There’s no need to hold your breath any longer. At long last and after much deliberation, this week’s winner is:

Everyone.

I didn’t think I’d ever do this a second time, but these were FANTASTIC! I felt like a kid in a candy shop, surrounded by 12 of the best truffle varieties and asked to choose my favorite.

The twists of Shakespeare are exquisite! The quotes from books, made to imitate free-verse, are divine! Your terrible additions are delectable! Well done! Well done!

Mr. Ed and Terrible Poetry

by Richmond Road

“Beware the Ides of March, my dear
With feelings foul for you I fear
Beware the frauds, the fools, the fakes
When light through yonder window breaks
The Ides they come and come what may
Compare thee to a summer’s day
Though no such day will yet prevent
The winter of our discontent

There will be blood, you may be sure
Cry havoc! Let slip the dogs of war!
And there within the maelstrom see
Lord! What fools these mortals be
Lend me your ears. Allay you’re fears
The rider of the storm, he nears
My kingdom for a bloody horse
For a horse is a horse. Of course. Of course.”

—–

Ern Malley Incarnate (Vegan Options Available)

by Doug Jacquier

‘Now is the winter of our wet cement’
quoth Lucy in her sty with diamonds in her silk-purse ears.
Meanwhile, in a battlefield far, far, away, Dicky Three hunched his back,
despairing at the sward strewn with sordid, sworded bodies in his path
and cried ‘A hearse, a hearse, my kingdom for a hearse’.
Hearing nothing but the sounds of silence he bellowed
‘Unleash the dogs of war. Out, damn-ed Spot and yes, you, Fido,
and you, frumious Bandersnatch.
And let no-one ask who let the dogs out.’
But alas, alack, the dud plan of attack now needed a patsy stone.
He roared so all could hear,
“Cry ‘Harry (and Meghan), England and Boy George’ ”
and hied himself to the tintantabulation of the belfry of Notre Dame.
Thus it was left to the immoral bard, TS (George) Eliot to record,
on a cold, bright day whan that Aprill with his shoures soote
and the clock was striking thirteen,
“This is the way the world ends,
not with a banger but a Wimpy burger.”

—–

Lost in translation

by Bruce Goodman

(My wonderful poem was first translated by Google into Malay, then into Persian, and finally back into English.)

I hid lunch for a word –
Empty!
Where did you go? Oh!
Quo Vadis? I say horse height,
above a saddle basket, is a pile of flowers and frozen marshes.
Look at what is in your favour
(not the silent bridge behind);
there are things where you are, but things are set up
when the tiger burns brightly

not! What a beautiful bird!
You’re not the one to beat
more than the moon puzzle.
You are a greedy-pants of unbridled surreptitiousness
like a pig in search of its mother.
Bacon I told you! Bacon! Everyone bacon!
Do not hold back your sucking finger.

—–

Superb Tentricles of the Thoughtless Glory

by Tiredhamster

Quite in;
The clouds feel very out.
The dramaturgy master mediates his own
Universe into the comic, but askew.

Father’s earth illuminatingly
Not. It’s the voluntary course of pristine parallels
Of other directions. However, to stars, some part
Of the universe fled.

Cleave the empty
Atmosphere. Time important, sure, but chemically not
The very mass business of solely atomical gentlemen.
Forbidden, we exploded the galaxy, and slept without ears.

The actually answered room
Parallels chemically. Shakespeare’s not the me
In once we were. The life that literalizes to recognize
These facts sees the ambiguous floorboards.

—–

Yo Ho

by Peregrine Arc

Yo Ho, ’tis a South pirate’s love for be
My love, your series, Doug breaks over
And love knows no quarrel which it does not already conquer love roads and toads
Be still. Be free. And dear, don’t forget to pee-
-r over the clouds, covers, counters and flights
Of fancy love be, come come and hasten away
For the Opera vegan hits noon today
But what yonder light is that?
Why bloody hell, I forgot to pay the electric bill.

—–

Ern Malley by Ern Malley

by Deb Whittam

It was a night when the planets
Breathed from the wastes of the Tartarean heart.
Where the urchins pick their nose in the sun
Inattentive, suborned, betrayed, and shiftless.
The elephant motifs contorted on admonitory walls,
A Chinese landscape-roll.
A splash – white foam in the dark!
Where the striped fish moved at will.

—–

Perfidy & Discontinuity

by The Abject Muse

To be or not

to be? Or to remain

in this perfidious purgatory?

Clearly I am over-optioned.

A sad, angry sun spews its

hot yellow-ness

from a giggling azure sky —

beckoning me thither.

O! But then a voice

emanating from deep within

the Earth’s inner core through

the Gutenberg and Mohorovičić Discontinuities

all the way up through the planet’s toasty crust

(that makes one’s hair curl if consumed)

to my ears, which

I choose to ignore.

And we wonder why the penguins

are angry.

—–

They murder with a kiss.

by Lucy

Our lightless fire
This love is fair with keen appetite
Acidification
Our magical hyperbole
We avoid and clean in the scullery
Of faint stale smells of beer
Sanctified by an ancient skull
Seized, penetrated by anguish
Fever of the jaguar
In its charm,
Possessed much, blood-faced
Fairer than myself,
No wonder on the summer’s day
Plucked in each verse, red for shame,
Desire is cold, bridled by Webster’s obsession with death
With a text that clutches and folds,
Anguish, anguish in the flesh
For I am myself here in the flesh
(And not hemorrhoids).
To stroke on one’s cheek,
As I on the opposite shore will be
Devoured by heavenly distilling flowers,
Tangled in pale delight
Like crimson shame, Et tu Brute?
Our roads diverged for better ones
Than ourselves because it would never make a difference
Existing letting this dream begin,
I come, I see
And then be immodest,
Oh, they murder with a kiss
Shaking in whispers.

—–

Hoaxes And Angry Penguins

by Ellen Best
Beneath is The Sacrilege of mixing Rebecca Hilare Belloc With WH Auden.

The Funeral.

Stop the clocks cut off the telephone.

Prevent the dog barking

With a juicy bone.

A trick that everyone abhors

In little girls is slamming doors.

Silence the piano

With a muffled drum.

Slap that girl on the bum.

Bring out the coffin

Let the mourners come.

She would deliberately go

Slam the door like billy-ho.

To make her uncle Jacob start

She wasn’t really bad at heart.

He was my north my South

East and West.

My working week

My Sunday rest.

The funeral sermon

(Which was long

And followed by

a sacred song)

I thought love

Would last

Forever

I was

Wrong.

—–

Mish-Mash*

by Ruth Scribbles

Her greasy small hand

Missing these four years

Unharnessed Fannie

Proprietor of the playhouse

It’s pointless

Ivan the terrible

Joined longhorn herds

Sang out to his team

One brief nod

Seemed thin and sour

Useless thoughts

It didn’t matter

Get on the horse

And go

~RuthScribbles

*Most phrases taken randomly from the book I’m reading for book club this month “News of the World,” by Paulette Jiles

—–

Untitled piece

by D. Wallace Peach

Protruding stomachs
In a Danish forest
Hairy as this covering
A sworn enemy of the giant race
Jack blew a mighty horn
The giant awoke
Understandably irritated
And killed him on the spot
A very hazardous task
Not equally spread numerically
Obviously
Such strenuous activities
Led to fatigue and rest periods
And practical jokes of ill-repute

—–

EVEN STEPHEN WAS A NUT-CRUNCHING EGGHEAD

by Matt Snyder

Her feelings at the moment are quite complex

Not Once did Eddie ever interfere

Fred made a good Psychopath

Maude was swept out to sea

But Stephen was always even

A decapitation ensues

Don’t just sit there like dopes !

Evil must suffer defeat

Hold up. A bubble machine ?

Questioned Stephen who was always even

He deduced and stated “Me no wear pants. It feels guuuuuuuud.”

Law is a bottomless pit, it is a cormorant, a harpy that devours everything!

—–

And, as a bonus by Ellen Best:

My Poetic explanation of The Great Austrailian Literrary Hoax.

A Sister wrote of her brothers passing

She sent his poetry for an editor to peruse

Not knowing the lot was a terrible ruse.

The Penguins were angry, who was the culprit

The Catholic church roared from the pulpit.

It bought down the wrath of the literary giant

When the hoax was revealed they became silent.

They had penned a collection of modernist rhyme

They made up a sister and gave him not much time.

Duplicitously they staged Ern’s demise, Graves disease

Both James McAuley and and Harold Stewart did freeze,

When eventually Ern Malley became more famous than they

His literary prowess like the phoenix raises its head still today.

—–

Thank you all for the wonderful, terrible poetry. These are incredibly clever and hilarious. Come back tomorrow for next week’s prompt, around 10 a.m. MST.

Everyone: Here’s a badge you can post as proof of your poetic mastery:

©2020 The poets, and their respective poems.