Bad Poem Project: Hockey Edition

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Exercise: write ten bad poems

(That was the original parameter – I got to 8 before this particular thread exhausted itself. I could have written a couple of unrelated bad poems, but eh. It turned into more of a versioning thing; the urge to revise took over.)

This is to loosen up my hold on the idea of always making perfect things.

I picked hockey because I don’t watch it and am therefore unlikely to accidentally write something good about it.

Poem		Why it's bad
Duck duck duck The motherfucking Puck Slap it! Whap it! Now just tap it Try your luck Fuck! You suck!		One rarely has cause to actually duck a puck. Tired onomatopoeia Purposeless repetition / rhythmic filler Profanity to disguise lack of actual emotional content I may have written this actual poem in sixth grade
With the swift edge He just                  Taps                                   The puck in Storm-roar around him Hurricane of love He stops as if startled Cuts a spray of white ice		How is the edge swift? Is there a slow edge? Weird synecdoche. Obvious / clichéd line breaks Thoughtless phrasing/word choice Goofy metaphor “hurricane of love” Clumsy management of time Uneven tone – too generically "literary" Melancholy echoes of better poems
Hurricane of Love Jim quit ice Hockey when He tapped in The puck two Breaths before The buzzer and A hurricane of love Knocked him down		I just clearly don’t know anything about hockey. The line breaks are manipulative (why split ice/hockey? Why call it “ice hockey” at all? Who does that?) Jim is a boring name. Is this moment enough to write a poem about? (You can see me sneakily starting to get attached to this poem. Stockholm syndrome.)
Jim was the second- Best centre but he Quit ice hockey When he tapped in The puck two breaths Before the buzzer And a hurricane of love Knocked him down		Loses the one good thing (short choppy lines) about the previous poem Now this is just a sentence with line breaks The line breaks are either too easy or too arbitrary – they should have their own sense of purpose Overloaded/redundant detail fails to flesh out the emotion
Hurricane of Love Jim quit the ice When he tapped in A goal one breath Before the buzzer a hurricane of love from the ring of fans Knocked him down		Please make it stop There now seems to be a pun on “fans” wherein they are both the audience and a bunch of actual fans blowing air/breath at ol' Jim. The alliteration in “breath/before the buzzer” isn’t doing anyone any favours
Hurricane of Love Jim quit the ice When he tapped in the win Right in front of the Tim Horton’s ad And one heartbeat before The buzzer. A hurricane of love From the ring of wild fans Knocked him down And he broke his femur.		Really? Is weird mock-heroic couplet the way to take this? Really? “Tapped in the win” sounds too much like the Tim Horton’s slogan “Roll up the rim to win”, but in the spirit of other drafts the poem is just going to run with it.
Hurricane of Love Jim quit the ice When he tapped in the win in front of the buzzer And the Tim Horton’s ad No one could catch him But a hurricane of love From the stands Knocked him down		A little zeugma tries to temper Tim Horton’s, but it’s not enough God now it’s some kind of parable ugh
Hurricane of Love Jim quit the ice When he tapped in the puck two breaths before the buzzer and A hurricane of love Knocked him down		Goes back to trying to mine the meager strengths of earlier drafts I think this is as far as this bad poem goes.

"Bonus"





Fish gotta swim
Birds gotta fly
Cats gotta scratch
But why oh why
Must cats assume
(and this ain't no boast)
Why must they think
I'm a scratching post?


The trees are bare, the leaves are dying
The birds are mourning for summer, crying
As summer slips into the past
A bird-song starts: it is the last
the last song of the sparrows as away they fly
I feel the chill of winter and watch summer die.


1. I had an Ogden Nash thing. Also, I insisted I had come up with the opening lines ALL ON MY OWN.
2. The bare trees with dying leaves. The poetic inversion. The majestic migration of the sparrows. The inability to move the idea on. at. all.


{rf}

Crossposted from Dreamwidth (http://radiantfracture.dreamwidth.org/6487.html), where there are comments. Comments either place are great.

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