The Weekly Terrible Poetry Contest

Chel Owens

Welcome to The Weekly Terrible Poetry Contest, 16th installment. I may have miscounted, but we’re going with that number for now.

If you’re new, confused, and/or need directions; read my how-to about terrible poetry. I look more on the face of the cringe-worthy construction than the content of a poem’s subject.

Here are the specifics for this week:

  1. Topic: Stories with a Moral to be Learned. Unlike last week, I am not looking for a parody of a story. I seek, instead, a reference to one we know or a lamentation of how annoying such tales are -stuff like that.
  2. Write for as long as you would like, but please don’t exceed most readers’ attention spans.
    »»Likewise, I’m capping the submissions at three entries.
  3. Rhyming is optional.
  4. The number 4 rule is to make it terrible. Aesop, Rudyard Kipling, and Jean de la Fontaine need to roll over in their graves, read what you wrote, and come to life just long enough to write a fable admonishing writers to never do what you have done.
  5. Considering the general audience of most moral lessons, let’s stick with a G-rating.

You have till 8:00 a.m. MST next Friday (March 8, 2019) to submit a poem.

I’ve had more than one complaint about the submission form, and can only apologize on behalf of an internet imp who seems bent on swallowing what people put in there. He’s lost at least two poets’ attempts permanently, delayed another, and sent me scurrying around trying to piece together nonexistent crumbs from both these actions.

As such: if you are shy, use the form. Leave me a comment saying that you did as well, just to be certain. Then I will be able to tell you whether I received it.

If not, and for a more social experience, include your poem or a link to it in the comments.

Have fun!

chen-hu-664398-unsplash

Photo credit:
Chen Hu

18 thoughts on “The Weekly Terrible Poetry Contest”

  2. A salient lesson

    I have told you multitudinous times
    not to make fun
    of a baboon’s bum.
    To illustrate why, here’s a story that rhymes.

    When four-year-old Constantia visited the zoo
    she had nothing better to do
    than to laugh at the baboon’s bright pink bottom.
    Her mother said, don’t do that, your manners are rotten.

    Constantia fed the baboon a nut.
    This, she said, is because you have a ridiculous butt.
    At that moment the wind changed
    and Constantia herself discovered that her own bottom had been rearranged.

    Now Constantia is all grown up
    and has an astronomical-sized butt.
    It has made her social life inferior
    because of her utterly massive bright pink posterior.

    The moral of this story is questionable and digestible:
    always eat your vegetables.

    Liked by 2 people

      1. Thank you – of course I couldn’t use the A-R-S-E word because you people misspell it and pronounce it “donkey” – so there were definite restrictions to my creativity.

        Liked by 1 person

  3. Never, ever.

    Never end your sentences with an ox
    For he’ll trample, dample all your periods into fox.
    That will scurry, hurry, lurry into vegetable lo mein
    My dear, where was the thesaurus again?

    The moral of this story is: Don’t use Google Translate.

    Liked by 4 people

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