The A Mused Poetry Contest 1/9/2021 – 2/5/2021 (AKA 9/1/21-5/2/21)

Chel Owens

Life’s not been great for quite a few humans recently, myself included. If I were a mature, serene type, I’d likely suggest a mature, serene acceptance and a moving forward with healing. …I’m not really that type, though, so this month’s theme is:

  1. Snarky Rant. That’s right: a jaded, sarcastic, fed up, perhaps even nihilistic poem in an “I stick it to you, sucky events!” manner.
  2. The Length is your call. This is something you get to call the shots on, after all!
  3. Rhyming is also up to you.
  4. The Rating’s still PGish to keep general audiences happy, but there are always asterisks or near-fudges for situations like this.
  5. Despite the he** you may have endured, make us laugh. As we lay, prone, in the minefield of calamities, help us hold our bruised ribs in a knowing and painful release of the bad times we all relate to.

You have till 10:00 a.m. MST next MONTH (February 5) to submit a poem.

Use the form, below, to remain anonymous until results are posted.

Otherwise, include your poem or a link to it in the comments. Let me know if your linkback does not show up because WordPress is having issues with that.

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Enjoy.

Photo by Joshua Mcknight from Pexels

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©2021 Chel Owens

37 thoughts on “The A Mused Poetry Contest 1/9/2021 – 2/5/2021 (AKA 9/1/21-5/2/21)”

  6. When the officer stopped me for speeding
    I explained that he wasn’t being kind.
    “Haven’t you read the road rules?” he bleated.
    “Hell no,” I said, “can’t you see that I’m blind?”

    “Take more care when turning those corners,
    Use the brake and slow down a peg.”
    I said “Are you stupid or something?
    Can’t you see I’ve only one leg?”

    The officer was starting to get snarky,
    He said “I don’t know what you were thinking.”
    “Nah officer,” I said. “Nothing much.
    I never think much when I’m drinking.”

    So we sat on the side of the road.
    He accepted a swig from my flask.
    Then he remembered his duty:
    “Why aren’t you wearing a mask?”

    He gave me a ticket for that
    Will self-righteousness never cease?
    At least it gives Joseph Robinette a reason
    To support defunding the police.

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  8. Here’s my rather long rant….

    From the Erotic to the Idiotic

    In starting this I’m feeling somewhat scared.
    Ottava Rima is a form that’s been
    Used to good effect by poets who’ve fared
    Rather better than I have; have been seen
    To well succeed by being well prepared,
    Writing something comic or obscene
    To voice complaints or a criticism
    Couched in a caustic witticism.

    The master of them all of course was Byron,
    Trundling on for sixteen thousand lines,
    Mainly, it appears, with a hard-on;
    All through Don Juan you can read the signs.
    I hear some say though, ‘I do beg your pardon,
    Where’s the evidence he so inclines
    To write throughout in a sexual fervour.
    He’s less like Eros, more of a Minerva,

    Goddess of verse, wisdom, strategic warfare.’
    I suppose that’s true to a large extent
    But what, after all then, do we care
    About the character of his true intent
    in being so satiric, with such flair?
    It’s very unlikely that he would repent,
    Retract his underlying eroticisms,
    Replacing them with courtly mannerisms.

    So, just as Byron sought to undermine
    Hypocrisies inherent in his times,
    Should we not then, also sharply shine
    A piercing light today on similar crimes
    Committed not in your name, nor in mine;
    Those negligently, cruel paradigms
    Of power, designed for the hegemonic,
    The devious, deviant, selfishly moronic?

    Johnson, Bezos, Bolsonaro, Trump,
    To name but four of the perpetrators,
    Head a stinking army, nay a rump,
    Of psychopathic, snivelling people haters,
    Hoovering up the profits, as the slump
    Is hitting labourers, the wealth creators,
    Driving millions into destitution,
    Smothered by a capitalist pollution.

    This Ottava Rima effort is pathetic
    Compared to Byron’s brilliant Magnum Opus
    In which he is poetically athletic,
    A swirling cauldron filled with hocus pocus,
    Learned, comic, endlessly eclectic,
    Never losing pertinence or focus.
    Would he were here now with his sharpened claws
    To scratch the eyes out of those bloated boors.

    But he, of course, was more a Tory than
    The politicians and poets he sought to trash.
    Raised more a lord than a common man,
    His sympathies are, likely, less to clash
    With the monsters of our devious plan
    Than we who would indict them in a flash.
    To use his searing wit, all things Byronic,
    Could undermine our aims. Now that’s ironic!

    But the plot to use a sharp Ottava Rima
    To savage all things oligarchical,
    Is pregnant in this adolescent scheme, a
    Side swipe at the trad monarchical
    (Perhaps I’m just a poor deluded dreamer)
    State that’s verging on the farcical.
    As Lenin had it, there’s a fine solution:
    In Greece, Byron died for Revolution!

    Let’s take them one by one, these devious infants:
    So Johnson first, designated Boris,
    Building, despite himself, a stout resistance
    In us common folk who’ve not read Horace
    As he has. At least, that’s his insistence;
    More a classical flower, than a florist,
    Vainglorious popinjay we should require
    To shuffle off into his own satire.

    A blockheaded buffoon, an unctuous creep,
    A man who lied his way to head the Tory
    Party, while most of us were fast asleep,
    Infighting among ourselves, (another story),
    Elected to oversee the State’s upkeep
    But acting like the Womble Tobermory.
    Yet underneath his foolish, clown-like antic,
    Flows a dark and dangerous semantic.

    It’s a strain reflected in that Bezos creature,
    An exploiter making depredations on
    Each worker picking a book, or other feature
    To reinforce his empire, Amazon.
    ‘Do as I command, or I will beat ‘yer!’
    They just cannot do right for doing wrong
    Inside his evil factories of the cursed.
    His form of exploitation is the worst.

    Designed to manufacture profits, obscene
    By any standard of civil or moral code,
    The employment contracts he’s invoked have been
    Introduced to undermine, erode
    All human dignity at work. We’ve seen
    A fetid jubilation, a la mode,
    Among the tax avoiding oligarchy
    Celebrating his malign malarky.

    So what of Bolsonaro? What a jerk!
    A fascist placeman, product of a coup
    Displacing all the socialising work
    Done to favour those, like me and you
    Who don’t own either Jaguar or Merc,
    In the favelas. So we ask, just who
    Will, one day, bring this criminal to trial,
    Wiping off his vile and hideous smile?

    Of course, the situation in Brazil
    Is mirrored in those South American states,
    Where humanising work, used to instil
    Just distribution, is overturned. The fate
    Of millions of the poor, drowned in the swill
    Produced by CIA-backed gangster mates
    Of US President (The Gangster) Trump,
    That preening, self-regarding Heffalump.

    Trump as President, you’d hardly believe it!
    Yet perhaps the Yanks really do deserve ‘im.
    Not those, of course, those that would retrieve it
    But all the racists, those that would preserve ‘im
    to mouth the hatred as they do conceive it.
    Most of us, it’s true, would rather swerve ‘im,
    Stoutly chuck him into History’s litter.
    (At the risk of sounding satisfyingly bitter!)

    But I’m justly sad that such could be elected,
    Whose message is crude, insanely autocratic.
    Instead of tending to those who should be protected,
    He’d rather promote the semi-automatic.
    Let’s hope there’ll soon be sense, he’s deselected
    And we see the last of this phoney aristocratic,
    No good piece of putrefying shit.
    (I hope I haven’t overstated it!)

    I’ll now conclude this Italian form of verse;
    I do not have the stamina of a Byron.
    I know it’s bad but it could get much worse,
    Won’t earn me any pension to retire on!
    Be fearful, though, you despots, you who curse
    Humanity: you will feel the iron
    In our depleted souls eventually.
    You’ll be overthrown and we’ll be free.

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          1. 😂Thanks for asking. I’ve not had anything published since I was a kid!
            I suppose that sooner or later I should try and organise them a bit better or look for a publisher. I don’t have a clue where to start really. It would be nice to know that my poems would still be around when I am not.🙂

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  11. A poor poem for the hard times?

    Firing Up.

    As far as finances go
    I’m in a proper pickle,
    My once flush cash flow
    Has dribbled to a trickle.

    The bills wash endlessly in,
    Only my heart goes out,
    My means are paper thin,
    My prayers never more devout.

    No assets left to seize,
    All my boom’s gone bust,
    I’m down on my knees,
    Not one ‘In God We Trust.’

    Pacing the floor by the door,
    Going postal for that relief cheque,
    To pay off Bill’s Convenience Store
    Before he wrings my scrawny neck.

    I gather together every letter
    In shivering mittened hands;
    One time a real go-getter,
    Now hold only final demands.

    Grab the largest pot
    In the stone cold kitchen,
    Dump in the miserable lot,
    Got troubles? I’ll pitch in.

    All those weighty dispatches,
    Gone in a stroke
    Thanks to Safety matches
    Hello, hellfire sulphur and smoke.

    …The letters dutifully brought
    By the conscientious postman
    Though warm, were too short,
    More a flash in the pan.

    Will Bill come by torchlight,
    Say ‘200 bucks or go to jail?’
    Cold comfort on a cold night?
    ‘Bill, bring a Molotov cocktail.’

    Liked by 1 person

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  12. Here is my poem, entitled “Thank You Governor Evers.”

    I needed a new car, so I bought one
    That was the easy part
    I went to get a title, like an old fart
    And they said, “hey, don’t get smart!”
    “Here’s a special COVID chart.
    on this side is the license part,
    And over here the title part
    As you can see, it isn’t smart
    To breathe air and transfer titles at the same time.”
    Well that’s dark
    It’s not like I came here on a lark
    Am I the first person to come here and park
    Thinking that help would be mine?
    Maybe so
    Fifteen minutes later
    And I’m staring at paper
    With a URL
    Near as I could tell
    the solution to this entire caper
    Oh, wait. We’re talking about the government
    Their websites don’t work
    I love being legally obligated to use malfunctioning technology to print off a piece of paper that I then need to send to Madison through the post office
    I feel so much safer
    I want just want to write on the freaking paper in the first place
    Is that too much to ask?

    Liked by 1 person

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  13. Hello, Chelsea. I come to you through Gary”s “bereaved” blog. I have been reading his tortured poetry for a while now, but was inspired to actually submit something today on your contest. You asked to make you laugh. I hope the following will do this.
    But I have a problem.
    For some reason I cannot copy and paste to your site, or even share a link. The best I can do is type in the website,

    https://wordartbyrawgod.WordPress.com

    and ask you to choose the post entitled Africa, a Parody.

    Thank you, and hopefully, you will enjoy.

    Liked by 1 person

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