Capers With Carroll

One comment on my last post sent me scurrying back to the keyboard to draft another entry for Chip MacGregor's Bad Poetry Contest. I may finally be a contender for the lava lamp.

Love or Not-Love

Love or not-love,
how does one distinguish?
To nurture one,
the other to extinguish.

If some folks seek Nirvana, not love,
should government protect us?
And bail us out as if we’d swooned
to falsified perspectus?

Oh, the newly married, running home,
with cries of, “Mamma, not-love!”
Should seek relief by filing forms
at bailoutobama.gov

As an adolescent, I wrote quite a bit of poetry that, even now, I look back upon as being several cuts above the, well . . . adolescent. I stopped writing poetry when I married. Subsequent soul-searching led me to the conclusion that my verse had been tied up in my loneliness. No longer lonely, my muse fell out of use. In my recently-completed program for a masters degree in creative writing, I produced nary a poem.

However, what my MFA professors could not draw out of me, a blog competition has. Literary agent Chip MacGregor runs an annual Bad Poetry Contest. I took a class from Chip at Mount Hermon, in 2003, and read his blog regularly. I’m still a little miffed at him for not recognizing the brilliance of my entry last year. The poem has been up since last May for the thousands who read his blog, but I figure it’s time to share it with the tens (sometimes twelves) who read mine. Chip threw down the gauntlet with the assertion that

There are only four words in the English language that rhyme with love: "Dove" and "Above" are the popular choices. "Shove" and "glove" don't really count. Use of the baby word "Wuv" can get you shot. (British citizens who enter are allowed to use the word "guv," as in "guv'nor," but don't push it. We Scots have been pushed around by you people long enough.)

I thought I deserved at least an honorable mention for expanding his list 0.4-fold with this entry:

Love

Love
is
like a lot
of
p’lov
in a pot—
rice and mutton
(nice for gluttons).
It warms your innards,
even for beginners.

Love
yells
“Mazel Tov!”
A reset button
When I’ve hit bottom.
It turns plain sinners
into winners.

This year, I’ve decided I won’t wait twelve months to share my poem here. I won’t even wait to hear if I won the Grand Prize lava lamp. So here is my 2009 (untitled) Bad Poem:

this post-modern poem is self-referential
bad as i hope it will be

it won’t rhyme
any time
except by accident

forward or
drawkcab
d
o
w
n

or

p
u

it phlaunts its phreedom to dephy conventions
boldly going where no poem has ever gone

read it and weep

And if this one doesn’t win, I’ll cultivate a new bad poem for next year.