Welcome to the biweekly Terrible Poetry Contest!
Did you know that everyone writes terrible poetry? Even bonafide, published, worshipped ‘poets’ write terrible poetry. Don’t worry; none of us is that famous (I think). We’re in it for the notoriety. Wanna join in but aren’t sure how to let it all go? Try reading my tips, here.
Here are the specifics for this contest:
- Matt won it all last round, and says we’ll write on the Theme of bad driving, free-verse style. Free verse is defined as “nonmetrical, nonrhyming lines that closely follow the natural rhythms of speech” (Poetry Foundation). Basically, you’re freewheeling it and trying to sound artsy doing so.
- You’re the driver; you choose the Length.
- Traditional free verse poetry does not Rhyme. You take that where you wish.
- Just make it terrible! Take the pedal to the medal on a collision course so awful you drive Ms. Daisy crazy.
- Rating: PG-13 or cleaner. I’ve seen you drive.
You have till 8:00 a.m. MDT on Thursday, April 14 to submit a poem.
Use the form below if you want to be anonymous for a week. It hasn’t gone through unless you see a message saying it has.
For a more social experience, include your poem or a link to it in the comments. Please alert me if your pingback or poem does not show up within a day.
The winner gains bragging rights, a badge, and the option to choose the next iteration’s topic and type of poem.
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©2022 Chel Owens
chelowens.com 
I’m a bad driver, but am I a bad poet 🧐
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Of course not. 😀
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Ya know Chel, maybe you should put a stipulation in your rules that winners can’t participate in the styles/themes they pick. That would take them out of the running at least once as to not hog the spotlight. After thinking about what you said I have no problem sitting this round out. Considering I have been a winner of this little contest a hell of a lot of times. 😁
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Maybe I could if I had a lot more contestants. I don’t think it’s a big deal since everyone has been really fair about it.
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Okie dokie
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Btw just recorded your incredibly hilarious short story Ted & Trudy with my wife for the podcast 😂
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Yesssss!! Tell her (and you) thanks!
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“nonmetrical, nonrhyming lines that closely follow the natural rhythms of speech” …. so bad prose with line breaks?
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You may
Have just defined
It
Even better
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When we start
It is odd
Is it not?
That the pause in the flow
Might somehow show
A teasing hint
Of thought so deep
Of thinking, not sinking
into sleep
An inner confusion
Leading to the illusion
Of footsteps
well trod
But just rot
Pretending to be art
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That was beautiful, RR. You should’ve done a terrible one. 😉
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It was terrible. Just insufficiency terrible for your exacting tastes.
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Meh. I liked it.
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Steering wheel
Gas pedal
Brake
I’m not sure which is which
I prefer abstract philosophical principles
To hard-headed empiricism
Those colored lights they put over the intersections are really pretty
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Love it. Short and sweet, with a twist.
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Thank you.
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This poem is in imitation of Gerald Stern’s American Sonnets. There “sonnets” have no rhyme nor meter (and often no sense that I could detect). They are all one sentence long allowing the reader to put in line breaks or not. I would call them terrible American sonnets, but he won some award for them and they are occasionally entertaining.
Bad Driver
I told my shrink that the cops brought me here because of my bad driving and he said I had no record of ever driving a car in my life and I told him, not car, spaceship, S-P-A-C-E-S-H-I-P, and he said I had no spaceship and wasn’t an alien because my DNA test, D-N-A, showed I’m human enough and I told him, well, then why am I in that padded cell and he said I wasn’t in any cell and I asked him if he was trying to drive me crazy and if he was he wasn’t doing a good job of it and then he said I was brought in because I was scaring the neighborhood kids and the judge assigned me to him and I told him that I had a lot of fun turning my head 360 degrees like an owl and he said I couldn’t do stuff like that and I asked him whether he ever saw me and he said no and so I asked him if he wanted to see me turn my head 360 degrees and he said, “Sure, Marvin, go ahead turn your head 360 degrees like an own, go on show me” and so I turned my head 360 degrees like an owl and he called the exorcist.
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(Need a ‘love’ button for this one!)
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Glad I’m not the only one!
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Very nice, Frank!!
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Bring it on Matt, we just want terrible poetry. We are all winners when we get to read the results!!!
Here is my entry for this round…
https://gmg1968.wordpress.com/2022/04/06/road-ragin/
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https://aprolificpotpourri.art/2022/04/11/the-bi-weekly-terrible-poetry-contest-the-bird/
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THE BIRD
Your blinker
is on
Still…
Oh
How much
Slower must I
go to get
You off
My
Ass!
Veins they but protrude
Shades of red flush my face
Cut me off
The hell ?
Holy
Shit a
Spider in front of
my face!
Smash Boom
Crash
not me, thankfully
we is stuck
behind rubber
neckers but you, you!!!
Pass everyone by on
the
shoulder yield
does not
mean
stop
every single one of y’all
gets the bird!
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Poor Parking Parable.
What a dazzlingly bright sizzler of a triple digit day
It was down at the Crucible Mall
What a joy it was to be beneath cloudless azure skies
In a Midnight Blue Horizon
With no fu…nctioning air-conditioning
Not a park to be found within spitting distance
Of the Mall’s shady walls
Nary a one
Thanks to one selfish bas- parker
who had left two half spaces on either side
Of the fat-wheeled Ford F150 parked athwart the middle line
Of the only two miserably designated Disabled car parks
Lolling In his F150 sat
A fat-as slack faced cowboy
Hairy mitt draped on the wheel
Cab wreathed in vape smoke
He paused but for a second to chug down his Bud
Before leaping down agilely and
Lightly-
Lightly for such a heavy gutted hombre-
Onto the asphalt
Belched heavily
And strode back into the Booze Barn
For ‘nother nourishing six-pack
No Disabled card on view
Nope, not right nor fair but…
Never mind.
After parking way out back in the back of beyond
Out in the furthest and farthest
Rarely traversed reaches of the car park
Far from the Mall and the madding crowd
I gamely sweated my way across
The shimmering tacky asphalt
Trekking towards the far-off
Sliding doored cold comfort of
Krogers
My journey through Hades proved to be well worth it though!
Oh
So gratifying it was to see our invalid invalid
Looking fair fit to be tied
Getting roughly cuffed and arrested by someone
Healthily buffed and in a well-stuffed XL black uniform
And
As a bonus
Our cow-poke’s big-as truck getting all
Set to be towed
I joined in with the surrounding crowd
Easing in beside
A finely groomed and elegantly dressed elderly gent
‘Another ass who believes it’s his right to use not just one
But two Disabled parks’ he offered
Eyes hard as tempered steel
‘It’s rare to see such justice playing out before our eyes’
I croaked agreeably in my parched cracked voice
Seems all about us most folks agreed
And as the baddest example
Of good driving I’d seen in quite a while
Was hauled away
Everyone enthusiastically yet oddly waved him ta-ta’s
All with both hands
But sans fingers
‘Cept for middle digits
I bade the elderly gent a hearty good day
And walked
away
He went gladly off on his way
His wheelchairs wheels
Making one Hell of a deep impression along the
Fords flanks
Which made for quite the racket too
But everyone in the vicinity
Who should have witnessed this
Had to have been deaf-finately handicapped
If not deaf, blissfully, smilingly unaware.
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Oh my, Obbverse. Perfect. Just barely shy of first place.
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Thanks. Over here we use ‘-as’ as an add on to everything; Big-as, good-as, sad-as funny-as,
happy as, crappy as, etc. I don’t know if it’s as prevalent in the States but here it’s a verbal tic.
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I have not noticed that one, here. It’s probably coming…
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Here’s mine.
https://michaelsfishbowl.com/2022/04/11/driving/
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I had it in there! I had to do a WP search for it, though. Stupid program!
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