This was written for this week’s Terrible Poetry Contest prompt. “I’d like every one of you to remember your First Love. What did he or she look like, smell like, eat his/her boogers like? MOST IMPORTANTLY: if you were to write that person a poem, in exactly the advanced writing abilities you had at the time, what would that poem look like? I want the younger version of you to read over your composition, sigh in romantic ecstasy, and imagine the love of your life rewarding your efforts with that elusive First Kiss.”

 

I love your sunburnt brown pretty freckles

And your shiny beautiful cute red hair

And your green eyes (sorry if their there not green)

You look just like that film star (can’t remember her name but she’s really pretty, like Doris Day but not her)

I know you catch me staring

And I can’t help going red

Please don’t marry drippy Mr. Smith

Wait for me to catch up.

 

Sined

You Know Who

 

PS – There really was a Miss Flanagan upon whom I had the biggest crush imaginable and, yes, she was always catching me staring and she really did marry drippy Mr. Smith and broke my heart. Of course I would never have delivered this fawning missive but I would have re-read and ‘edited’ it a lot and hoped she wouldn’t find it in the back of my exercise book.

This my response to this week’s Terrible Poetry challenge to create an epic poem about a great adventure.

 

Upon a nonce, amidst general farnarkerling,

a fair maiden did set her sights

on a handsome prince in tights

so she could wear his ring a’sparkling.

 

In her way, as was her feckless fancy,

she feigned to plight her troth

to a handsome Visigoth

known as Screaming Nancy.

 

The handsome prince, with heart full sick,

swore and swore and swore and swore

that up with this he would not forbore

and plotted war, down to the last tooth and pick.

 

He gathered full his skirtling Scots all skittish

and filled his lungs

and spoke in tongues

of once more defending the breeches of the British.

 

Come battle day, his fulsome steed he mounted

and waved his sword

around the sward

then charged the Nancy boys uncounted.

 

Full well sounded the irony ring of wrath

‘gainst shields both stout and flimsy

‘til the prince’s tilt proved but whimsy

and he was vanquish-ed by the Visigoth.

 

The maiden shed a seemly tear or two

then plighted her troth

to the Visigoth

known as Screaming Nancy.

 

Footnote: The couple died without issue and the kingdom came under the demesne of the Angle-grinders, followed by the Saxons (aka the Sax Collectors) and then the Holy Roman Umpire.

Thanks to my UK blog pal Bryntin , I came across this delightful site, Terrible Poetry and have submitted this entry under the prompt ‘The Bleak Midwinter”.

The bleak midwinter arrived in

the middle of winter

and it was bleak.

Not moor bleak;

more bleak than that.

The wind was keen,

not in that American neat way

nor like mustard,

but sharp

and bleak

because it was midwinter.

I watched it being bleak midwinter

but I don’t think God did.

 

The signs don’t work ‘cos the vandals took the handles

but the dune charioteers look after their own.

(It seems obscurity is merely an absence

of old fruit boxes and black paint.)

Along a graded road as straight as

the line on the forestry map,

we inspect the commercial pines at parade attention,

shoulders branch length apart.

Behind the parade ground is the local Flanders Field,

vast rolling hills dotted with the grave-stumps

of the Unknown Pine Trees

like a crew-cut magnified X 1000.

As the roller-coaster road begins to seem pointless

if not endless

we consider turning back but morbid curiosity drives us on

to the final crest

which lifts the descending gloom as if accompanied

by the opening chords of ‘Thus Spake Zarathustra’.

The hill top looks down in worship

on the virgin white altar of the tabernacle of the sea.

What first seems the surf-wash of a tidal wave

and then a snow-field surviving mid-summer

floats its nature slowly up the slopes, stating without arrogance, but,

in no uncertain terms,

‘These are the dunes of Discovery Bay

and they have more than your measure.’

The descent to the camp ground underlines the point.

Huddled in a three-tent enclave in a corner of the acre clearing,

their sand stallions muted and hobbled,

a group gathers in the late afternoon sun

to eat, drink and be unified and fortified

against the impending night.

A small hillock provides us with a measure of privacy and protection

from the insistent wind.

The tent pitched, a meal begun, a flagon opened.

A red-eyed knight in blue track-suit armour appears

to herald the despatching of two snakes in the vicinity.

His malevolence at our lack of vehicular sand-ripper is overcome

by the ethics of the Arthurian Card Table.

He exits, stage left, weaving,

as we blare the car radio

to scare away the mind snakes.