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Professor Roy and the Amazingly Bad Poetry Journal

28th November, 2007. 9:21 am. ABPJ Classic Review - Untitled (Come, Lover)

I have no new reviews up my sleeve at the moment, but I wanted to update, so I pulled this personal favorite from the archives. Hopefully, you will enjoy.

Untitled
by Marisa; Harvest, AL

Come, lover
Come away from the storm
Feel the heat of the fire on your body
I'll watch the golden glowing of your skin
From where I stand watching in the door frame
And as your long body stretches across the blankets on the floor
I will slip over to where you are
Planting soft kisses all over your face
Playing tug-of-war with your bottom lip
And we might fall asleep there, by the fire
Basking in the peaceful slumber
Or we could stip the heathen clothing off our bodies
Engaging in the oldest of all dances (cerainly the most passionate)
But either way, here, in this little room
The firelight dancing over our faces...
Peace will prevail here
For this fire was not built with wood and matches
The warmth here comes from our love


"You can fall asleep next to the fire if you want, honey, but if it's all the same to you, I'm going to sleep in the bedroom, where it's a little bit less romance novel cliche and a little more comfortably temperate. If you want to be a human pop-tart, fine, but I'm going to sleep in a bed because tomorrow when I wake up, I'd like to be able to move my neck without a steady stream of painkillers. And by the way, it was really creepy when you stood in the doorway naked and stared at me for forty-five minutes. I started to get worried when you wouldn't blink. Oh, and I nearly forgot to tell you, it may not be the greatest idea for us to have sex tonight.There was an accident in the lab and I might periodically glow with this yellow-orange hue. The HMO guy says I shouldn't worry about it. Night, hon."

I propose that this poem be titled "Blue Balls." She's so vague about their doing it. "We can go to sleep (and have sex later?) or we can have sex now then sleep or we can watch "The Butterfly Effect" on cable then sex or..." By the time she's done discussing all the options, he's "taken care of himself" and fallen asleep. We came SO close to a sex scene, the moment is right, the candles are lit, there's incense in the air ... then Marisa pulls the rug right out from under us! That's not fair. Picture a baseball pitcher throwing the ball and it disappearing on its way to home plate. It's like that. The poem's only 18 lines long -- two lines under the p-dot-com limit. She can logon to her poetry.com account, make the changes and then everybody's happy. For gods sake, the poem begins with "Come, lover" -- which would be a neat trick if it worked. I don't know anybody, male or female, who can do that on command.

"But either way, here, in this little room"... either way, my butt. I think there will be more prevailing peace if both of you have orgasms. And even then, the guy's head may not be peaceful. He may be worrying about something at work, or why he thought about his mother for a split second 10 minutes ago, or where this relationship is going, maybe we're taking it all too fast. "A little room" -- I'm imagining an isolated one-room log cabin where your eyes jump out of your head with a "plonk" noise when you hear a scritch-scratch-scritch noise coming from the front door at 4am. If I was given the setting, the general theme and the characters (but not the poem itself), I would have guessed that there would be animal metaphors. Bad poets are always peppering their work with jungle cats or wolves or birds with large expansive wings. The line "as your long body stretches across..." is begging for a reference to a panther.

I'm not sure what to make of the tug of war with his bottom lip. You associate tug-of-wars with picnics, not foreplay. Does she sign up his unit for the wheelbarrow race? Also: the allusion to a tug-of-war suggests resistance on his part, as if perhaps he doesn't want his lower lip sucked on. I think it is also notable that the only thing we see the man doing is stretching. Besides that and the hypothetical disrobing, he doesn't do anything. I have no problem with the woman taking control of a situation, but I'm against the man being portrayed as a lump. "This fire was not built with wood and matches" -- no. No. We built this fire on rock and roll! Built this fire! Built this fire on ROCK AND ROLL!

This fire *is* in a fireplace, right? You better check. And it's not being fed by the tallow culled from your last lover, right? Is this guy actually drugged and tied to stakes affixed to the floor and Marisa plans to perform a faux-Pagan rite? After all, the clothes are heathen. They are unclean. They must be sent back to the flames of hell from which they came. Why 'heathen' ? Do you think clothes are dangerously impure? Or are they only excommunicated when it's time for the lovemaking but once Marisa and friend finish, they're welcomed back into the fold. After the clothes come off, they engage in the oldest, most passionate dance. This is, of course, the Hokey Pokey. "Yeah, baby, yeah, and then shake it all about. Yeah, yeah, you know what I like. Yeah, you do that hokey pokey and you turn yourself around... mmm.. that's what it's all about, baby. Uh-huh. Yes, oh god, yes!"

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

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