Eratosphere - Don't Piss off Tim

I'm not sure what the assignment is here, Martin. Is this where we post throwaway verses aimed at fellow workshop members who are pissing us off? I find that writing bitchy sonnets is a great way of blowing off steam, and over the years I've accumulated quite a few. Here are some of the better ones. They're not necessarily fair to their targets, but they seemed so to me at the time.

How to Be an Internet Martyr

Choose an issue: trivial, preferably.
Pontificate about it at great length,
insinuating all who disagree
are cowardly, and you're a tower of strength.

Be rude to someone who deserves respect.
If anyone complains, assume they're irked
because you disagreed and were direct.
Trust me, I've seen this done, it's always worked.

Interpret all debate as cruelly personal,
all motivation for dissent as hate.
Use every clumsy arrow in your arsenal
to twist, exaggerate, manipulate.

Should anyone's impatience bruise your pride,
pretend you're Jesus being crucified.

At the Poetry Workshop

"Your sonnet breaks the rules!" she gasped, appalled,
wringing her hankie in a fit of pique.
"Trochees are fine at first, you understand,
but this--heavens! Out of control! Such bald
disregard--you've lost your head. What cheek!
And those horrible anapests! Dear, let me give you a hand!"

She tore my draft to pieces, grabbed a pen,
and helped me write another, smoother piece
exhibiting such regularity
I'd never need my FiberCon again.
Cliches? Okay! The metrical police
prefer predictability, you see.

She fiercely followed every rule she could,
except the ones that make a poem good.

Fenster the Formalist

"Dear Rose," he opened condescendingly,
"Your so-called poem fails to float my boat.
It doesn't showcase virtuosity
with rhyme and meter. Poetry should tote
that bale and lift that barge! You've heard the quote
from E. A. Robinson, who never stooped
to mere vers libre for, he said, he wrote
badly enough already. Don't be duped
into complacency by Modern hacks
who, mostly women, gays and PhDs,
produce a plethora of "verse" that lacks
the artistry that's present in a sneeze.
In short," he said dismissively, "dear Rose,
it isn't metrical, therefore it's prose."

Professor Poopshoot's First Post to the Gazebo

Undoubtedly, the so-called "critics" here
will not appreciate my subtle humor,
for irony's a dying art, I fear,
and foreign to the average baby boomer.

I'm certain, too, illiterates will carp
because my verse is layered and allusive,
and sadly, most of you are not too sharp,
which renders all your verdicts inconclusive.

Nevertheless, noblesse oblige demands
I educate you--an unpleasant duty--
and post some poems no one understands.
How could you, when you have no sense of beauty?

Now get to work, dear scribblers, and critique
my piece. Your five-page essay's due next week.

The Sonnet as a Vehicle for Family Values

A sonnet is a venerable thing,
and should be used for venerable themes,
like thoughts you think when little birdies sing;
moderate thoughts, of course, no strange extremes.
Poets are those who always got straight A's:
no nasty past, no freaky fires fanned.
Sex isn't nice. Bring back the good old days
when Swinburne's kinky poetry was banned.
Don't mention pederasty, or philandering,
or cunnilingus, or fellatio.
To speak of such realities is "pandering";
true poets have no fire down below.
Beauty is truth, but only to a point,
and only if you've never smoked a joint.

Here's one I wrote when I got locked out of the Sphere (2002? 2003?) due to a technical glitch and assumed I'd been banned.

Banned from the Sphere

The Spherean sages are prudent and wise,
their advice is a pleasure to hear--
not only on poetry's dotting of i's,
but on weightier issues, like seeming sincere
and refraining from fawning and flattering lies
and abstaining from flaming when boozy with beer
and disdaining ad hominem gutting of guys
(you can rag on their writing, though, that much is clear)
and restraining the yearning to don a disguise
and containing your verses to fifty per year--
though I'm somewhat uncertain to whom this applies,
for I find that I'm banned from the Sphere.

I'm banned from the Sphere: inspected, rejected,
persona non grata, dismissed, disconnected,
they've shooed me away, I've been shunned and neglected,
like one who's infected and pus-y;

tattooed with an A, I'm outré, disrespected,
ignobly ignored by Erato's elected;
though other folks' errors don't get them ejected,
with me they decide to be fussy.

[This message has been edited by Rose Kelleher (edited July 04, 2008).]