zigzackly’s omnium-gatherum

Godawful Poetry Fortnight made its, erm debut in 2008 and came back in 2009.

And now it's time for the the third in the series. Hopefully, like all sequels, it will be even worse.

To reprise, the essentials:

• Godawful Poetry Fortnight runs from the 19th to the 31st August.

• Our Patron Saint is William Wordsworth.

And he gets this signal honour for saying that poetry "is the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings." Way too many aspiring poets have rallied behind that banner, too few going so far as recollecting those emotions in tranquillity, let alone reading the rest of the preface to Lyrical Ballads (which can be found on Bartleby, for those interested).

• To join in, all you have to do is post on your blog* a godawful poem you have written, with—all totally optional—a brief note about GPF, a bit about what godawful poetry means to you, and a link to this post.

• Post godawful poems as often as you like during the Fortnight.
•• The True Believers Challenge: Post thirteen godawful poems, one on each day of the Fortnight.)
Squeeze your muse like a boil. Get it all out. Pester your friends to post too. Once GPF is done, you will write good poetry for the rest of the year, yes?

• Please use this Technorati tag on your post: Godawful Poetry Fortnight. Here's the HTML for the tag: <a href="http://technorati.com/tag/Godawful+Poetry+Fortnight" rel="tag">Godawful Poetry Fortnight</a>

• To those who feel the need to point out this Fortnight lasts only thirteen days, we draw our cape around us, and say, in a marked manner, "Poetic license."

* I'd be happy to link to you if you tell me where your poem is.
If you don't have a blog, you're welcome to either use the comment space here or the Godawful Poetry Fortnight thread over at Caferati.

One has been most remiss
One whole day one has missed
A godawful host am I, alas
To let a godawful fortnight day pass
Without finding a moment in time
To add to the feast of mediocre rhyme

The side-effects of the H1N1 influenza

You know what the worst
Side-effect of this burst
Of this oh so very
Unfortunately-
Named flu is?

It's the amateur wags,
And their lame borrowed gags
Littering the statusphere
Wherever you peer.
Gah.

It's even worse, you will agree
Than godawful poetry.

I,
I write for you.
You,
You write for me?
We,
We both write?
Okay?

My humble contribution to this fantastic, much-looked-forward to annual event:

Banished

They dragged me with brute force to the door,
Callously kicked me down the stairs below-
And screeched like the oft quoted Raven, “Nevermore!”

I staggered to my feet and limped my way across the street,
With fumbling fingers groped for my pack of woe,
And struck a match- Ah, even in adversity life can be sweet.

So now I wander lonely spewing dark, belligerent clouds,
That lurk on high o’er the stained cityscape,
And insidiously creep into the lungs of the teeming crowds.

All I ask for is Keats' Grecian urn to tip the ash,
While contributing generously to the city's smog,
It wouldn’t hurt would it, that dead sexy touch of dash?

By Rupa Gulab who, incidentally is not blushing furiously, but rolling on the floor with mirth. Shameless!

In a Godawful Mood,
Just not a Godawful Poetry mood.
But as the host, I can't be rude,
So here's my pseud-
o poem.


Godawful Poetry Fortnight

We launched the first Godawful Poetry Fortnight here last year. (You can read all our contributions here, and this was a brief article in the TOI about the Fortnight.)

Cut to the chase: it's that time of the year again!

The essentials:

• Godawful Poetry Fortnight runs from the 19th to the 31st August.

• Our Patron Saint is William Wordsworth.

And he gets this signal honour for saying that poetry "is the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings." Way too many aspiring poets have rallied behind that banner, too few going so far as recollecting those emotions in tranquillity, let alone reading the rest of the preface to Lyrical Ballads (which can be found on Bartleby, for those interested).

• To join in, all you have to do is post on your blog* a godawful poem you have written, with—all totally optional—a brief note about GPF, a bit about what godawful poetry means to you, and a link to this post.

• Post godawful poems as often as you like during the Fortnight. (The True Believers Challenge: post thirteen godawful poems, one on each day of the Fortnight.) Squeeze your muse like a boil. Get it all out. Pester your friends to post too. Once GPF is done, you will write good poetry for the rest of the year, yes?

• Please use this Technorati tag on your post: Godawful Poetry Fortnight. Here's the HTML for the tag: <a href="http://technorati.com/tag/Godawful+Poetry+Fortnight" rel="tag">Godawful Poetry Fortnight</a>

• To those who feel the need to point out this Fortnight lasts only thirteen days, we draw our cape around us, and say, in a marked manner, "Poetic license."

* I'd be happy to link to you if you tell me where your poem is.
If you don't have a blog, you're welcome to either use the comment space here or the Godawful Poetry Fortnight thread over at Caferati.

Good poetry, I say, is never hard,
Oh so easy, just look at me!
Dante did struggle, as did the Bard
And other writers of poetry,
When compared to good ol' me,
Faded hacks trail by many a yard.
(Ulysses wishes that I had been free —
Look what he got with that Tennyson laird.)

So come, gather round, kick off your shoes!
On our pedestal come rest your weary heads.
Now watch as we perform, we do party tricks!
No sweat, we could do this without getting out of bed.
Even two-in-one deals, you can't lose!
(This poem is also an acrostic.)

Godawful Poetry Fortnight

In which we do keh-mukarni His pulse is racing, heart a-flutter, Into the night,, he pines, he's tense Does he expect a love letter? No, cupcake, he waits for blog comments And anthadi How do I love thee, let me count the ways. The ways in which I love thee, I shall enumerate this day. A summer's days I shall compare thee to. To find another line to steal too. Stole my heart away you did. Didn't you? And I forgot to rhyme that bit. Bits an pieces make sense here. Here I am, half-asleep in frog pajamas. Pajamas, Bahamas, I love the Lama's Llamas. Llamas are found in Peru. Guavas are found in my garden. Gardens are nice places to end poems. Except I need to bring this back to an ending that locks with the beginning. How? Godawful Poetry Fortnight

Another anonymous submission, from the bashful poet who wrote this one.

Day before I thought I found my calling
With my first godawful poet penned
So I sit today to write another
To this all my faculties I lend

And then I realize that no words flow
I write cruddy muck and backspace and delete
What I write sounds too awful to be godawful
And yet I feel no conceit

My poem is too bad to be good-bad poetry
And yet not so craptacular that its good
It is poetic when it should not be
And yet too odious to be withstood

What does one do when she can’t write good rhyme
And can’t write bad rhyme either?
Does she write prose then?
Or from composing take a breather?

What can be worse that not be able to not write;
Not be able to write sucky enough?
Especially when you can’t even write things well
Can life give you a better rebuff?

The godawful poet relinquishes her throne
She decides to call it a day
And maybe its just in time too
Because doesn’t the fornight end tomorrow?

Godawful Poetry Fortnight

by Annie M Mathews

I slouched at my computer disconsolate
My inbox empty as it was wont to be
When suddenly there came a spate
Of mail I greeted with much glee
Viagra, meds, ten-inch you-know-whats
Everything to hit the ‘other’ spots

Messages in English and Spanish too
Inviting me to visit their page
My heart to point of bursting grew
When offered work with plentiful wage
I skimmed, perused, mulled and soared
To be thus wanted had me floored

I little knew what worlds there lay
With a little link that led elsewhere
So very many with so much to say
The few of words had much to bare
And now when on my comp I slouch
Mail I will receive, for this I vouch

Go find more: Godawful Poetry Fortnight or search Google

The admiring masses have, no doubt, noted the variety of forms we, in our verse-a-tility (ooh, he puns too!) have showcased. This next one's in blank verse.











Blank. Geddit? Geddit?


Godawful Poetry Fortnight

From a friend who prefers to remain anonymous. We wonder why.

I have never been much of a poet, not I
But this noble cause made me try
For even if poems make me nod
-off to sleep, godawful poetry strikes a chord

Is it the whole wretchedness of it
That wrings my heart to complete grit?
Just like pity for the hungry tramp
Is it the abjectness that makes my eyes damp?

Is it the brave face godawful poets don
Under assault of classic poetry they hold in scorn?
And attack it back with absolute tripe
That looks like it appeared spontaneously on an asswipe?

As I write these words at night
I see the end-of-the-tunnel light
Could it be that godawful rhyme
Holds the key to the heavens sublime?

Godawful Poetry Fortnight

Saved this in drafts and forgot to post it. Apologies, oh ye teeming masses.

Many words worth

I wandered lonely as a cloud
With acid rain and no antacid pills,
When all at once I belched aloud
It was like several textile mills.
Around me several old ladies
Fell, coughing, to their knees.

It had shades of turpentine
And gutters on a summers day,
And bits of tripe — i.e. intestine —
And rotting fish in a stagnant bay.
Ten thousand slew I with that burp
Top that, Kid Billy, and Wyatt Earp!

Poison gasses kill, sure, but they
Are nothing to that awesome burst
Agent Orange had a nice bouquet
Compared to the smell that we produced.
I breathed deep but little thought
What wealth the show to me had brought:

Oft, when on my commode I sit
Indigestion having driven me there,
Summoning up a good old .. never-mind,
And the sound and vapours fill the air;
The odours we produce are solid, tangible, big!
But that eructation that day was in a different league.

We have outdone ourselves, no?

Godawful Poetry Fortnight

Poetic forms are many today, like the ghazal
Many poets I know, they say they like the ghazal

I too tried many times to write one,
They never come out close, nay, not like a ghazal

Other poets write them easily, I see:
My friend Jeet can write and recite from memory, on the mic, a gazill-

-ion of them before breakfast, the swine,
Me, I am still struggling to write a wee tyke of a ghazal

I tried writing them sitting down, standing up,
lying down, walking, even on my bike. No ghazal.

My words leap, bound, run, sprint, jink,
Like they're running from a sher, and like I'm a gazelle.

So we wind up seeking solace in wine;
Zig, he much prefers *hic* to have a guzzle.

Godawful Poetry Fortnight

I have always wanted to write a villanelle,
Just five tercets and one quatrain;
But it's way too complicated to do it well

Many have done it, so I hear tell,
So I've tried until it drove me insane.
I so badly want to write a villanelle.

If I give up, I will languish in poetic hell,
To notice me, real poets will never deign.
But it's way too complicated to do it well.

I juggle the words, but they never jell,
I turn them all sideways and upright again,
I have always wanted to write a villanelle.

The performance anxiety I just cannot quell
I'm in realio trulio physical pain
But it's way too complicated to do it well.

I scream And I shout and I weep and I yell
Until they can hear me in the next lane,
I have always wanted to write a villanelle.
But it's way too complicated to do it well.

Godawful Poetry Fortnight

Mary had a little lamb
Its fleece was white as baraf
And everywhere that Mary went
The lamb went ussi taraf
It followed her to school one day
Which was niyamo ke khilaaf
It made the children laugh and play
Poem ends. Gustakhi maaf

Notes: the first half is an old college joke, origins lost in the mists of time. The second is all our fault. No, wait, we tell a lie. Poonam and Manisha helped us. Our Hindi is way too pathetic to manage on our own.

Godawful Poetry Fortnight

doopity doopity doo
the mouse ran out of the loo
having done what he went in to do
doopity doopity doo

Inspired by a certain status message.

Godawful Poetry Fortnight

Got to tell you about my crush!
Words come out in a rush!
Like Usain Bolt's 100 metre dash!
Like the Mithi in flood they gush!
Do not interrupt! No! Hush!
Have another dose of mush!
See my emotions, naked and lush!
Kabhi gam and kabhi khush!
My labour's easy, I just push!
Sit here, comfy, on my tush!
Sipping my vodka orange juish!
Are you enjoying my nash
aa?


Godawful Poetry Fortnight

They gave my my poetic license -
Then they took it back
For rhyming under the influence.

They called me a dirty hack -
A nuisance
But, like Ahnuld, I'll be Bach.

Footnote: That should have been "They gave me my poetic license" but then one of the basic principles of bad poetry is to have typos which one then justifies. So, er, ah, um, "my my" was poetic repetition. So there.

Godawful Poetry Fortnight