Walt Shitman's Bad Poets' Circle

up ahead is underground.
the air, the water,
everything is soiled with radiation.
superhuman rot,
putrid boils filled with pus,
extra limbs fall off
replaced by another one
growing out of your ass.
a convenient death is payback
for destructive creation.
after a thousand cycles of nonlinear time
it was bound to happen now that everyone is capable
of striking water from a rock made of formica.

if it were so
and so to speak
as likely or some other
more likely otherwise
if anything
it would be likely
more or less
worse than this.

Easter shifts according to something
Ecclesiastical
Wonderful
Bunnies wait behind gates
In masses
Ready to hop out at just the right time
Pastel colored eggs are being held by Sisyphusian servants

He hired them
Because he was so tired
From before

This is not a little tap
Nor a mere knock

It's a big bang
KNOCK KNOCK
And my theory is that
Such a loud sound would summon you back

Back to the door
KNOCK KNOCK
The door of crappy poems galore

Come back my crappy poet friends
And spread your crap all over the world

Come out from the Facebook tomb
KNOCK KNOCK
In which you were buried alive

This is a summons to the ghosts
Of bad poets
To rap

KNOCK KNOCK KNOCK KNOCK

Sitting in the graveyard is cold when you're alone
So warm it up with spirits
Pour all over

Let us drink it
The elixir of amazing words
Syrupy and thick
And it might be sweet
Or bitter

The vinegar world
A high acidic kick
A lemon
A lime

KNOCK KNOCK KNOCK

Give lemons
Let's make them into lemonade
And let's make a stand again

Hopefully --- and you never know
Someone will pay twenty-five cents

KNOCK KNOCK

It's not money
It's labor
It's love
It's effortless

It's
KNOCK

You gotta knack for the knock
What do you got?

This was my entry into my university's annual Bad Poetry Contest in 2007. The Joseph in the title would be the then-editor of our literary magazine, who was giving me crap for not having anything prepared for the contest. I did not win anything. I am not sure whether that is a compliment or an insult.

I have to come up and say this or Joseph will beat me
A haiku is five
syllables, then seven, and
then five again.

... shit!

aNaRCKYY! is as
b
e
a
u
t
i
f
u
l
as the sight
of a fat dickhead from the G8
(whose summit
I
PROTESTED!!!!!!!!!!
)
choking
on his
K.
F.
C.

(to the protest
I wore my union-made
S U P E R F L Y
t-shirt, which got me
18 girls,
it said
"cracktivist")

30 Minutes or Less

Pizza delivery boys
come to my door with
goatees and
too many singles in change,
shocked to realize
they're pizza delivery men.

Where did all the cyber poets go?
To the refrigerator door
To fetch some snacks
Sally never came back
And when they came back they signed up for MySpace accounts
It's a true account
And LJ became passe
Doctor Suess has long ago died
And along with his corpse
Is these user accounts
But the users aren't using
There is no drug war any more
Bad poets come back
Need that long over due
Log on
Bulletin board fix

And seeing her again
going through some door or another
She recognized me vaguely
yes we once planned to wear
nicotine patches and smoke cigarettes
That was some time ago.


Does anyone want to whore out their journal? I've been wanting to read something new on this thing.

There was a barroom debate over whether that song "Ironic" actually had ironic things in it. I could only remember two, and it seemed like irony to me. But let's go to the song:

An old man turned ninety-eight
He won the lottery and died the next day
It's a black fly in your Chardonnay
It's a death row pardon two minutes too late
Isn't it ironic ... don't you think

Well, I think it's 'cosmic irony'; it's not the sarcastic kind, but I'd allow it.
Chorus

It's like rain on your wedding day
this is ironic only to a culture which associates rain with gloom. So it's a bit insenstive to the Chinese, but it makes sense
It's a free ride when you've already paid
Hey, you can go to the Black Keys show next week for free! Don't buy tickets, ask me how!
It's the good advice that you just didn't take
I think this one's a bit more tenuous, but I get it, it's a song about how life has these sucky moments, and this fits in
Who would've thought ... it figures

Mr. Play It Safe was afraid to fly
He packed his suitcase and kissed his kids good-bye
He waited his whole damn life to take that flight
And as the plane crashed down he thought
'Well isn't this nice...'
And isn't it ironic ... don't you think
Textbook example of irony.
Repeat Chorus


Well life has a funny way of sneaking up on you
When you think everything's okay and everything's going right
And life has a funny way of helping you out when
You think everything's gone wrong and everything blows up
In your face

It's a traffic jam when you're already late
Not irony. It would have to be like, a bus ran over a guy directing traffic (to keep it flowing, eh?) and that caused a back up. Or if you thought the main way to get somewhere would be slow so you take a short cut and IT turns out to be jammed, while on the radio, the traffic guy says how smooth the main way is flowing. That's a little wordy for a song
It's a no-smoking sign on your cigarette break
Just walk farther down the parking lot, dummy,
It's like ten thousand spoons when all you need is a knife
stupid
It's meeting the man of my dreams
And then meeting his beautiful wife
it's more ironish than ironic, a stronger image would be "the man of my dreams, who really, really raped me."
And isn't it ironic... don't you think
A little too ironic... and yeah I really do think...
Repeat Chorus


Life has a funny way of sneaking up on you
Life has a funny, funny way of helping you out
Helping you out


So it looks like the last verse is the weakest, and what those Best Week Ever jokers must have focused on, Fox News style.