetically challenged
For those who have something to say

Read, read, read. Read lots of poetry. Read the kind of poetry you like and you'll begin to write like that too.
Read literature as well. Learning words and turns of phrase comes not only from poetry but from beautiful prose and lines.
Memorize your favorite poems. You can use them as starting points for your writing. When you draw a blank, you can use these favorites to kickstart your literary mind.
Put down what you've written. Give it away. Pretend someone else wrote it and then have someone proofread. It's easy to become so attached to your writing that you hate to tear it up, but proofreading and correcting can make a huge difference.
Here's a great idea for good practice writing as well as learning to let go of your writing: at a fair or group, charge $1 per poem and set up a poem booth, where you write a poem on any topic the customer chooses. You write it in a blank notebook within 5 minutes, tear it out and give it away.
Set a goal of writing one poem a week or day or every few days. Some will likely be awful, but there will be those few gems that stand out from the rest.

Method 1: For the word-challenged

1. Get a magazine, newspaper or random book.
2. Flip through it and write down or cut out words that appeal to you. You may also just sample words semi-randomly.
3. Get a list of 10 words for starters. You may choose more or less if you have a proper idea of what you want to write.
4. Put together the words in interesting phrases. For example, if you found the words clandestine and explorer, you might put them together into clandestine explorer on one line, or split them up and repair them, so you get desert explorer and eager clandestine a few lines later.
5. Make several lines and several poems. In one case, add articles and connecting words, to make the desert explorer wandered into eager clandestine hands, or leave out the extra words and use just the ones you've got.
6. Change tense, add ending and beginnings and descriptions to words. Get explorers, exploring, deserting, exploratory, deserted. Add punctuation if you want.
7. Even if you randomly throw great words down together, you can get a great poem. If you fiddle with it, your poem will be your own personal creation, just to convey your own feelings.

Method 2: For the poetically challenged

1. If you're having trouble with beautiful imagery, do this practice: take a boring object - your key, the doorknob, a speck of dust. Now look at it and describe it. In the case of the key, is it golden, doe it have ridges along the side, what door does it open, how deep are the ridges, what's its story? You may come up with this:

It slipped under the door,
Shone in the dim light of the hallway
Rough edges worn away
Years of wear softened lines
Paved cracks and scratches
Unlocking doors, unlocking fears
Left finally locked and discarded.

Method 3: For those who have something to say

1. If you have something to say, you are in luck. You already have a message in your poem. Keep your mind focused on that, but don't fear experiment.
2. You can just write. Write whatever comes to mind. Any words, they don't have to be coherent or even spelled correctly. Write them as you hear them in your hear or as you see the pictures in your mind. Describe pictures as well as emotions, using whatever words you like. Don't shy away from using words because you think they're "wrong".
3. If you want, you can just compile a list of words and thoughts and rearrange them later. Or, use the above writing you created and break it up into lines, where the lines have actual pauses in meaning - not arbitrary, because a line should break naturally and not just because it seems to be getting too long.
4. When you think you're done, let it go. Come back and read it later. You may or may not like it, you may or may not agree still, but hang on to it and don't rip it up, because poetry has a life of its own.