The 2008 Bad Poetry Contest is still going on…

Don’t wait until the last minute — now’s your chance to show off that lack of talent!

Give us your wretched rhymes, your lousy limericks, your hurtin’ haiku. Every year at this time I celebrate my birthday by hosting the Bad Poetry Contest. We’ve got some absolute stinkers this year — poems about monkeys in cages, acrostics about casseroles,  and "fearsome fanged sparrows from the cliffs of Aldu-Hazziz." In other words, these are bad. Terrible. Rotten to the core. Just the way we like ’em. We even had one woman reveal that the love of her life looked her in the eye and told her, "They look like big blue bowling balls." (Um… it should be noted she THOUGHT the guy was talking to her about her eyes.) And to top it off, two of my students took time away from their end-of-the-semster studies to rhyme "final" with "vinyl." Does my heart proud to know I’m discipling two young up-and-coming bad poets.

Last year’s winner was "Blind Puppy on a Freeway," which offered this inspiring chorus:

Love, love, love, love

Love, love, love

Love.

I don’t know. Whenever I read those words (sniff), there’s just something (sniff) that touches me (snort) RIGHT HERE (honk!). [For the sake of potential children reading this blog, we won’t be showing pictures.]

Anyway, here’s your chance. Rage. Emote. Show us your deepfulness. Greatness awaits. (So does a copy of Does God Speak Through Cats, which is this year’s Grand Prize Selected Especially For You.) My 50th Birthday is Sunday, when I hope to be picking a winner, assuming I can still read and I’m not overcome by the fumes.

Poem away!