Category: Bad Poetry

February Poetry Comp. – Casabianca

OK, I did not know it was called that either, but after all I’m just a retired techie (right Janus?)

Except for the original, all  the versions I know are “unsuitable for family viewing” as they say here in rural Maryland.

So let us innovate, if you wish you can keep the first line, or if you choose, change it to set the scene elsewhere, but keep the ballad meter and the a-b-a-b rhyming scheme.  Short or long is OK,  the original is an unending twenty verses of Victorian melodrama.

Continue reading “February Poetry Comp. – Casabianca”

Books, who needs them?

So it’s books, who cares? Reading’s such a bore
My Information comes off the streets
from Facebook, Google, Wiki-p and more
to my hand held phone or simple tweets.
Knowledge they cry, ‘you should read and learn’
But Why? In the twenty first century.
Go green don’t chop down trees or slash and burn
think the future, save our ecology.
Agree that books and paper are finish
so last century, old, so outdated.
A laptop, TV and satellite dish
keep me up to date and educated.

So if your out looking for me
It won’t be Waterstones but HMV!

Another sonnet for the pomes comp

Its all a load o balderdash! Dyou wish

To keep those pesky commas in mid-air?

How can they influence the price of fish?

If bookshops want to drop them, do I care?

Them Waterstones will still sell books, I smise

Like Boots will do the drugs and Tiffnys jewls?

And Ronald will make burgers, Sainsbrys pies?

Do squiggles in some logos make them fools?

So lets go back to dear old GBS.

He knew a thing or two bout grammar stuff.

Lets rite it ow we say it – dont digress.

Of snobby arty farty crap – enuff!

Shall I compare thee to a summers day?

I shall! And sweep that comma clean away!

Sonnet-Waterstone’s: A rally cry.

Waterstone’s: A rally cry.

In London, Kensington, young Waterstone,
It would appear, sold out to a stranger,
So punctuation is now in danger;
Waterstones, now writ, lowering the tone.

Grammatically unsound you say, but hark!
Printed books or wet garden stones for pools?
Or are apostrophes for older fools,
We ancient pedants who insist and bark?

No, war it is and we are right to fear
The loss of this small mark, by which we own
Still our proud language, although loud we moan.
Standards will not slip despite those who jeer.

Save the apostrophe I hear you cry,
In this small mark all we possess must lie.

Waterstone’s Sonnet -Jan Poetry Comp.

I’m found high up, a tiny crescent mark
a comma wand’ring from its rightful place
abused by every ill-read grocer’s clerk
some oft’ used plural noun to sore deface.

When I’m true placed, behind all proper nouns
the power of possession, I’ll at once confer.
I’m in mid-word?  I beg thee, spare thy frowns,
you’ll know the missing letters I do there infer.

A worthless vestige, or some antiquated sign
I never was.  Sad victim of some Ad-man’s pen
will never be, until the writing of the final line
means to us all the great, and last, amen.

When the rules of English usage they defile,
ALL the many Waterstones must we revile.

Poetry: 10-January 2012 the Results.

They were all good, there really is an abundance of talent on this site (sometimes it does take a little drawing out).
To use a quote from Janus, I am kind of “rumpty-tumpty” poet myself (if I am any poet at all and I make no claim). As result I do like a rhyme in my pomes and I was drawn to Ara’s late entry and Janus’s masterful compilation of place names for that reason, but for staying with the theme and evoking the kind of perplexity that only a new beginning can do, I must award the “Poisoned Chalice” this round to Bearsy. Well done, that Bear.

A Friendly Poke

Just a reminder that the Poetry Competition has but a few more days to run, it will of course be extended indefinitely, until some contribution from the female side is received.
By way of encouragement I offer this little piece from a local paper. When I read It I thought of Bearsy who has favored this form in the past, I have a hard time with the sonnet, something about counting in fives.
Continue reading “A Friendly Poke”