Bad Poetry Thursday

Indefatigable
by [REDACTED]

Little tiny slivers of pine
Slide freely into these hands of mine
They fester and swell
I do not feel fine
But who can I tell?
To whom can I confess I am not well?
Swollen flesh is just a sign
Of fingers under an infection's spell.
The wood is now a part of me
Use a knife to cut it out
Call it sliverectomy
I try not to shout
At the searing pain.
Why won't you just give up?

Bad Poetry Thursday

Highway
by [REDACTED]

Asphalt cracks patched with hot tar
stretch ahead for miles
Exit 178 flies by and we can't stop
not now
now that we're almost there
almost to Canada.

Bad Poetry Thursday: Now Sugar Free! Edition

I was going to do some Photoetry, but I'm still learning GIMP 2.6, so I'll give it a couple weeks. So anyway, here is some (imo extremely) Bad Poetry for you!!! HOORAY!



An Anthem

A roll of tape
A roll of twine
Sixteen cases of fine red wine

Some rubber bands
Some handrail screws
I black eye and a rais-ed bruise

Don't buy the hook
Just by the sinker
Pull the line down into the drink(er)

Fire all of your guns at once
Because there is a lady who's sure
That ice is just as great firearms.
But she's wrong, you know.
It won't suffice.
You can say it twice
"It won't suffice,
It won't suffice."
(Unless, of course, it's pykrete ice)

A roll of tape
A bottle of wine
We hope we don't run out of time.

Bad Poetry Thursday: Chocolate Trap

Alphabeta Con-o-rama
by The Great Mulrooney III

I saw a campsite just yesterday
A fire still smoldered
The embers reflecting maroon, yellow, gold and grey
Perhaps a monk once sat there
Eating S'mores and spirits
He leaves the fire burning
But it doesn't mean anything.
It's not symbolism and it's not metaphorical
It's just a fire burning bright in the wilderness
Lighting up the night and then burning out.

Bad Poetry Thursday: A Metallic Sonata

Blasting Caps In Disarray

Golden handshakes
Gallium parachutes
Vanadium ice cubes
Copper disco flutes
Silver racks and pinions
Palladium keys
Beryllium flautas
Potassium willow trees
Manganese libraires
Magnesium lies
Sodium arc lights
Arsenic apricot pies
Lead mechanical pencils
Plutonium concrete walls
Einsteinium headphones
Bohrium missed calls
Francium death beds
Cesium picture books
Chromium asphalt
Calcium meat hooks.

Bad Poetry Thursday: Just Sitting Here Resting My Bones

A Far Off Land

How many times must a man walk down the same road
Before he realizes He's been down this road before?
We've been over this ground before.
We've always been over this ground.
This time I swear it's different.
I'm breaking new ground here.
I'm going somewhere.
I'm shooting for the stars.
I'm going to make it, just you wait and see.
I'm the great hope.
Watch me as I fall.
I'm breaking new ground here.

Bad Poetry Thursday: Dude, I'm Tripping Balls!

Said the Porpoise

In a lot of ways
A guitar string
Is like a cup tea.
Round tones and round handles
Reverberate in rounded chambers
A pluck can send a note soaring
and destroy the seeping bag.
The constant overbearing harmonies of
Black and green, of
Half and whole, of
Sustain and influenza, of
Black and tan
Can calm the noble savage.
And aggravate the ignoble savant.

Blahd Blahetry Blahday

When Walking by The Lumber Store on A Snowy Evening

I think that I shall never see
A box full of free wood
that is useful to me.

A warp-ed piece of creaking pallet
And two panels of fiberboard
To nail together with a mallet
Would not make a very good stage.

If only two-by-fours were in there
I could build a tennis racket
If I also had strings and tape and
Other wood-shaping equipment.

All the wood in the world
Would not stop your innocence lost
from being found again and lost again.

Not even if all the wood in the world
Was free.

Bad Poetry Thursday: I Used To Be Made Of Plastic

All four of these were written in the span of about...let me see...it's 9:52.....29 minutes! So you know they must be totally friggin' awesome.


Non-recyclable
by The Landfill

The only thing I know of
That can't be recycled
Is a memory.
It just gets re-written
until its resemblance to the actual event
is tenuous at best.
It doesn't get recycled
Just forgotten.


The Sound of A Thousand Feet
by Podi A. Trist

A thousand feet
More or less
Are what you need to grind bones into bread
To tread the many miles to the office.
A thousand feet
Are stomping at the bit
and skidding lengthwise toward
the empty vat
that used to hold our bread
before we broke and ate our bones.


When Dogs Lie and Pigs Fly
by Total Nuclear Warfare

I saw a tinsel cat the other day
it adorned a tree of stone and twine.
I thought "what odd things are done with tinsel,
Nowadays, at least."
I also ate a trundle bed the other day
It was all that remained of yesteryear
And I was wont to see it gone.
It tasted of bad taste
and rotten cotton
and ancient hopes.
The mattress was too much for me
I couldn't finish.
Like many things
it was too soft
and full of hidden metal.
I lost an eye to jumping springs
and washed my hands of it forever.



11 O'clock on Thursday
by Alfred P. McMatoat

What light from yonder window breaks?
The glow of ten thousand glowing screens
of course.
What other light could make the world
so frightening and grotesque?
Blue glow is a haunting shade.
It never goes out.

Bad Poetry Thursday: I'd Probably Break Down and Cry

So, somebody at Wells Fargo Bank in San Francisco found AToB by googling a poem using the words pants spoons and powerade. Now, unfortunately I've never written a poem using those three words so his search was in vain. Today's poem will fix that egregious error. From henceforth, the internet will contain a poem using the words pants, spoons, and powerade.



All Things to All People
Inspired by a true story

A door hangs open
in a musty room full of fear.
Pants lie strewn across the floor
like giant, deflated inflatable flailing-arm waving guy balloons.
And in the center of this melange
amidst the rubble and the spite
a group of three spoons stands erect
surveying their kingdom of trash,
their domain of some crazy garbage.

What the hell is going on?
says Spoon 1 to spoons 2 and 3.
What happened to our joy? Our life? Our land?

Spoon 3 points his fingers at spoon 2 and says
It was he, my dear, that ruined it all.
He that poisoned our hearts and drank up
all our Powerade. We have no Powerade any more.
Our wells have run dry. Our blue gold is gone.
Peak Powerade has come,
and now has gone.

And now spoon 2 must protest
Wait, s/he says
We haven't used it all.
Here, under the pants, and trash and fire and hate
we can find some more.
We can mine some more.
We can try some more.
Here is the hope for our future,
the hope for our illustrious race of spoons.

Bad Poetry Thursday: Skip the Good Stuff

Yep, that's right. From here on out it's bad poetry only. None of that sissy REAL POETRY garbage, only my own, um, garbage. It's okay though, when a bad poem falls in the forest it only makes a sound if it falls into a river (or lake, or any body of water bigger than a puddle of beaver urine, really) and then the sound is kind of like a little "splash" sound that doesn't carry very far because those ferns absorb the exact frequency distribution of those little "splash" sounds and the only places that bad poems occur in nature are always in conjunction with ferns, the most ancient of all plants. So yeah.



Sixteen (+/- 1) Lines from a Sheet of Graph Paper
byline

She once visited a friend
in California where trees hang like dangling chains
from the ears of the sky.
Her friend was older than her by half
a month, 45 and 7/12ths to 45 and 13/24ths
But other than that difference in age,
they were like two peas in a greek salad
green, and completely out of place.
She longed to see her friend succeed
but always looked the other way
at the least opportune of times
and missed success after succession
until a woman became king, which was a long time later
And alas it wasn't either of these two
these friends and erstwhile lovers
pitching softballs to each other
over coffee.

Bad Poetry Thursday

Let's try another genre today. How about Sixth Grade (pre-angst) rhyming poetry? Okay, sounds good. What rhyme scheme should we use? How about aabbcdcd? Oooh, great call. Topic? Cheeses. Yes!


The Provolone Ranger
by Some Stupid Kid

A sandwich just isn't delicious
unless it's devoid of fishes
And covered in awesome cheddar
More and more cheddar is better.
Now add on some crumbled up feta
Some swiss, gruyere and havarti
And don't forget some more cheddah
And we'll have a cheese sandwich party.

Bad Poetry Thursday: All is Dark Edition

I love bad poetry, it is so much funetry. My goal here is to make this poetry not make any sensetry. It's not very difficult and it sounds like something my 10th grade English teacher would have likedetry. He had terrible taste in poetry.

Look into the Mirror and Repeat My Name Three Times
by Mothface McGee


A world away
A goldfish flaps its wings
and a tornado happens
In a Back Alley.

The World is a vampire
And I am the one
That invited him in.

Man is dead
And the world is dead
And love is dead
And death is dead.

Who wants to party?
I've got three cases of
Imported organic beer
That will go bad tomorrow.
Let's all go to the lobby
And buy ourselves a snack
To eat while our bodies go.

Bad Poetry: Oh Noetry

A Dramatic Reading of World Events
by Someone You Have Never Heard Of, Jr.


You watch from home
And see the hopelessnessism
An allegory is just that
You did not so much as
turn on your track lighting
When out of nowhere
Came a violent, malevolent attack
Provoked and in jeopardy
You turn with Samuraitic skill
To fend off your attacker
Only to find that it is you
But not you
A clone of you dressed up in wrapping paper
And under that
A flesh of wire and plastic
Its (your) fingers are like claws
Are claws
When last you saw you
You were nothing but a twinkle
In the imagination of gnome
You own
Purchased from a store called Gnorm's Gnomes
That's been replaced by yet another
Barbershop.
You got your hair cut there once
But slipped on your own hair
As you tried to get up from your chair
And now you swear
That you will never go back
And you rue the day that you didn't buy
More than one gnome from Gnorm's Gnomes
Because then he might still be in business.

Bad Found Poetry Thursday

I found this poem on the cover of one of the Pay TV Porn guides in my hotel room. That's right. I said "one of." There are two. I get 6 regular channels and two pay channels that carry mostly porn with a little bit of no-holds-barred fighting I think. Basically they are primal urge channels. Anyway, this wonderful haiku was on the cover of one of them. The one with the schoolgirl on the front I think.



Porn and Paradise
by ParadiseTV


Nothing can stop our
Crazy Entertainment Shows
From Tokyo, Japan.

Bad Poetry Thursday: In Media Res

Wow. It's been awhile since I've written any bad poetry. If I'm ever going to narcissistically self-publish a book of bad poetry, I better get cracking. Also, it will be a best seller, so think how lucky you are to get to read it here first for free! Actually, if you wouldn't mind just going ahead and paying for it right now? Just $11.95? I could really use 4 Broccoli-Cheddar bread bowls from Au Bon Pain about right now. I would go up to the roof and drop them onto the sidewalk. That would rule.


A Long Road to Whole
by Schuyler


There are a few things
I care about like
diamond-studded cufflinks
and untenable solutions
I care for Apple Jacks
A great deal.

It is the rumbling
thunderclouds
that cloud my thoughts
with non-diamond-studded cufflinks
and approximations of the whole
a startling example of
practicality incarnate
from southwest
a large and greedy
seven-headed monster
gazing out of 10 grey eyes
and four green

When he gets here
it will be a long time coming
will have been.

The Greatest Day in the History of the Blogosphere (We Kid You Not)

We would like to present some laughably bad poetry to maybe help cheer you up. Blogs may not have done anything good in the world, but they keep us entertained, so please don’t stop.




Sonnet #1
by A Ton of Bricks

At times when in this world we find ourselves
Attached to things we know not how to use
I imagine that they were built by elves
Who even now are mending all my shoes
I look on them and then, bestill my heart
I cannot comprehend their work ethic
Because although I wish to do my part
I cannot bring myself to sew or prick
Or hammer into soles those tiny nails
And delicately then undo the knots
That seal my feet and keep them from the trails
Prevent my socks from getting damp in spots
I want to think that all these things are real
But lying to myself is wrong, I feel.


Sonnet #2
by Us

A book in hand is worth two on the shelf
Its words leap off the page like tiny sprites
And gambol in my ears and on my self
And in them all my heart of heart's delights
I hope that I shall never see the day
When things turn sour for the literati
And books are tossed on piles of fiery hay
And ashes rise as far as eyes can see
The end is near my friends I would beweep
And now ‘tis much too late for us to act
To alter the trajectory we keep
And save ourselves and our beloved tracts
We’ll lose them all to be replaced by blogs
The best minds of our generation’s dogs.

Those are some pretty atrocious sonnets. Thank God I’m not Shakespeare. But speaking of Shakespeare, and trying to get the bad poetry out of our heads, let’s look at one more poem. This one is not written by me, so I’m afraid I’m going to have to run the regular “Poetry Thursday” banner again. You know, just in case this dude ever Googles his own name and is directed to A Ton of Bricks, I want him to know that I think this is good poetry, not bad.




An Infinite Number Of Monkeys
By Ronald Koertge

After all the Shakespeare, the book
of poems they type is the saddest
in history.

But before they can finish it,
they have to wait for that Someone
who is always

looking to look away. Only then
can they strike the million
keys that spell

humiliation and grief, which are
the great subjects of Monkey
Literature

and not, as some people still
believe, the banana
and the tire.

Man, would I love to get my hands on some monkey literature. I am very interested in their lives of quiet desperation. Or in the case of those dang howler monkeys their lives of obnoxiously loud desperation.

Bad Poetry (Thursday)

Today's theme is....Parenthetical Remarks!

In Which Our Hero (the Heretofore Unmentioned Ellery) is Faced with His Future As A Zombie

by The Unknowable Magician (Schuyler)

The undead face me
and confront me
and stand in front and back of me
There must be something particularly
tasty about my marrow
I don't know
why else these things would surround me

Come sweet death and let me ride
your fiery chariot through
the legions of grave-escaping fiends
that trail me and track me so
mercilessly
Let me grab your sweet embrace
and disappear without trace
from in front of their eyes
or what were eyes in a past life
a life which none remember
but all fear
Let me bask in your doomed descent
and find my solace in your sacred attempt
to free me from a future too
horrifying for words (but let me try)

BRAINS! BRAINS! BRAAAAAAAAAAAINS!

Nothing else
no words no thoughts no hopes
cross my mind
just your mind
is on my mind
and in my mouth and down my gullet
if you cannot escape from it (me)
Never satisfied
Never satiated
My bills are never ratified
expect to be excoriated

BRAINS! BRAINS! BRAAAAAAAAAAAINS!

I will walk
endlessly across the earth
like a banshee, screaming
but as a zombie
Searching always for another prey
I pray that I will die
But God does not answer the prayers of the undead
He'll throw our skeleton bones away,
and leave us all to rot on fiery graves
If only we would die that is.

BRAINS! BRAINS! BRAAAAAAAAAAAINS!

Arms! I don't need you.
Feet! I don't need you.
Head! I don't know if I don't need you.
You cannot kill the undead
Or perhaps you can
I hope to God, the Devil or Bob
that you can
Release me, Bob
from this
Do not let me get you
or you'll become like me too
Do you have a shotgun
that might work
Or at least a can of gas
and a lighter
or a pitchfork
Anything, Bob
that can free me from this outcast state
that I beweep so much.

Oh God (or Bob)
Just kill me now
Again.

There are no Un-un-dead.

Viva Administration! And Bad Poetry Thursday

Okay, we'll get to the bad poetry in a sec. First I've got some administrative things to write about.

First, in one of the strangest things ever to happen to me, I have at least one reader from Provo, Utah. I don't even know where Provo is, let alone know any um, Provozoans?. I think it might be near SLC, but I'm too lazy to open up Google Earth and check. At first I thought it was someone who knows my sister-in-law, but it's not. It's some random girl I've never met named Becky Karlsven. She seems like a nice enough person. Anyway, it appears to be a long story, but there are five links on her blog: Google News, BYU (hey, she's from Utah), sudoku, her brother (I assume), and me. Why me??? Not that I mind. I actually feel kind of special that some random person I don't know would link to me as though I was someone important! It appears that she first found my blog (I don't know how) in August when she left a comment on this post and she has been a reader ever since! Thanks, Ms. Karlsven. I appreciate it.

Also, I still have regular readers in Seoul, Sunnyvale, CA, and recently, the UK. But none of them link to me, so I don't like you as much, okay?

Second, when searching for that post from last August, I came across another post that now has 22 comments, almost all spam, and almost all new! Awesome!

Third, today and tomorrow will be post-heavy in the morning and not so much in the afternoon. I have a lot of work to do. And by work, I mean constant refreshing of ESPN's NCAA tournament scoreboard.

Fourth, I just wanted to let you know that They Might Be Giants are playing the 9:30 Club in April, if you want to go. I already have tickets (they went on sale over one hours ago!) and if you want to go, let me know. Also, I feel kind of stupid for being excited about this show. I am out of the age range where liking TMBG is really appropriate. It starts at about 13 (there's just something about their cleverness that nerdy teenagers love) and goes to about 22 (or 25 if you're still in college. Undergraduate, that is). I guess it now includes babies and parents of babies so, hey, maybe I do still qualify! Yeah, I'll rationalize it like that. Does that mean I have to take Levi?

Okay on to.....


Waiting By The Side Of The Road As If You Think Something Is About To Happen
by "Skizz"

When you look in the windows of the passing cars
you can see the look in the eyes of the of drivers of the passing cars
and you think "what would they do
if I threw
a full cup of orange soda through
the open windows of the passing cars"

Or remember the time
that you forgot the time
and went late to the movie about
the guy who lived in a small house on the side of the road
and threw orange soda through the windows of the passing cars
like you did just now

What a strange world you think
what a funny place to raise a child in
or on or around or about face
you cannot find a trace
of your child in the world you live in
since your children are in fact a part
of nothing at all
and don't even exist in your mind's eye
that is looking through the windows of the passing cars

Birds and bees flutter in and around your head
and my head
and the sounds of the passing cars fill and follow our ears
and a single dangling piece of pie
hanging from a delirious lamp post
across the street is tempting
you to cross the street and eat it
but perhaps you will miss the bus
and find that the pie was only dust
or come in contact with the passing cars
that have star in thars
You are sure to lose that battle


On the street, people come and go
talking of Michelangelo

Or more likely why must the traffic be so bad
or guess how much my house is worth
or can you believe what that guy just said
or I heard that Howard's cat is dead
or I didn't want to leave my bed
or please stop these voices in my head
or oh god my blood is spilling, red
or I wish I had some more street cred

But nothing
happens because a watched pot while only occaisionally boil
and now is not one of those occaisional times
when a pot will boil
and the passing cars knocked the pot on its side
and spilled the water down the gutter on the street
where the passing cars have orange soda flying from
their tailpipes and their drivers eyes.

The Bad Poetry Train Rolls On.....

201 posts, can you believe it?

Fire in the Hole
by Schuyler

Black lines on a blue sticky note
tell the whole story
a story of life, love, hate, death
and music
melting chocolate and creamy nougat
A fingerprint and a streak
of brilliant black blood
mean that it's over now
And a crude representation of a sound wave
bounces from one side to the other
frozen
at that one moment in time
And a swoop of hair like lines
vanishes into the oblivion of no paper
Life's trajectory is traced out
squiggles disappearing into nothing
flaming out or fading out
it all ends the same way
when the pen
is lifted from the page
All that's left is an echo
a hole reflecting nothing
except smiles and stories.