Bad Poetry

BY

phil porter & beth hoch

Beth Hoch (she signs her poems “eah”—for awhile I thought it was some sort of New England rejoinder) is a social worker, mom, aerobics queen, class clown, InterPlayer, and WING IT! member. She has led me down a slippery slope. She started it. It’s all her fault. But now that I have been dragged down into the mud, I am enjoying every minute of it. I can’t wait to open up aol and hear those magic words, “you have bad poetry!”

She wrote me a bad poem.
I wrote one back.
She wrote another.
So did I.
This went on.
Then there was silence for a time.
Did she no longer care?
Then it started again, like a dripping faucet...

B.P. ONE

my heart is full of inky goo
when the lights go out
it shines like those little
fishy things in the water

is this love?

eah

B.P. TWO

the words
are like those little pieces
of toilet paper that kind of get rolled
up into little balls
in the “forest” so to speak.

direct, indirect, directionless
i breath through my mouth.

pp

B.P. THREE

Paper and trees
Paper and trees
Trees and paper
Trees and paper
So sad
oh.... so sad
TP
PT

eah

B.P. FOUR

and the elk
glide across the meadow
like pooneyborros
and even now their
eyebrows rise
cause what the heck
is a pooneyborro?

pp

B.P. FIVE

blue…
being blue…
enjoying the view…
being blue…

what’ll I do
being blue
enjoying the view
being blue

eah

B.P. SIX

and she spoke back
with words slippery like worms
the meaning vague
like when someone asks
do you wanna rootbeer?
and they say, well………

answers sometimes look better
in red

pp

This page was created by Phil Porter for an online class in Cascading Style Sheets.
design: © Phil Porter, 2005. All rights reserved.
poetry: © Phil Porter & Beth Hoch, 2005. All rights reserved.

phil@interplay.org