The Weekly Terrible Poetry Contest

Chel Owens

Good day, fellow poets. May I be the first to welcome you to The Weekly Terrible Poetry Contest? You, sir or madam or sidam, are attendant to the 21st iteration of this most-anticipated event.

Now! Sit back, relax, and don those thinking caps. We also advise those participating to drop a few, stingy rules at the door. Yes, you may leave your senses of meter and form there as well. If necessary, here is a general guideline to which you may reference.

Ready? Excellent! The following are the rules for this week:

  1. The Topic is Making Sport of Classic Poetry. You, like many, have heard of creatures stirring, woods with diverging paths, gentle nights, and captains (O, Captains!). Well –nevermore!
    • Pick a popular poem, and have at it! We’re talking parody, satire, and silliness. Go where your nausea of repetition leads you.
    • As a final note, the judge and readers will follow your ramblings with slightly more understanding if you note which work you choose.
  2. The Length will depend on the poem you mock. If you choose Beowulf, however, please keep it to the first page.
    Also, please limit your number of submissions to three. Those of you who are really good at this game are making the rest of us look bad.
  3. If the one you mock rhymes, you Rhyme. Or, not. You’d be surprised how casual the judge is.
  4. Moste importantely, make it terrible. The poem’s original author must feel compelled –no- SUMMONED by the chantings of those who read your parody aloud to drag themselves from the grave (or desk, if still alive) to seek you out and haunt you every Sunday afternoon before supper.
  5. Keep things PG-13 or nicer. Sometimes my kids read over my shoulder.

You have till 8:00 a.m. MST next Friday (April 12) to submit a poem.

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

For a more social experience, include your poem or a link to it in the comments.

Have fun!

 

 

 

roman-kraft-455470-unsplash

 

If you need further inspiration, please reference “Everlore,” and the newsletter I made my family suffer through in December.

 

Photo credit:
Roman Kraft

87 thoughts on “The Weekly Terrible Poetry Contest”

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  7. The Agent

    Once upon a midday dreary, while I pondered how to write my query
    To sell my quaint and curious volume of forgotten lore
    While I edited typos and participles hanging, suddenly there came a clanging
    As of some one harshly banging, banging at my apartment door
    “’Tis the landlord,” I sputtered, “clanking at my apartment door –
    I better hide since my cash is no more.”

    Ah, I wish I could remember, was it May or December?
    And each separate rejected note lied crumpled on the floor
    How I dreaded the marrow: – I’d have to pay back the cash I did borrow
    And not selling my book caused me sorry – sorrow for “The Art of the Bore”-
    For that bit of putrid fiction had that name “The Art of the Bore”-
    A stupid name evermore

    -a bunch of skipped verses…-

    “Please don’t’ let that word be our parting, my pretend friend,” I shrieked, embarrassingly
    “Please read my manuscript, it’s not a Plutonium store!
    See what my black plume has transcribed, as my soul has spoken!
    Don’t leave me lonely and broken – take it with you out my door!
    Take this bleak writing of my heart, take the my book, no matter how poor!
    Quoth the Agent “Nevermore”

    Based on Edgar Alan Poe, The Raven (https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/48860/the-raven)

    Liked by 4 people

      1. Thanks, Violet. I might put it up on my blog, possibly on Sunday. You are right that I have a lot of poets who might enjoy the poetic parody and a lot of writers who might understand it from that side follow my blog 😉

        Like

  8. Cousin MacDuncan

    The Witches:
    All hail, Duncan, Bane of Craw
    Whence camest thou, worthy Prince?

    From the castle I sayeth.
    Pray tell, I am needeth
    the spell of Puxogt, my birthright:
    stir the pot to bestow the incantations
    that you’d wilt the will of nature
    doth have me know the words
    though be it darkest magic I demand.
    Giveth I say the boil, the power
    as foretold in the prophesy.

    Witches:
    Beware the idles of auto-carraiges.
    Though many knights save their seats
    against rebellion and lavish treachery
    speak quickly in tragedy before the second stab.

    But I had not known the puzzle of the boils.
    And thus in folly, all was thought well
    though the traitors lurked in hatred of the Priestess.

    I was to escort Her Sacredness to her doom the raff assumed
    ’twas twisted chicanery looming as explosive as the petard.

    We’d gone in a convoy, but with a bomb
    the doors of Her car were blown off

    An evil twenty swarmed out
    from fields of Sunflowers tall
    knives redoubtable

    They tied Her Sacredness to a fence
    gagged her that She’d not reproach them:
    their scabbards empty of their treachery

    Such evil drawn out
    upon the dastardly ceremony
    that hides a scoundrel from a conscience

    “Kill her,” I heard the tall one bade.
    “Righteous tyranny of the Gods
    “can NOT be malice when obeyed

    “Let the least of us wound,
    “the greatest stab Her in the heart,
    “the fearful give the coup de grâce.”

    Villains, villains, I shouted.

    Halt at once this vileness,
    these sneezed speeches
    a phlegm of your diseased souls

    A frenzied one spoke:
    Her Sacredness
    would fawn to the Council
    and not to the Gods

    She would banish our Sister
    who champions the Gods

    This impostor usurper
    who takes the crown
    would deny our true Priestess
    her enfranchisement with the Gods

    Let the Gods rightly
    paint our true Priestess in
    the light of Their Love, and
    make her star brighter than
    the day of this puny planet’s sun.

    Hasten us all
    lest we’d be interfered with
    in our noble cause to
    stab out the usurper

    Draw now the blood of Her Falseness,
    each of you in turn do act:
    stab out this blotch

    Sazrgk, begin!

    But I crawled closer,
    picked up rocks to throw

    Thus I:
    Sazrgk no! You of the least
    do not now promote yourself to fiend

    Let them have their honors.
    Sazrgk, if you’d save your soul
    take your mercy and go

    But Sazrgk stabbed her in the shoulder.
    ’tis true: of weakness cold-hearted, he
    did indeed plunge his dagger.

    I screamed the ancient kinesis:
    “T’ukmpuxogt!”

    I became splattered in red screams
    drowning in oceans of slaughter that
    pulled me out of my mind with
    a fury that engulfed the sun, and
    made it set in vomit

    By T’ukmpuxogt bold
    the sunflowers were decapitated
    in exploding shards of skull, and
    headless bodies were
    strewn across the road.

    Thus I protect my Love
    the only true Priestess.

    Liked by 4 people

      1. Yes, sort of. It’s in the style of MacBeth. I wanted to borrow a dramatic murder scene and I like the treachery and power grab: the fight between two power centers. And I like the use of the word “enfranchisement”. I added the witches as a source of magic powers: psychokinesis. However, Duncan does the murder rather than Lady MacBeth because he is strong enough and doesn’t need her to do a substitution for the King as murderer. Except in this case the power centers are Duncan and the two competing High Priestesses and their entourages and fanatic followers. The high priestesses have more power than any of the nobles. And one needs to be rescued. I’ve spoken to the Shakespeare from the Twilight Zone episode and he doesn’t approve of this play excerpt. He doesn’t like trochee feet and prefers iambic pentameter. But this is more like one of T.T.’s (Thomas Thorpe’s) stolen manuscripts. This is from the 14th extant manuscript still in existence. I acquired it from an unreliable source.

        Liked by 1 person

  9. Stopping by woods on a snowy evening

    Whose woods these are I have no clue.
    And if truth be known, nor do you.
    It’s sheltered enough for me to hop off my gig
    And stretch the legs for a minute or two.

    My little horse must think I’m queer
    To stop with no pub in sight and no beer
    With snow all over the place
    In the middle of nowhere.

    The woods are lovely, so to speak,
    And you might think I’m some sort of creep,
    But there’s miles to go before I‘ll get another chance to stop for a leak,
    But there’s miles to go before I‘ll get another chance to stop for a leak.

    Liked by 4 people

    1. The absentee landlord in the village, Robert Frost, probably hates the rock and roll of the gig. His little horse has been missing from the dog and pony show. The pilgrims too thought it odd that the Indians they found in the New World had no taverns, no Inns, no Hotels or pubs. There is no rest without a restroom.

      Liked by 2 people

  10. Will I Sweat a Sweet Summer’s Day?

    Indeed I’d liken thee to a hot intemperate day.
    Thy art work hangs on the wall by the bed:
    In the heat and torrents of Summer’s bray
    The painting warps ‘n tilts though glee outspreads

    Though furies of heaven are too hot tempered to tame
    And often the sea would rush in with scorn
    A perfect day fickled with clouds that disclaim
    A Nature’s bearded willow teased forlorn

    But thou art hotter than the Sun
    An eternal fire of thy soul consumes not;
    Thy burning bush still fertile not done
    Nor will death retrieve heat God wot:
    One summer’s day none can tame
    As there’d be forever one dame.

    Based on Sonnet 18: Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day? — Shakespeare

    Liked by 3 people

  11. Parody of “Death be not proud” by John Donne

    Dog, Be Not Proud

    Dog, be not proud, though some have called thee
    Mighty and dreadful, for thou are not so;
    For those whom thou think’st thou dost stinky by
    Die not, poor human, nor yet canst the dog’s Flatuence kill me.
    From rest and sleep, which but thy doggy dreams be,
    Much pleasure; then from thee much more must flow from thy waggily tail
    And soonest our best men with thee do go,
    Rest of their noses, and soul’s too early delivery.
    Thou’art slave to smell, poo, gas, and dead things,
    And dost with poison, gas, and sulphur dwell,
    And skunk ‘or carcass can make us smell as well
    And better than thy fumes; why smellest thou then?
    One short stink past, we breathe eternally,
    And doggy gas shall be no more; doggy, thou shalt go poo.

    Liked by 4 people

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  14. Wow! There’s some stiff competition this week. I fear I am out of the running before I even start, but then I usually am, because I am a terrible rebel without a rule abiding bone in my body. But I love the excuse to post poetry under the terrible heading, just in case… 🙂

    Liked by 2 people

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  18. I’m new to this game, and have come in at the last minute, but a few years ago, I ‘updated’ a few classic poems ‘in order to make them easier for the contemporary reader to understand.’ If I manage to post one in time, would it suit?

    Liked by 1 person

      1. OK 🙂 This is what I have for you:

        It’s a send-up of Shakespeare’s sonnet: Shall I Compare Thee to a Summer’s Day. I’ve just completely rewritten my original mash-up, since it didn’t rhyme.

        You’re as hot as I get when I win a race,
        You’re pretty and you’re always sober.
        Gales blow petals all over the place –
        it’s like, as soon’s you blink summer’s over.
        One minute I’m sweatin’ like a goat,
        The next the weather goes all cloudy;
        You always need to take a coat
        ‘Cos accidents and nature make stuff dowdy.
        But your beauty will always and forever stay,
        And they’ll never take you from the sunshine.
        You won’t even die, ‘cos you will stay
        Alive thanks to this pretty rhyme;
        As long as there’s still people around,
        My poem will hold you on the ground.

        The original:

        Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?
        Thou art more lovely and more temperate:
        Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,
        And summer’s lease hath all too short a date:
        Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines,
        And often is his gold complexion dimm’d;
        And every fair from fair sometime declines,
        By chance or nature’s changing course untrimm’d;
        But thy eternal summer shall not fade
        Nor lose possession of that fair thou owest;
        Nor shall Death brag thou wander’st in his shade,
        When in eternal lines to time thou growest:
        So long as men can breathe or eyes can see,
        So long lives this and this gives life to thee.

        Liked by 2 people

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