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Professor Roy and the Amazingly Bad Poetry Journal

25th January, 2007. 5:37 pm. Amazingly Bad Poetry Review - Cube Work

Cube Work
by Daniel, unknown location

I sit here in a cube
of thumbnails and paper
wondering my next move
in my mind and my life

I wish satisfaction
upon my dead marrow
hoping to find my place
in this sour world

Lonely as I can be
there must be something good
to rest my numb mind on
in search of my heaven

I find the clear window
punch my white fist through it
smell the heavy damp air
and finally breathe life


Depressed yet? You know, it's a good thing that poetry.com doesn't allow itself to be indexed by Google, because if it did, the country's unemployment statistics would skyrocket.

Hey, listen buddy, I work in a cube! And it's...um, well, it's not this bad! Maybe if you got a houseplant or a fish, it would lighten the mood a little bit. At least there'd be a little bit of life in your personal workplace. Yet, I have the feeling that Daniel would slowly kill the plant with mites or eat the goldfish so he'd have fodder for a poem to accompany this one. So Daniel has a boring and unfulfilling job. (Join the club.) He's obviously lonely and depressed. Now, I'm no life coach but I'm thinking that while moping around your cube is counterproductive, it's *incredibly* counterproductive to waste that same time moping around on poetry.com. At least read the Guardian or Salon or Boing Boing when you're not counting beans. I'm going to avoid giving Daniel strategies on how to improve his life but I know that when I'm having a lousy day at work, I enjoy editing articles on Wikipedia, slowly falling into a diabetic coma due to my caffeine intake, and fantasizing about a couple women I see on the bus every day. What I find especially ridiculous about Daniel's poem is that aside from the last stanza, all the stanzas communicate the same basic ideas. Marvelous.

There aren't any phrases in this poem that strike me as being particularly whiney--but I get that sense from this poem anyway. Do you remember that scene in "The Godfather" movie when Don Vito Corleone suddenly grabs and shakes the weepy Johnny Fontane? That's what I want to do to Daniel. He's looking for "something good to rest [his] numb mind on in search of my heaven." What kind of horse pocky is that? Do you plan on getting to heaven by submitting bitter, flowery poetry to a website famous for its immoral business practices? Maybe it's just that his blood sugar is low. How about some caffeine? And if you don't dig the Mountain Dew injections, what about some Cheez-Its? Yum!

I've had jobs before that have made me question whether or not there is anything truly good in this universe (as Daniel does here)--and I'm guessing Daniel has one of those jobs. He may actually have one of the jobs that I vacated. The poem is more or less straightforward except for Daniel's "ace-in-the-hole" last stanza. If we assume that he didn't really punch a hole in a window, is this a wholely metaphorical act or are we talking about something particular in the real world? It doesn't work either way. My best guess is that he's talking about going down to the patio for a smoke break. Or he's just leaving for the day. And tomorrow it starts all...over...again. How's about that? Why a white fist? It's worth asking. Is he Gollum? Or the albino assassin from The DaVinci Crap?

Does anyone else think the phrase "a cube / of thumbnails and paper" is a bit on the disgusting side? Is anyone else picturing a cubicle constructed out of thumbnails and rice paper? (Well, you are now). How would this work? Well, I suppose the walls are made out of paper with the thumbnails glued on-- sort of like those macaroni art projects from elementary school? I am totally going send out a company-wide email tomorrow morning so I can collect toenails from everyone in the company. And then I will be fired. My neighbor already clips his nails several times a week. Honest to god. The noise makes me grind my teeth.

Bad Poetry Grade [F = your standard bad poem; A+ = worst poem imaginable]: B-

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