Professor Roy and the Amazingly Bad Poetry Journal

random APBJ question of the x

2008-04-23T21:58:33Z

What's your favorite scene of sexual carnality in printed media?

This includes but is not limited to actual literature, short stories, and paperback tripe. I used to love to find these in secluded corners of the library when I was in my young teen years, way before the web, of course.

New ABPJ review soon, hopefully.

ABPJ Review - Mr. Fix-It

2008-03-13T05:06:32Z

Mr. Fix-It
by Monica; unknown location

Mr. Fix-It can fix anything my heart,
My attitude, my everything.
He's a man of honor, he's a man of grace,
He's a man of pride, I can see it in his face.
Whether it's a broken friendship,
Whether it's a loss of self-esteem,
A look in his eyes can be a guide,
A guide unto the path of my dream.
Mr. Fix-It can fix anything,
My heart, my attitude, my everything.
His atmosphere is filled with imaginable things.
Such a beautiful person inside and out,
So lovely that it makes me want to sing,
So manipulative in a good way that makes me shout.
His walk is invincible,
His voice is louder than a lion's roar.
Everything about him is amazing
And I wouldn't ask for anything more.
Mr. Fix-It can fix anything,
My heart, my attitude, my everything.

Wow, it turns out that co-dependency isn't just a river in Egypt. I doubt Monica can brush her teeth without this guy's assistance. I'm not bothered by Monica having to rely so heavily on her man, Mr. Fix-It ("Fix" for short). I am bothered by the fact that she's so bored by her own thesis, she heartlessly abandons it by the side of the road. Then she drives off erratically, speeding. But the poem's central idea has a quick revenge, because immediately wrecks the car, then throws the junker into reverse to pick up the idea again. This poem is 20 lines long, and I think that Monica was determined to get to that plateau because she repeats the poem's refrain three times. He can repair her heart...and her outlook on life...everything, really, and well, that explains that. Everything else is just filler.

Speaking about filler, I'd like Monica to explain what she means when she claims that his "atmosphere is filled with imaginable things." A place can have atmosphere, a planet can have an atmosphere, an environment can have an atmosphere, but I'm not sure a person can have an atmosphere. But for the sake of our argument, let's say that a person can have such a thing. What are these imaginable things that fill his atmosphere? I think she is saying that this person has realistic goals, that the way ahead is clear, that he can see clearly now, the rain is gone (if there was any rain to speak of in the first place).

I was ready to suggest that Monica is talking about God, but I've never seen any Christianity poem describe their God as "Such a beautiful person inside and out." But maybe Monica is into really long beards? If so, is she really attracted to Iron & Wine too? And unless you're being interviewed by God post-mortem (and it's going really well) or you're standing by his side to introduce Luke Skywalker, Jedi Knight, I don't think that any reverent person would talk about looking into his eyes. On the other hand, there is the fact that his voice is louder than a lion's roar. I just did a quick Google search and a lion's roar possesses 87 decibels. According to this neighborhood association's website, sound becomes "very annoying" at 100 decibels, equal to the sound of a chainsaw. So if I am to understand Monica correctly, this man has a painfully loud voice. However you look at it, it's an odd compliment -- especially when you consider it alongside the line "So manipulative in a good way that makes me shout." So if I am to understand Monica correctly again, this man has a painfully loud voice and he uses this voice to be manipulative--but in a good way! Not manipulative like a slimy used car salesman named Gus. Not manipulative like, say, Monica's ex-boyfriend, Mr. Do-It-Tomorrow, who never paid his share of the rent and HIS atmosphere was always full of unimaginable things, like Senator Fred Thompson -- naked and greased up for some reason.

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

ABPJ Review - Lonely Dancer

2008-02-19T00:05:16Z

Lonely Dancer
by Jack; unknown location

She walks across the empty floor
as though the world has ended
Another night has made its rounds,
she still goes un-befriended.
Her dress she will save for another night,
then wear it as though it were new.
Besides tonight, it wasn't seen by many, in fact, by very few.
Oh, she tried to show herself off in her own very common manner
By walking back and forth continually
as though she carried a banner.
She never danced, but only watched
as she sat in her own little corner.
Lost in a world of unconcern, a world where she is a loner.
The lights are out, the music hushed, and now her world begins,
a world of dreams and everywhere the sound of violins.
She dances across the polished floor
in the arms of a lover she has found,
her hair making golden circles of light
as he takes her round and round.
The music comes from across the clouds, floating softly in her ear.
Just for a moment, soaring up high, her heart has no fear.
Then tears come softly across her cheeks.
In her dreams she is such a romancer,
yet on this cold and empty floor, she is just a lonely dancer.

Mama was right. I should have never come to the dance. I should have never wrapped my dirty pillows in duct tape so I could squeeze myself into this cursed red dress. Mama said that they were all going to laugh at me. Mama said that only bad girls sit in cars with boys. Why didn't I listen to her? I was such a fool. Well, I think I ought to thank the lord that that sodomite Chris Hargensen had the entire prom dance moved from Chamberlain to Derry. It was a really elaborate practical joke, I have to admit that. All for l'il ol' me. I was worried that I would be voted the prom queen and get pig blood dumped on me by Chris and her sweathog boyfriend when I was standing on the stage. Then everyone would have had to die.

Drama, especially young drama, on a dance floor is not uncommon. It's been utilized in everything from "It's A Wonderful Life" to "The Karate Kid" to "Angus" to that Soul Asylum music video with Claire Danes. Oh, and Cinderella. However, Jack throws us a bit of a curveball because, like the hero in the popular song by Cake, this poor waif is striving and driving and hugging the turns, even though not long ago somebody left with the cup. The former occupants of the dance floor are now cupping each other's genitals while this Éponine dances with her imaginary bodice-ripper stud. Aww. Aww? As long as you're going to manipulate us, why not mention that, a few miles away, E.T and Elliot are hugging goodbye forever and in the nearby canyon, Mufasa is being trampled to death by a stampede of wildebeests? I am Jack's diabolical poetry. He even invokes the image of her dress, and oh, I'm getting verklempt... hardly anyone noticed the dress! Talk amongst yourselves! ... She tried to flaunt her "common" goods, but no one was buying. Jack piles up the emotional trauma like an ice cream vendor. Why not show her peeling a "Kick Me" sign off of the back of her spaghetti straps? Somehow she manages to pace the floor continually while simultaneously sitting in her own little corner--huddled among the cobwebs, no doubt. She can bi-locate. You'd think that would be enough to make her popular. I find his "as though she carried a banner" reference to be amusing. Perhaps Jack is no stranger to the Medieval Times restaurant chain?

"The music comes from across the clouds, floating softly in her ear." - one might ask, "What clouds?" But this is a fantasy Technicolor dance sequence with Gene Kelly, directed by Vincente Minnelli. (excuse me, I have to go eat some raw meat while watching classic George Foreman boxing footage). There can be clouds if Jack wants there to be clouds in the high school gym. Maybe there's a fog machine. I know I've said this many many times before, but gravy, if you're going to have a rhyming scheme, you have to stick with it. Don't just throw rhymes here and there like you're feeding pigeons. You come out as looking lazy, and I, for one, feel insulted. Here's the rhyming scheme in the first third of the poem: a, b, c, b, d, e, e, f, g, f. Don't consider that for too long, or your nose will start bleeding.

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

ABPJ Review - Penelope Strings Her Bow

2008-01-24T01:40:53Z

Penelope Strings Her Bow
by Melissa; unknown location

I am Penelope; I am tired.
My fingers ache from 20 years of weaving,
Sitting straight at my distaff and loom.
Each morning I unseal my eyes to the sound
Of your movements across the sea,
Sailing farther and farther and farther
From me and love.
I've slept alone, shivering in an olive bed,
Chained and chaste to its great solid roots,
While you sail, sail to women who love you hard.
Oh, severe mercy of Death!
Why not send me away to brave deeds too?
The greatest punishment is to be left, cold.
Rumors of your conquests slip through old ladies' teeth.
Menacing whispers tickle my ears.
My weaving is done, the unraveling too.
I will weave my own shroud of death.
So, just as I return to a lonely bed each night,
My beloved Odysseus will return to sadness as well.

Oh, I'm tired too. So tired.

Time for a history lesson, ladies and gentlemen. I don't know how familiar each of you are in classic literature, but being an English major who graduated with a stretched-taut 'B' average, I can tell you that the Penelope in this poem is, of course, Penelope Ann Miller, star of such movies as "Big Top Pee-Wee" and the Arnold Schwarzenegger cop-thriller "Kindergarten Cop." I always thought that she would have made a great (adult-ish) Mary Jane Watson if a "Spider-Man" movie had been made in the late 80's -- provided they somehow dispensed with Peter Parker's teenage origins and ... what? My geekiness is making you sick? Okay, I'm done. Soon I will be talking about the Odyssey, which is nerdy, instead of geeky. Penelope Ann Miller should not be confused with Penélope Cruz, actress and former love slave of Emperor Xenu. Penélope Cruz should not be confused with Salma Hayek.

Okay, enough. The particular Penelope in this poem is a character in "The Odyssey", the epic poem by Homer. Penelope (Holly Hunter) is married to a Greek king (George Clooney), whose name is Ulysses (aka Odysseus). Interrupted from a pleasant evening spent dining in hell, Ulysses runs off to fight in the Trojan War, which lasts ten years because they went over budget and because a few millenia later, a distant relative of Agamemnon would give birth to Donald Rumsfeld. Thank you! This is hard enough for any wife to endure, but since this is an epic poem and Homer was paid by the couplet, he spends another ten years trying to get home to his wife and son. He could have made the trip in a few months, but he refused to stop and ask for directions! Please tip your waitresses! Meanwhile, Penelope busies herself with studying their family's genealogy on the Mac, before realizing that they are at the beginning of civilization. So she takes up other hobbies, which including weaving, un-weaving, rejecting various evil suitors who want to move in on Ulysses' territory, and contemplating suicide. Like you do. More or less, that takes us up to where we are in the poem. Oh, and one of the legs of their marital bed is an olive tree, thus the "olive bed." Those Greeks and their olives. I know the Odyssey is not to be taken literally, but my family used to have an olive tree in our front yard and you would not believe the mess it made. Presuming Ulysses and Penny had post-business-trip sex when he finally stumbled back into Ithaca (drunk as usual), I'm sure there was olive muck all over them by the end.

As for the poem itself, I dearly hope that this was written for a high school assignment. Because if it isn't, Melissa loves "The Odyssey" way too much. Someone should either lock her in a room with nothing but Dean Koontz and John Grisham books, for a year. She'll be either insane or "cured" by the end of the 365 days. Unless she's going for her professorship on Ancient Greek poetry, it seems to me that her fandom would be better spent on "Heroes" slash fiction between Mohinder and Matt -- especially if we judge her fandom on the quality of this poem. Really, "unseal my eyes"? I think Melissa is saying that Penelope is tearing her eyes away from her fruitless search of the horizon, but I smell an abused thesaurus. It smells of mortality. "Rumors of your conquests slip through old ladies' teeth." - Death's conquests? Are the old ladies spreading unfair rumors about death? Isn't it a big leap of faith to assume that the old ladies of Ithaca had teeth? "While you sail, sail to women who love you hard." Ooh, no she didn't! "Honey, I promise I didn't touch the sirens! I swear! Demodocus wanted me to, but I said, 'hey, man, I love Penelope! I can't do that to her' Honey? I brought you something from Troy. ... It's right here in my ... Crap, I think we must have tossed it at the Cyclops."

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

if you've never heard of Threadless (indie advertising comes to the APBJ)

2007-12-08T19:26:59Z

You should hear about Threadless. Unique, beautiful t-shirts (based on original designs by artists just like you and me) make excellent gifts for the December holidays or if your close friend has a birthday on January 2, they still make an excellent gift. If you shop via this link, I get store credit. Everyone wins!

ABPJ Classic Review - Untitled (Come, Lover)

2007-11-28T17:23:19Z

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-

ABPJ Review - A Few Words For My Downing Daughter

2007-11-02T05:00:14Z

A Few Words For My Downing Daughter
by Quentin; Cincinnati, OH

You my child are a true light,in the sky.
one that is truely a blessing,for all to see.
Your ray is a inviting one,I was truely given a gift form above.
You bright diamond in the ruft,
don't fear your light,Shine for all to see.
My most prized possesion i'm truely greatfull to
walk in your presence.
With a kiss from the forhead to the cheek.
I wrap you in a casing of love,warmth, and kindness.
You carry the joys of the world on your shoulders.
And as I hug you, i'm favored enough to feel those joys.
Stay or go my child, but forever know
that you are in my heart,my thoughts, and my good graces.

"I wrap you in a casing of love,warmth, and kindness" -- ooh, like a Hot Pocket? Yum. And Quinton shows his father-to-daughter affection with "a kiss from the forhead / to the cheek." So... he's kissing her with his forehead? Does he have an extra set of lips up there? Can they talk on their own? He's probably trying to say that these are the two spots where he can ... wait, there's no time for jokes! Oh no! For gods sake, man! Help! Fire! In the name of god, man, stop all of the gooshy language and save your daughter! She's drowning! She never learned how to tread water! I don't understand why you're still writing this crappy poem while your daughter is drowning! Oh wait... it's not drowning, is it? It's "downing." Well, that makes a whole lot more sense. Thank god for that. Keep an eye on her, though. Keep her away from the jacuzzi.

Very strange that Quentin comes close to spelling "possession" correctly, but "darling" somehow becomes "downing." Is this somehow a reference to the Prime Minister's office in London: Downing St.? If we were going to excuse Quentin, we might say that he was spelling it phonetically--except there's no way you can get "darling" out of "downing." In all seriousness, when I first read the title of this poem, I thought he must have meant "Drowning" and by "Drowning," he meant "Drowned." I was suddenly reminded of the poem "Elegy for Jane (My student, thrown by a horse)" by Roethke, and thought I would pass on this one because I'm not so cold as to poke fun at the death of a child ... but after finding that the poem did not include any references to water, to death, to a funeral, etc., I concluded that no one was dead. Thank goodness for that.

As long as we're here, it's worth pointing out that a "diamond in the ruft [rough]" is not a compliment. I'll allow that Quentin might be alluding to the awkwardness of her teenage years, but it's still not something you'd want to use in an any sort of ode. "Sure, you're all knees and elbows now," Quentin is essentially saying, "and I'd rather kiss a monkfish than listen to you whine about the other girls in your math class, but you're going to be a diamond someday, my darling shiny piece of coal!"

"Daddy, how can I shine if I'm a diamond in the rough?"

"..."

"Yeah, I thought so. I'm going to Vegas to pursue a lucrative career as a stripper."

Bad Poetry Grade [F = your standard bad poem; A+ = worst poem imaginable]: B+ for the "downing" alone.

ABPJ Review - Lies

2007-09-20T04:07:16Z

Arrr! This poem deserves to be in Davy Jones' locker, it does!

Lies
by Amber; Everett, WA

I don't understand you
Or anything you do
Why did you lie?
You didn't even want to try
You said you'd never leave
Then left me all alone to grieve
Are you telling her all the same old things?

Our son is growing up
Soon he'll want his own pup
He's going to be one
Won't that be so much fun?
He'll be making every little sound
While I'm chasing him around
But you have other "better" things to do now

When she says that he has "better" things to do now, she's talking about his secretary! Hello!

The last time I was on poetry.com to cull some material from the ever-loving herd, several poems from Amber came down the pike. I found myself having to pick out my favorite from what I'm going to call the Steve Garvey series. All of these poems by Amber revolve around the subject of her deadbeat ex-husband/ex-boyfriend/father of her son. I worry that I'm going to stay home from work tomorrow, switch on the TV, and see Amber and Bruce (we'll call him Bruce) sitting on Maury Povich's couch. And Bruce will be taking a lie detector test to prove paternity and oh god, my brain just dissolved into oatmeal. But you get what I'm saying: Amber is just prime trashy daytime talk show material. Perhaps this isn't a fair assessment, but that's how she comes across here. I doubt Bruce will see this poem or any of the poems Amber wrote about his irresponsible ways. In fact, I flinch when I picture Bruce reading these poems because I can't imagine any scenario where a poem could convince him to accept his paternal responsibilities. (especially with the rhyme at the beginning of stanza two that makes me to take a welding torch to my eyes.)

Before we get to my blinding myself, let me point out that the rhyming scheme of Amber's poem is consistent. Each stanza has seven lines, with three rhyming couplets each. The scheme is aabbccd in both stanzas. If she had rhymed line seven with line fourteen, I'd be calling for an exorcism or calling it an odd coincidence. But thank goodness we're back on track with the content of these rhymes. Especially, "Our son is growing up / Soon he'll want his own pup."

First of all, you don't know that he'd want a puppy. He might be a cat person. Second, he's unable to speak yet. He is less than a year old. He can make noises that might sound like words, but he's not getting on Craigslist looking for free puppies and then sending you an email that says, "Mother, I think our home would benefit if we purchased a golden retriever puppy. Consider that I will be growing up without male role model -- and not having a puppy will only make this worse. Don't worry, I probably won't grow up to be like Richard Speck or Mike Tyson or Jerry Falwell. Stephen King had a deadbeat father and he turned out okay, if you discount his drug addiction during the 80's. Let me know what you think. TTFN." I don't care how "fun" he is, you're not going to get that sort of email out of a 14-month old. If I give you the benefit of the doubt and assume by "soon", you mean 4 or 5 years old, well, 5-year-old boys want everything. They'd walk home from daycare with a rabid baboon on a leash if the crazy peddler man traded it for a set of crayons. I know she just needed a rhyme for "up", but I really worry that Amber used this old standby of bad poets. "Up...up...bup, cup, dup, eup, gup..." until she got to "pup." Eureka.

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

ABPJ Review - Forever

2007-08-19T01:58:08Z

Today is National Bad Poetry Day in the United States. I saw this noted in a bookstore today, but I can't find any confirmation that it actually IS the National Bad Poetry Day. Anyway, it's also the 520th birthday of Virginia Dare (1587-?). She was the first English child born in what would be the United States. ANYWAY...

Forever
by Katrina; unknown location

As you grace your hand down my neck
You kneel down before me
You whisper in my ear of your truest love
And tell me how long you have wished for her
You then sit back and take a deep breath
As you look into my eyes, a tear rolls down your cheek
You wipe your tear and place it on my lips
Then you say the sweetest words, I love you
I then sigh with amazement
Wondering how could I ever be love again
It felt good to hear, but hurt to believe
Wanting to accept, but scared to open up
I still say I love you
A shiver runs through my body,
That feels so good I cry
I so much don't want to be hurt again
And I now hold a shield around my heart
Please treat my heart as if it were your own
And be very gentle if you do these acts that I ask of,
And love me in return... I will be forever yours

I'd bet money on my belief that Katrina never read this poem all the way through. I think she probably skimmed over it once or twice but nothing was really absorbed. It's sort of the equivalent to bullshitting your way through an exam in college. While it's likely that this poem was inspired by a true-life event, Katrina gave it the same amount of scrutiny that I gave to the horrible essays I wrote for this piss-poor communications course that I took during my sophomore year. That is, almost none at all.

I don't make excuses for these poems but this is the only thing I can think of to explain the first few lines of this poem. Read the first seven lines over again, in defiance of Katrina's own clear apathy. I don't know about you, but it sounds a lot like the other person in this poetic opera is confessing that he loves someone who isn't Katrina (even though this isn't correct). Katrina refers to herself in first person and third person alternately, in deference to the emotion of the situation (I guess). "You whisper in my ear of your truest love / and tell me how long you have wished for her." - the first time I read this, I was convinced that we had a nasty breakup poem on our hands, with some lust and infidelity in the mix. Wait, I thought, if he's confessing his love for someone else, then why is he groping her neck? Is he planning to strangle her right after he breaks her heart? What a great poem!

The idea that this relationship was a Jeep about to drive off a cliff was strengthened by the next lines where the whisperer leans back and inhales with what I imagined was a rueful air. "Sorry, babe," he might be saying, "that's the way the cookie crumbles. Better luck next life." But then he's crying. What? Why is he crying? Could he be ashamed? Wha-? If you're reading this review without having read the poem, I'm not pulling these ideas out of thin air. This poem actually DOES read like this. But it turns out that they actually love each other and he proves it by forcing her to swallow a tear from his eye, which is incredibly disgusting. Some boyfriends might get their love a dozen red roses, or a tennis bracelet or tickets to WWE Summer Slam, but this guy is way too suave for anything so generic. Here's one of my tears. Straight from my limbic system to you, baby.

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

Amazingly Bad Poetry Journal - A Gift

2007-07-25T05:58:16Z

a gift
by Hirsch; unknown location

My key fits but the door seems so far.
I wage a war, yet no volunteers. Caused so
much pain, my vessel became callous. Love's
blood is sweet so I binge. Its voice cries
out, I ignored the echoes. My drink got
thicker. I dilute it with warm honeyed
water, yet it got dark, cold and bitter. My
thirst now relies on sorrow. My eyes has an
affair with tears, but makes love to shadows
once glimpsed opposite the door. Where's the
door, is there another path? I wouldn't
know where to begin this journey. In
desperation I hold the key, and in insanity
I cling-on. My path is obscured, haunted by
ghosts with familiar cries. Cries so loud
they can't be ignored. The words would rip
the very flesh, which is engorged with
undeserved kindness. Here, please, take my
key. Do not mind the bloodstained grooves,
for they taste sweet.

I'm three lines into reading this poem and I don't want to go any further -- not when author invokes the image of a key without a door (think about it...) and a calloused vessel (don't think about it too much...). Later, he holds and clings on to this key -- probably while watching late night Cinemax and/or something starring Jenna Jameson. Later still, he invites the reader to take the key from him. And because he's been drinking "love's blood", it's bloodstained. Now I suppose that he might have been drinking this metaphorical blood out of his cupped hands before handling the key and that's why it's ... tarnished... with blood. You'll have to excuse me, I'm going to be violently sick all over the place.

Okay, I'm back. I've always imagined Goths drinking with elaborate silver flagons rather than cupped hands. Ah, well. I'm still wondering how two independent metaphors can merge like that. They shouldn't, but they do. And why would anyone be eased by the gift of a bloodstained key because it tastes sweet? Who's putting keys in their mouth? Oh god! The contents of my stomach!

... ... Okay, back again. Better to not think about it too much. We're going to assume that Hirsch intended this as a Goth-y poem because if he didn't, then I'd have to give up. If this isn't a Goth poem, then nothing on this planet makes any sense at all. Luckily for everyone involved, there is a lot more to examine in this composition besides the key. "Love's blood" is a good place to (re)start. Goths enjoy vampires in the same way that anime fans enjoy screaming. It's hard to read "Love's blood is sweet so I binge" without thinking about the Nosferatu of your choice or burning a copy of an Anne Rice novel and then peeing on its ashes. Okay, so he is saying that he is bingeing on love. He's a man deeply in love. He's passionately gaga over another human with a penchant for feminine trenchcoats and eye shadow. A voice cries out -- Hirsh naively ignores it. It would appear all is not well back at camp. The drink becomes thick. I think Hirsh is trying to say that his girlfriend started writing really terrible Goth poetry and rifts started developing. The honeymoon period of their relationship was over-- it'd been over for several weeks. Hirsh was just too dense/blinded by the light to realize it.

Realizing that something is dreadfully wrong, Hirsh reacts by smothering his lover with sweet (honeyed) affection -- which, of course, doesn't work at all. Love becomes "dark, cold, bitter." I was going to make yet another Goth joke at his expense here, but I'm starting to feel mildly sorry for the poor sap author. But, for the record, the joke was going to be something like... "yet it got dark, cold and bitter" -- so the two Goths lived happily ever after? Zing. Aw, poor Hirsh. Now he's sorrowful and crying, haunted by ghosts of Girlfriend Past. It sounds like he's suffered his first major breakup. Empathy is the last thing he needs. Maybe he should just sit down on his couch, microwave some blood-flavored popcorn, and watch a few hundred episodes of "Dark Shadows." Go. Barnabas Collins is waiting for you.

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

Amazingly Bad Poetry Journal Review - The Undying Love

2007-06-27T01:25:01Z

The Undying Love
by Natasha; Ramsey, IL

their eyes met and that was it
their gaze has still never ended
they believe it's love
sent from God above
they'll never let go
because of the deep glow
he said he loved her
she said lets last forever
they said "i do"
and now she is due
not long after she past away
he has decided that was his day.......too!

Wait, is someone dead? Or did someone leave someone else? Did a marriage fall apart? Did a heart fail? Was there a baby? That's what I thought Natasha meant by "now she is due" ... although it may have been one of those infamous situations when a word was chosen because it rhymed with the prior word. Since the prior word is one of the more common in the English language ("do"), we'll hope that Natasha chose "due" because it was relevant. Then again, the rhyme scheme is inconsistent so that rhyme might be merely a coincidence.

Let's move on. The female in this narrative is "due," as I said. I took this to mean that she is due to give birth. That is, they start a family after they get married. It's written in the present tense, so we then assume that she's currently pregnant. What else could "due" mean? She's due back at the library? Is it something about her being needed up in heaven? This latter idea would gel with the next line ("not long after she past away") which may or may not refer to her death. I think Natasha meant to say, "Not long after she passed away, he decided that was his day ... too!" What's going on here? Why does anything exist? What's wrong with the world that such a line exists in a piece of poetry that I've saved on my hard drive for the deliberate purpose of trying to understand it? Lewis Black has a great bit on an album about overhearing a conversation in an IHOP then feeling that he has to figure it out lest he suffer a stroke. That's how I feel about this line. And I'm just a schmuck with a blog. I acknowledge that it may have no meaning at all. Natasha might have accidentally left out a word or an entire line of thought. Or she did it on purpose to fuck with me.

Hold my hand. Let's tackle it together. "His day too" -- something happened and it was significant to both of them...? Oh god, this is harder than I thought... It might be that he's decided that it's time for him to toss off this mortal coil and and join his wife (and child?) in heaven. However, the cheerful "too!" makes me doubt the death and possible suicide angle. Maybe she was thinking about rhyming "too" with "due" ... for no particular reason. Although bad poetry precludes age, there's something childish about the "too!" at the end, and if this was written by a 12-year-old, my guesses at an interpretation is especially pointless. Ever tried to parse a child's logic? You might as well discuss Hegel with a cat. Anyway, back to the line... aw, fuck, I give up. Later.

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

Amazingly Bad Poetry Journal Review - Waiting

2007-06-18T02:31:11Z

Waiting
by Jennifer; Germantown, TN

I sit here waiting,
Waiting for class to begin.
The clock ticks off the seconds
As I sit here waiting,
Waiting for class to begin.
Noone else is here yet
As I sit here waiting,
Waiting for class to begin.
My mind begins to wander,
Wander to the places I would rather be
As I sit here waiting,
Waiting for class to begin.
Finally the room begins to fill,
Fill with the other students.
Now we all sit here waiting,
Waiting for class to begin.
The teacher arrives.
She begins t0o teach.
Still we sit here waiting,
Waiting for class to end.

We're going to try something different with this review. We're going to focus on what we LIKE about this poem, rather on what makes me want to pole vault (unsuccessfully) from my third floor apartment to the sports bar patio on the other side of the street.

Thank goodness that Jennifer specified that the classroom began to fill with students, as she waits in the classroom (she repeats this several times so it really does sink in) for class to begin. Thank you, Jennifer. Before I got to that line, I was laboring under the belief that the classroom was about to fill up with caramel ice cream topping or Campbell's chicken-noodle soup. It was definitely going to be one of those two things. Why? Well, it's obvious. When you think about a classroom, you immediately picture it almost completely filled with gallons of Campbell's chicken-noodle soup, yes? Yes. But instead, Jennifer has this classroom fill up with STUDENTS, and while this idea is almost too far out there, like that filthy website you'll never tell your boyfriend/girlfriend/pet about (yeah, you know the one I mean), I have to commend Jennifer for her originality. Maybe they don't have soup/caramel topping in Germantown, so they use students instead. My friend Jamie is a teacher in North Carolina (which shares a border with Tennessee). Maybe Jamie can shed some light on this. Jamie, when you arrive to begin class, what comes into your classroom? It has to be some sort of soup or ice cream topping, right? Dippin' dots? I'm thinking it might be different from state-to-state. Jamie?

Jamie: Roy, I think when i enter the classroom, it generally becomes filled with despair.

Thank you, Jamie. Was anyone else shocked by the surprise ending? "The Sixth Sense" and "Se7en" are trifles compared to this. Also, what class is this? It may just be Geometry or Latin or sex-ed taught by the homeless or something equally generic, but I'd like to think it's a special course on how to survive the zombie bee infestation that's going to start tomorrow in Germantown. The lucky ones will die first.

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

ABPJ Director's Cut - "A Woman Known As Eve"

2007-06-04T03:01:21Z

[because it's already too long]

"It beholds the very first start / of the world's beginning" -- as opposed to the last start of the beginning of the world? And wait a minute, if I crack open good ol' King James, God created Adam on the SIXTH day (thus the title of the unholy Gov. Arnold movie about clones). This is nothing less than sloppy writing on Brian's part. Has he even opened a bible? The Sistine Chapel actually depicts the creation of the heavens -- but Brian is referring us directly to the Creation of Man. What about the dinosaurs and their 160 million years on earth? The creation of the human did not mark the beginning of the earth! God creates the non-human animals (including dinosaurs, presumably) and then 160 million years pass, the dinosaurs don't work out, and he creates Adam. All glossed over in four verses. Oh, Creationism. Love it.

this shirt destroys fascists.

2007-06-01T21:16:30Z

Threadless loves you, even if you don't know it yet. If you don't now about it, Threadless is a site that accepts submissions of t-shirt designs and then prints a select few (after they are voted on by the site's general patrons). I've been working on a few graphic designs (like this one, in the Critiques section -- I'm still working on it)...

But in the meantime, I keep myself busy by thinking of "Type Tees" -- which are words on a shirt with good use of fonts. Now, in a moment, I'm going to direct you to the site with my slogans, where (provided you register with Threadless), you can vote "Omg no" or "I'd wear it". I don't expect you to lie and I don't want you to stuff the ballot in my favor. There's no way I know who voted for me or against me. There are some that I think are clever. Maybe it's just me. You may "OMG NO" all of them. But I thought I'd encourage more voting by mentioning it here. Fair enough.

The Threadless link in question. Thanks.

ABPJ Review - A Woman Known As Eve

2007-06-01T04:56:20Z

A Woman Known As Eve
by Brian; unknown location

High upon a ceiling in Rome
Portrays a beautiful painting
A Fresco known to more than some
Keeps the crowds waiting

This magnificent work of art
Has a powerful meaning
It beholds the very first start
Of the world's beginning

It is God's hand creating man
That you will believe
But what Angelo genially drew
Was the one who would conceive

Because on Adam's right calf
You can clearly see
The Creator's other half
A woman known as Eve

Can we give him half-credit for citing Rome? Judges? It's not like he decided to move the Sistine Chapel to Russia. He got it correct in a general sense. The judges say no. Fun fact: the Sistine Chapel resides in Vatican City, which is technically separate from Rome. Let's be fair. Unless you have some Ogden Nash skills, it's hard to rhyme 'Vatican City' with anything. Finding a word to rhyme with "Rome" is easier. But he managed to screw that up too. Yes, the Sistine Chapel is a fresco and it is well-known ("a fresco known to more than some"). It's not a secret, but Brian has to point out that more than just "some" know about it, because he needed a word to rhyme with Rome--except the two words don't rhyme at all. Wait, Brian, calm down. I know they both contain 'o', 'm', and 'e', but if you had bothered to read this poem out loud, you might have realized that Rome is pronounced as "Roam" while "some" is pronounced as "sum." How is Brian pronounced in your universe? I want to get it right.

What do you suppose Brian meant to say instead of "genially"? At first I thought it might be "generally"--but I think that makes even less sense. Could he have meant "originally"? Maybe he misspelled "originally", Microsoft Word's spell checker corrected it to "genially", and Brian didn't notice because he was too busy congratulating himself on abbreviating Michelangelo to Angelo for no reason I can fathom. The "genially" business wouldn't matter to me at all, except that this line serves to introduce the last act of the poem, or what I am going to call a crackpot, fruitcake, puerile theory from Bizarro City on Planet Nutjob.

Take a look at an image of the Creation of Man section. There's Adam with his impossibly small wingding. There's God (beard, flowing robes). Adam's right leg is sprawled out at a slight angle. I've studied this leg, I've rotated the picture, I've zoomed in and out, I don't see a female figure. Okay, maybe Brian goofed and meant us to look at Adam's left calf. I tried to give Brian the benefit of the doubt and strained my imagination to the point where it snapped like a twig. I drew a female shape on top of Adam's left calf. I'm not going to show my results, mostly because I'm worried someone might think it's how I see women. My rendering of Brian's idea works especially well if you accept the theory that Eve was "born" without arms, and with giant malformed legs, and with the assumption that she was constantly in a bizarre and painful yoga position.

Now, I might understand Michelangelo slipping in a secret image of Eve in defiance of the Pope Julius II's wishes -- but hell, there's whole section for the creation of Eve! And Eve (or possibly Lillith) appears next to God in the Creation of Man panel! God has his arm around her and she looks worried/anxious. Meanwhile, I'm livid at the thought that this poem was possibly inspired by The DaVinci Coded Piece of Crap. While I'm sure plenty of terrible spin-off poetry came out of that novel, this is the first time I've seen one. At least Dan Fucking Brown interpreted something that actually exists (the figures in the Last Supper fresco by Ardo Vinci), whereas Brian somehow manages to see a female figure in one of Adam's two legs. Poppycock! Garbage! If I know Brian's type and I think I do, he's writing the Michelangelo Code novel right now. He'll publish it on his Tripod website alongside some mortgage banner ads. I'd prefer a poem written about Michelangelo, the Ninja Turtle. That actually sounds readable.

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

reallybadpoetry @ 2007-05-15T18:49:00

2007-05-16T02:24:20Z

Friends and neighbors,

Not that anyone necessarily cares, but after a lot of consideration, I decided to delete my previous post as it was pointed out to me (and rightfully so) that an illustration of a hell-bound destiny is exactly the sort of thing Jerry Falwell might have said when someone that he disliked died. I don't believe in hell, but more importantly, I don't believe in Jerry Falwell. I think this is one of those instances when I went with my gut reaction only to reconsider later. The man was a bigot who defended his views with his faith, the man had no appreciation for the separation of church and state, the man had no sense of humor, but he had a right to his beliefs, just as I have a right to disagree with them vehemently. I'd prefer to live in a world where there are no Falwells, but I don't want to be seen as someone who fights hate with hate and does so thoughtlessly. I'd rather not subscribe to that sort of twisted logic.

Love,
Me

Amazingly Bad Poetry Journal Review - A Feeling I Can't Forget

2007-05-13T09:06:22Z

A Feeling I Can't Forget
by Tara; Victorville, CA

And there it happend,
You stood there on my doorstep.
Something happened inside of me,
A feeling while I know not what it is,
Is one I can't forget.
You pulled at the strings of my heart,
And the years melted away,
It was as if we were never apart.
I couldn't stop smiling,
I was grinning like a fool.
You played it off, tried to act cool.
But I knew, knew you felt the same,
And the feeling blossomed the moment you said my name.
It roled off your lips like a song,
And I prayed, and pray agian that I wasn't wrong.
It isn't love, not quite yet,
Just a feeling I can't forget.

Gosh. I think we have a bona fide flibbertigibbet on our hands. It's rare to see one in the wild. We don't know what happened on Tara's stoop (so to speak). Sadly, we'll never know, but I think her male companion managed to impregnate her with the power of his mind. For someone who is unable to identify the feelings brought up in her by this ass clown, she's certainly chatty about the whole encounter. Let's go with what we do know. Tara and Gary (we'll call him Gary) have been separated for years before this encounter. Theory: one of them was sent up to San Quentin for a three year stretch. They've been reunited and Tara gets all tingly as soon as Gary says her name. He even remembers how to pronounce it, which is a miracle in itself.

Tara is ecstatic. She can't stop smiling--because she has lockjaw. She assumes that Gary feels the same as her. What he feels isn't clear, but if he's anything like the average male, he's feeling his chances at getting to second base slipping away. Yet, Tara has convinced herself that Gary feels the same as her and who am I to argue? She prays that she isn't wrong. Wrong about... ? We're not sure what. We'll say that she's praying that she isn't wrong about whatever she sensed between herself and Gary. And this would make sense if not for this line: "But I knew, knew you felt the same."

That is to say, how Tara can know that Gary feels the same as her when she is (by her own admission) fuzzy on her own specifics? This poem is like a Möbius strip! Tara, it's exactly these sort of assumptions that lead to a broken hearts. I'm going to make a note of Tara's last name and follow-up on her in a few months, to see if we can read the next act in this opera. It's a shame that Poetry Dot Scum doesn't have an option of sending email to the authors. We still need to figure out what "Aspun" means and I want to set up a Q&A with Tara to get to the bottom of this Gary business. Inquiring minds want to know if Gary has seen or touched Tara's bottom.

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

...oy...

2007-05-09T06:20:39Z

Does anyone have a copy of Photoshop 7.0 or CS (8.0) that they'd be willing to sell at a reasonable price? The definition of 'reasonable' is negotiable, by the by. Thank you very much in advance.

[cross-posted (blaaah) to damnportlanders and Craigslist.]

Amazingly Bad Poetry Review - My Little Girl

2007-04-28T03:36:35Z

My Little Girl
by Dawn; Pincher Creek, Alberta

She lays so sweet
Eyes softly open
The edge of her lips twitch
And the sweetest thing you ever saw
A toothless smile
And eyes so big and bright

I know this poem is only 6 lines long, but for some reason, the lines "a toothless smile" and "the edge of her lips twitch" immediately jumped out at me. I read those lines without taking the whole poem into account. Then I read the title and thought to myself, "uh-oh"... there are plenty of petite adult women in the world with no teeth. But I read that "My Little Girl" was written by a woman named Dawn in some Canadian backwater ... "Ohhh, she's writing about her baby!" I thought. "Of course! How dim of me to think otherwise!" This all happened within about a second and a half. I think faster than these sentences would suggest.

If this was written by a Donald instead of a Dawn, you'd still be able to quickly understand that he was talking about an infant girl--but only because of the toothless smile. If you remove the toothless smile, there's nothing in here to tell us this is an ode to a baby. Don't get me wrong. I'm not anti-baby and I'm certainly not anti-dental hygiene. I think most babies are cute and it's certainly cute when that percentage of cute babies smile out of the blue, as if they just remembered their favorite "Seinfeld" episode. But you can't have your entire poem hinge on that one image, especially if I could tell Dawn that if I read this poem out loud without the toothless smile, we now have a guy named Don writing about his large-eyed girlfriend who he addresses as his "little girl." If Dawn wants to leave herself open to that sort of criticism, fine. If not, then you better throw something in there about your uterus on the double. I can't see how that could be misconstrued. Of course, I wouldn't tell Dawn any of this. I'd ask her how she can bring another life into this dying planet, considering that her grandchildren will have to wear special anti-UV hats by order of Empress Jenna Bush-Rove 3.0.

I think a male or lesbian reader of the APBJ should do this: find and corner an friend or acquaintance (classmate, ex-girlfriend, co-worker) and ask them if they want to hear the poem you just wrote about your new girlfriend. (Pick someone who is apt to say yes--despite the danger inherent in that question). Then read this poem. If you do it right, their reaction will be priceless.

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

So it goes.

2007-04-12T16:05:36Z

...although you wish it didn't.

Rest in peace. Kurt Vonnegut. 1922 - 2007

"The most important thing I learned on Tralfamadore was that when a person dies he only appears to die. He is still very much alive in the past, so it is very silly for people to cry at his funeral. All moments, past, present and future, always have existed, always will exist. The Tralfamadorians can look at all the different moments just that way we can look at a stretch of the Rocky Mountains, for instance. They can see how permanent all the moments are, and they can look at any moment that interests them. It is just an illusion we have here on Earth that one moment follows another one, like beads on a string, and that once a moment is gone it is gone forever."
-- from "Slaughterhouse Five" (1969)

Amazingly Bad Poetry Review - I Wonder

2007-04-11T03:52:14Z

I Wonder
by Jennifer; Glen Burnie, MA

I wonder how you look at her
with eyes that say you hung the moon and made the stars for she?
With dark orbs swirling darkness that have love for her alone?
I wonder how you talk to her
with voices soft and careful
or louder and laughter filled?
I wonder how you touch her
with hands filled with soft caresses
do you try to protect her?
From the world and from herself?
Do you hold her while she sleeps
and watch her whilst you love her
I can’t help but wonder
how you love her but I can see you do
so I stand at a distance and remember
I remember how you watched me, how you spoke
I remember how you touched me
both my heart and mind
but mostly I remember you
cause I can’t seem to get you off my mind

You have to imagine that regret was in the running to be one of the seven deadly sins, but it lost out to envy. We have a little bit of both in this poem. One is tempted to hunt Jennifer down and buy her a puppy, but I urge you to resist. Meanwhile, the new girlfriend is at home writing a poem to poetry.com about how her boyfriend's ex- won't stop staring at them and how she wishes Jennifer would stop. The ending came as a bit of a surprise to me and that doesn't happen very often. I had my money on this being a "wish he was mine but he'll never see me the way I want him to blah blah blah" poem. The ending also makes the rest of the poem null and impotent. You know darn well how he looks at her, talks to her, etc. -- you used to be his girlfriend, dammit! And then you screwed it up. Or he turned out to be an ass-hat and you dumped him. Consider yourself lucky.

I like the line "voices soft and careful or louder and laughter filled" because it makes me imagine him as a Viking or possibly a Klingon. "and watch her whilst you love her" -- no no no no, bad bad, wrong. Unless you're writing a poem that's supposed to be set in the past, you do not use antique words. It doesn't lend any sense of distinction to your poem and it ends up sticking out like a sore thumb. The word alone is awkward, but the phrase is even more so. Because it smells like voyeurism. Does this watching go on while she's sleeping? And is he loving her while she's asleep? That's wrong. I'm hoping "hold her while she sleeps and watch her whilst you love her" are two wholly independent thoughts inexplicably connected with an "and."

She wonders how her ex- can love this new person. She imagines them together. Yeah, attempting to get inside your ex's head is always a great idea. When I think 'healthy,' I think about trying to pick the brain of your ex-boyfriend on the off chance you'll find a tiny nugget of explanation that will allow you to get your life back together and stop writing poems like this one. Yay! It's nice to know Jenn has a plan. I think it would be much healthier if she wrote a poem about how much she hates the new girlfriend and how he must like the scabies he's contracted from her. It brings them closer. That must be one of his turn-ons: sluts with contractible diseases. She skirts the edge of this type of thinking with "I can’t help but wonder how you love her." She should have gone on to say "She'll never make you as happy as I did" and "She's in remedial math, for petes sake" and "She doesn't know how toast works!" But instead, we transition off with a "so I stand at a distance," then summarize the poem with some repetition, and then state the obvious ("I can't seem to get you off my mind").

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

reallybadpoetry @ 2007-03-26T17:19:00

2007-03-27T00:24:44Z

So poetry.com has redesigned their website recently and to my surprise, they've managed to make it look even less legitimate than it did before. They know have a daily contest which is sort of an "Hot Or Not?" [wikipedia] for the poet crowd. The poems are available for voting by the site's general populace (thousands daily). The person with the highest vote average wins an Ipod shuffle--DAILY. This following poem was one of a handful that won last week:

"Meant for you"

When I met you I couldn't take my eyes off you.
And you could't take your eye's off of me.
I couldn't wait hold your hand.
I couldn't wait to hear your voice.
I couldn't wait to see you smile.
And I couldn't wait to stand beside you.
couldn't wait to tell you I love you.
And I couldn't wait any longer.

The "Hot Or Not" website started in October 2000. I don't know how poetry.com took this long to get on the bandwagon. I have to wonder, however, how these poems get so many positive votes? I tried to vote for the same one twice, and it wouldn't allow it ("You've already voted for this poem today"), so there's no ballot-stuffing occurring here. It may simply be that the type of person who visits poetry.com regularly does not know a good poem from a bad one. Are these the same deluded people lampooned by American Idol during their open-call auditions? Or (and I wouldn't be surprised at this at all), these people and their poems might be simply poetry.com inventions, and they don't exist outside of the website. Hmmm. I ran across a contestant in the today's top ten whose middle name was ... Optional.

View some other winners, if you'd like:
www.poetry.com/voteforme/poemvotewinners.asp
But really, aren't we all winners, when it comes down to it?

Note the name of this department of the website: "Vote For Me". There's something awful about that on its own. If you want to bring one of these poems to my attention, please don't use the person's name. Poetry.com doesn't allow indexing by Google, but Livejournal does.

Amazingly Bad Poetry Review - Death Do Us Part

2007-03-24T23:25:58Z

Death Do Us Part
by Lindsey; Clermont, FL

She is lost in a maze of thoughts, her
emotions rendered vague by her lack of words
to express them. She wants to tell him how
deeply she is longing for him but she does
not know how. Scared of how he will react
she holds back and casts her feelings aside
like a note inside a bottle floating off to
sea.When she hears his voice it seems as if
she is completely content and at peace with
herself, he makes her calm and serene, like
a picture on a wall, she feels one with her
surroundings. She no longer feels like the
ugly duckling, the one who is always left
out. She gave her heart away to him to keep
forever in his possesion,hoping he will
never release it, or leave it vunerable to
prey who wish break it. Till death do they
part wil lthey remain this way.

This might sound crazy, but I've heard it said that if you actually write down your feelings and put them into a bottle--a message in a bottle, so to speak--you will eventually find a hundred million other bottles washed up on the shore (polluting our beaches), each representing a hundred million castaways looking for a home. Let that be a lesson to you: don't be shy about sending out an SOS to the world.

Speaking about SOSes, would someone please attach a large red flag to Lindsey? We need to tag her for future research. We're going to assume that the author Lindsey is also the "she" in the poem. This isn't really the kind of poem the maid of honor writes to read at a wedding reception. Lindsey's uncertainty makes me nervous. She hopes her man (we'll call him Dirk) will never let go of her heart or "or leave it vunerable to prey who wish [to] break it.""Scared of how he will react," she bottles her feelings away. Yet, his voice seems to calm her and bring her peace. Seems, m'lady? I know not seems. What is it about Dirk's voice that brings her peace? And is she aware that this idea clashes dramatically with her fear of how he will react if she expresses her (inexpressible) feelings to him? In fact, their entire relationship seems contradictory. If you just read the first eight lines of the poem (ending with the bottle floating off to sea), would you imagine that their relationship is going well? Hell, if you isolate those lines, it sounds like they don't have a relationship at all! Yet she writes: "Till death do they part -- will they remain this way?" (punctuation added by me). Aside from how convoluted this thought is, I really hope they're not married.

So Lindsey has gotten the fuzzy end of the lollipop before, eh? But in what scenario would Dirk be responsible for her heart being attacked by prey? If he leaves her or if they break up, are there a bunch of loser guys (I believe TLC called them "scrubs") waiting in the wings, salivating over the opportunity to mess with Lindsey's (now broken) heart. Do these hypothetical guys know Dirk? It would make more sense if Lindsey had written it this way: "hoping he will never release it, leaving it vulnerable to prey..." As it is, it doesn't make sense in an either/or way, unless Dirk insists that she date the alcoholic, necrophiliac, and unreliable type after he breaks up with her. It's more likely that Lindsey gravitates toward that sort of scumbag guy--thus her mistrust of the nice empathetic guy (like Dirk).

I desperately need to parse this sentence: "When she hears his voice it seems as if she is completely content and at peace with herself, he makes her calm and serene, like a picture on a wall, she feels one with her surroundings." Although we'll never know the answer to this question: I have to ask: is it that the picture on the wall is calm and serene or does Lindsey feel at one with her surroundings like a picture on a wall? And why do I care? Either Lindsey has never read this poem or she feels the reader will forgive an undecipherable run-on sentence. I suppose I should be glad she didn't go with 'bird in a cage' imagery. If a guy wrote this poem, 1) it wouldn't exist and 2) he would say that he's able to feel like a tiger in a jungle, at one with his surroundings.

She invokes the ugly duckling story. I understand that in the first draft, she compared herself to Rudolph the Red-Nosed Alcoholic Communist. It's frankly embarrassing that the reference to the fable is tossed in there and there's absolutely no follow-up. I'm not disparaging stream-of-consciousness poetry but when use the ugly duckling, you really should be legally obligated to point out the ugly duckling grew up to be a swan and proceeded to bite the hell out of everyone who had mocked her (although I think the original ugly duckling was male).

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

buzzzzz

2007-02-25T21:23:26Z

There's a short audio-visual piece on the NY Times website on people who have tattoos of celebrities (Bruce Lee (well, okay), Jack Nicholson (I guess...), Tony freaking Danza (wtf?)).

This reminded me of an image I found several years ago and downloaded just because it was so horribly ridiculous and so inexplicable. The following image is safe-for-work, but I warn you... it's bizarre.

It's Dustin Hoffman from the Steven Spielberg movie/toy-commercial "Hook"! And it's on the back of a thigh! The THIGH for sake of pete! I think it's likely that "Hook" is this person's favorite movie and if you were to look on the other side of his thigh (or his opposite thigh), you'd see Robin Williams or Julia Roberts with elf ears and a resentment toward Keifer Sutherland. It's upsetting!

Speaking about upsetting, this lad (linked on Metafilter) seems to have gotten a tattoo on his back of a ... device found and photographed in Kevin Federline's home. (mostly sfw).

Amazingly Bad Poetry Review - Ghost Story House

2007-02-25T20:39:22Z

Ghost Story House
by Conor, McKenzie, TN

A big, abandoned mansion
On the way to the theater
Is dull and grey,
Like in horror movies.
Whenever we pass it
On our way to
The latest adventure film,
We tell ghost stories
As soon as we pass it,
About how Mr. Jenkins
Still haunts it,
About how anyone who enters
Can never ever leave,
About how on the full moon
A demon paces
The time-worn hallways.

The fact that they're attending an adventure movie really takes away from the atmosphere of the poem. And there's very little atmosphere to spare. I thought it was common knowledge that haunted houses are way creepier when you're on the way home from a movie (ideally, a horror movie), not the other way around. The whole idea is that you have to get past the haunted house/rabid dog/Joan Rivers/cyborg assassin in order to return to the safety of your home, not because you're anxious to get to the movie theater in time to see The Rock's latest opus. It's like having foreplay after the sexual intercourse. It just defies logic.

Which brings us to his decision to make it a adventure movie. This bothers me a lot. During my senior year of college, my friend Liam and I watched John Carpenter's "The Thing." One of the greatest horror movies of all-time and geniunely scary. We watched it alone in the student center's auditorium. When it was over, we joked about which of us was going to walk behind the other as we exited. We were both in our early 20's, mind you, yet this horror movie was able to carry over into our real life, after the movie had ended. Later that night, I had to kill Liam with a cinderblock because he refused to submit to a blood test to prove he wasn't an alien clone. Now if Liam and I had been watching "Con Air" and I'd killed him with a cinderblock, my actions wouldn't be justified. I think you understand what I'm getting at here. If you change the poem so they're swapping ghost stories on the way home from "Air Force One", it's even worse than the original configuration. If they're on their way to a horror movie, it's still wrong but at least on the right track.

If Conor doesn't like horror movies, I wonder why he invokes the haunted house as being "like in horror movies." Are we supposed to say "ohhhh, of course, Conor and his friends are going to a crappy Vin Diesel movie because the haunted house creeps them out without the aid of cinema! How clever of the author!" Seriously -- bite me. It has to be a horror movie and they have to be on their way home. It would have been so easy to change.

I'm sure the eternal spirit of Mr. Jenkins does not appreciate being mocked, even from beyond the grave -- provided he's dead at all. He may have just retired to Florida, unaware that his name is used as a scary threat by abusive parents in his old neighborhood ("Eat your spinach or Mr. Jenkins will get you!"). Is there a difference of opinion regarding the supernatural being in the house? Is it a demon, or is it Mr. Jenkins? I prefer to think of Mr. Jenkins and the demon competing with each other and engaging in some good old fashioned trash talk. "You call that haunting? You didn't even make any 'woooo' noises! You're mine, bitch!" You don't really think of demons in haunted houses. Maybe it's a small cute demon that came with the house when the Jenkins family bought it years ago. "Well, this mansion has its original marble floors, a fountain in the foyer, and of course, there's Screwtape the demon."

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