How to Write Bad Poetry

First, include weird
line br
eaks.

Add in strange!.gramm?ar
and pun(tuatio)N~

Go off on an unrelated tangent.
Unrelated, like the beaver
is to the daffodil,
and yet they still seem to whisper
secrets---

---and then jump back.

Use bigger words than is necessary,
but don't you dare use them vociferously!
Only a fool and a hypocrite
would be naive enough to use
the word "ubiquitous"
in conjunction with a beaver!

And last, but not least,
use cliches.

Art Gallery

Shout it from the midst of crowds.
I would.
But a cupped hand to an ear
may be more conspicuous.
Whatever your choice,
----------------choose your poison

The familiar blood rush
with a new touch of adrenaline.
Was it the way her hair curled?
An explosion of amber,
peaking with a sparkle in her eye.

My dead give-aways,
canvassed over with lids,
blank and ready for the masterwork of my memories,
unfolding and running over each other.
Bubbling brooks of smiles and laughs,
whispering like trees with their secrets.

Critical Poetry

Which to listen to
and who to leave,
that
is the joy of poetry.

whatislove?

at first sight
chemical imbalance
thought
desire
lust
sex
fate
emotion
heart
necessary
poetry

==========
*a different version


at first sight,
just a chemical imbalance.
mind thoughts, stop thinking.

desire
lust
sex.

fate can't be stopped.

emotion,
hearthurts.

necessary
for
poetry.

The Kingdom Under the Bush

Five years have passed
and still our children are dying.
My own children spend all night
counting the three hundred billion
Caesar threw with the hopes of appeasing the mighty Mars--

a retaliation that reaches
to a small village in the Philippines
where a straw hut smolders
and a woman cries (over her limp child)
to Allah,
"Why?"

--the sand and sun beat
on those men and women,
worker ants, fulfilling statistical analyses,
remembered only when they are gone,
------------and only by their mothers--

a young man with dreams of reaching captain,
Nathan Perry, caught it a crossfire,
the only one of his group to walk away.
No purple heart for him today

--but Caesar snorts
and signs away more billions,
more for my children to count
with their papercut and raw fingers,
while our old receive less and less every month
and the ants march on
to the tune of a silent scream
from an unborn child.

The 'most prosperous of nations'
writhes in pain
from a thousand overlooked issues,
instead looking over its borders
in the hopes of fixing others' problems.
With millions on the streets
and too many going hungry,

Caesar ignores his kingdom,
leaving his smile on a blue screen and his mind in a desert
while rats and disease rampage the streets,
and the ants march on.