[Roger Slater]

Counting to Infinity

Don't let the joy of
beginning diminish
simply because you
will never quite finish.

Although it may be
a gigantic amount,
don't waste time complaining!
Get started and count!

[John Whitworth]

I must say, Susan, that I have never come across a poem about extruded food. Which must mean you have a winner.

[Adrian Fry]

The titles keep coming but not the poems to go with them; I hope they amuse here.
Your Oblong Face
Epitaph for the Agricultural Wages Board
Unhand Yourselves, Onanists!

[Roger Slater]

The real difficulty of the challenge is that the more bizarre or seemingly uninviting a title sounds, the more interesting it is. It's sort of like naming a rock band.

[Adrian Fry]

Roger, I liked your Counting to Infinity - but isn't that rather a good title? Either way, it is something I remember trying, idiotically, to do when a child.

[George Simmers]

Originally Posted by Roger Slater

The real difficulty of the challenge is that the more bizarre or seemingly uninviting a title sounds, the more interesting it is.

Yes. The rude ones especially. 'Arsehole' was the first poem I turned to in that Craig Raine collection. But maybe that's just me.
The ones that say the poems are useless are also intriguing..,
I'm thinking about the titles that send a shudder down any editor's spine when they appear in the inbox:

The War-Song of my Heroic Lingam
Hitler's Spawn Lives in Downing Street
Buffy in Twilight-World
Poets! Rise against the Zionist Conspiracy!
I Dream of Jesus, and he Speaks through Me
A Selection of Unrhymed Limericks
Listen, Crass People of Worksop, for I am the Bard

I don't think I can write poems to fit any of those, so anyone else is welcome to them.
At the moment I'm working on 'Mournful Reflections at Penge Crematorium.'

[RCL]

The Withered Pap

A stingy mother
and spineless father?

A mentor’s mind
no longer kind?

A church’s words
now fossil turds?

A government
a circus tent?

A wiki on all
accuracy small?

A muse once trusted
no longer busted?

And those who trusted
also busted.

[Douglas G. Brown]

The Long-term Hazards of Bat Excrement

Twinkle, Twinkle, little bat,
A grotto’s where your sleeping at.
All day, while hanging by your feet,
You’ve bowel habits, indiscreet.

You know, you’re not the only one
Who lets this flow of feces run;
Ten thousand bats comprise your troop,
And every one’s condemned to poop.

Enumeration of these turds
Is way beyond this poet’s words;
But crapping in your habitat
Is filling up your lair with scat.

Your population’s facing doom;
You’re running out of sleeping room.
This situation’s gotten grave -
You’ll have to find another cave.

[Roger Slater]

Read This Poem If You're Being Punished

I don't know what you did, what sin
you're expiating for,
but I conclude it must have been
a doozy, that's for sure!

Had your offense been slight or small
you would have got a sentence
of reading Bill McGonagall
to demonstrate repentance,

but since you're being made to read
these words then it must mean
you must have made somebody bleed
or spat upon the queen

or photographed Kate Middleton
undressed or in the raw.
It's cruel, but you must purge your sin
and read this. It's the law!

[Chris O'Carroll]

What Roger says about rock band names seems especially apt. I'm also thinking of all the American microbreweries that give their beers outré names with an off-putting edge. If there's not currently a Rhino Sweat pale ale on the market, I expect there will be soon. Lots of hot sauce manufacturers go for dare-you-to-eat-it names like "Inferno" and "Satan's Anus," and we've all seen extreme amusement park rides named to sound like death threats or torture equipment. In all of those cases, the name is deliberately bad, or ironic in some way, and the intended audience is in on the joke. But if I get the drift of this comp, we're supposed to go a different way. We're supposed to imagine a poet who isn't in on the joke, someone with a McGonagall-esque degree of cluelessness who has no idea how bad the title (and the poem) is.

People have weighed in here with lots of potential ways to skin this cat. (Hmm, is there a title in that phrase, maybe?) Poems about bodily orifices and effluvia, earnest praise of something that merits a pan more than a paean, popular press headlines repurposed as poem titles. Any of those could be the key to success.

Like Adrian, I've had fun coming up with ghastly titles that so far have mostly defied me to write the accompanying poem: "There's No Jam Like Toe Jam," "Fungal Infection Be Not Proud," "Another Foreskin on the Doormat," "So Many Girls, So Few Handcuffs," "Pint of Blood, Side of Guacamole." I do have some hope for "I Taste Better Than I Smell," a love poem in which an ardent suitor likens himself to stinky cheese and urges the object of his affection to try some. Or I could try a poem addressed to my fellow competitors: "May You Totally Suck, and May I Be Even Worse."