How bad?
 

If you google www.winningwriters.com you will come across the Wergle Flomp Humorous poetry contest where there appear to be genuine dollars to be won (a $1,359 first prize) for NO entrance fee. Your intrepid reporter pressed on and discovered what you do. You enter the WORST poem you can possibly write (I think McGonagall here) and SIMULTANEOUSLY you enter it for one of those vanity poetry contests where every one is a winner. And if your poem is truly execrable and it wins acceptance on the Vanity website, then you sit back and rake in the dolars. Last year's grand Wergle Flomp was a chap who looks like Mel Gibson in what we English call a dinner suit (dinner jacket if we are posh) and what Americans call a tux. His winning anti-poem is a quite risible piece of Walt Whitman. Whitman himself would probably have won at a canter. Anyof you budding Ern Malleys want to have a bash?
I once wrote, in my callow youth,a poem of unredeemed awfulness that began. 'Wind your wildering hair with sorrow./Wind it with the night' and went downhill after that. I could resurrect it, though I've (mercifully) forgotten how it went. Joe Kennedy co-edited a fine Anthology of real gluggers from real poets called 'Pegasus Descending' from which I cull this Canadian morsel by James McIntyre.

We have seen thee, Queen of Cheese,
Lying quietly at your ease

Dammit, that's so bad it's GOOD!

Any Sphereans want to try to be Wergle Flomps? Alternatively do you know any bits of really BAD poetry (perhaps even written by your good selves in your younger days before you saw the light). Who wrote this?

Over his head were the maple buds,
And over the tree was the moon,
And over the moon were the starry studs
That drop from the angels' shoon.

Dammit,they don't MAKE poetry like that any more.

I think I'm worse when I'm trying to be better, but here's what I quickly came up with:


THANK YOU, I'LL STAND

It makes me groan to sit on stone.
  Unless there is a cushion
plumped up there upon the chair
  I will not put my toosh in.

I'm on my guard when seats are hard.
  I don't mean to sound whiney,
but I can't bear the sort of chair
  that hurts my tender hiney.

I don't know why, Roger, but your contribution brings to mind the verse of Samuel Butler (the Victorian one) in 'The Way of All Flesh'.

The pious dogs of Saint Bernard go
To pull the people out of the snow
And round their necks is the cordial gin
Tied with a little bit of bob-bin

Butler says 'I tried to mend the last line but I found that I couldn't'. I may have misquoted. This is from memory.

This is from my teen years. I wrote it as a theme for a party, for which I made dummies out of stuffed clothing, and seated them around the room. (Yeah, I was pretty weird.)

It was actually a longer poem, which started out: "The laughing clown went home that night/as many nights before..." There were about two or three more stanzas, mercifully I've forgotten them. It was called--guess what?--"The Sad Clown."

Here's the last stanza:

For life is but a masquerade;
we wear the masks and gowns.
Reality will always fade,
and people will be clowns.

As Rocky the Flying Squirrel might say: "Badenuv?"

[Edited in: I hasten to add, the dummies weren't the only guests at the party--there were real people too! I wasn't that weird!]

*********
Bob, you're just too good with the tush humor for "Thank you I'll stand" to be bad. Sorry just being honest.

I won't be able to find it, but I wrote a poem called "the Trouble with Truffles" about a girl and Fontina cheese. Not a single mention of truffles. I wish I still had it although there are plenty of other truly terrible poems I could share.

Nah -- you guys are all too good.
A really bad one would go something like,

"The sky was as blue as blue could be
the little birds sang in the willow tree
and butterflies flickered across the lawn
to celebrate a brand new dawn ..."

Now that has real downside potential ...

Or like this.

The blue lake was like a little ocean
white gulls cried in the sky
and no single wave was in motion
when you caught my eye.

But when I saw you standing there
I got butterflies in my tummy.
on end stood my every hair
Darling, I thought you were yummy.

And when I watched you walk away
I felt a lot like Dante
Who was dashed to hear Bernice say
"I can only be your pococurante."

That is true doggerel.

Perhaps it will be worse if I add a third stanza?

THANK YOU, I'LL STAND

It makes me groan to sit on stone.
  Unless there is a cushion
plumped up there upon the chair
  I will not put my toosh in.

I'm on my guard when seats are hard.
  I don't mean to sound whiney,
but I can't bear the sort of chair
  that hurts my tender hiney.

I will not hide my honest side
  to dally with my tact side,
and you will find I stand behind
  the interests of my backside.

No Roger, it's good. It's not bad. I have just been reading P G Wodehouse, something I do pretty often. The novel is 'Leave it to Psmith' and it contains a poet, well, actually two poets, but the one of which we speak is the real deal as ar as bad poets go. Actually Wodehouse vouchsafes us only one line but it's a real winner.

Across the pale parabola of joy

Well I meanter say!!!

No, Roger, this could win you a prize in a light verse contest.

It is not only not bad, it is good.

Just want to add, that I don't like people who are so good that they are good when they try to be bad.:p