Bad Poetry Day: can you write Chicago's worst poem?

Title: I love you Oprah: a sonnet

Do you think I’m stupid, Oprah?

Just because you never respond to my tweets
doesn’t mean my heart doesn’t leap
each time I see you on the big screen of my devotion
(21 inches, baby!)

You may have blocked my Twitter account
But you can never deactivate MY SOUL!

I forgive you. You’re Oprah! How could I not?
You run on awesome, while the rest of the world
only runs on Dunkin Donuts.

O, O how I long to see your face
while I am sleeping and not so quietly shedding heart-shaped tears for you.
my love is like a hummingbird on crack –
fluttering! FlutterING. Until it bites me!
Ow, O. Wow, NO.

Just what are you insinuating with tweets like this:
“Been traveling with all my peeps 1525 harponians and their families to 5 countries 7 cities.”
Are you mocking me by listing the thousands of people closer to you
than I am?

It’s OKAY, my love. Your passive-aggressiveness is like poetry to me.
I’ll be thinking of you when
I drink my Acai Berry cocktail – I named it after you –

Oprahwesome.

A fierce, scruffy giant from Winnetka,
Bought a sticky toupee for his gerbil,
But a snake used his toothpaste,
Ate his cookie in a rowboat,
Then deactivated his fluttering iPhone while sleeping excitedly and enjoying delicious, hot coffee at a table where there was a big-ass monitor on which was showing a short documentary by Dr. McGillicuddy on Mr. Spock that won an Academy Award for Best Animated Feature.

Scruffy
Chicago
Toupee
Fluttering
(the sound of snapping fingers...)

Run, Sticky Giant

Fierce gusts blow from the lake
The windy day bites my skin
Like tasting toothpaste on a cookie
I am lost without you in Winnetka.

How dare you insinuate my arboreal nature
would win the Academy Award for Best Animated Feature.

I am sleeping, thinking of the view of Chicago
from a rowboat.
Excitedly, the leap deactivates my Wednesday.

Our scruffy romance has run out, like the coffee.
Your snake, Melvin, and my gerbil, Dr. McGillicuddy,
are the only winners here.

Two hot souls gaze across the room.
Be my Mrs. Dr. McGillicuddy forever.
Dare I let the snake loose?
No, I will deactivate my heart. Power down. Power down.

Hewett-Packard sauce (aka HP sauce) is boss.
But I’d rather toss
an arboreal species
into fluttering moss.

It may sound trite
But I’d rather deactivate
With all my hawt might
Dr. McGillicuddy’s sticky buns.

“I saw that big-ass monitor.
The gerbil that runs it looks rather sore
Cover it with that toupee you found at the store.”
As Spock said this, he looked a bore.
Excuse me: boar.

“I was insinuating something.”
He said with a wink.
“That I’d rather force Wednesday to have a drink,
Than to even think, to even consider …

“… hearing your iPhone
break wind(y).”

It was a trite, hot, windy Chicago day, I on my iPhone, he on his computer staring at Twitter on his big-ass monitor.
When much to my surprise a scruffy snake insinuated its way around the table leg.
My heart went skip as my giant gerbil jumped down from his arboreal perch and came fluttering to my defense.
Offering the snake two bites from his cookie which the snake excitedly ate and slithered happily away.

Shaken to my core, and he totally absorbed in a tweet, I gave him my best Academy Award for Best Animated feature,
And with a leap dumped my coffee on his stupid toupee, thinking, Dr. McGillicuddy would sure hit the spot right now.

How delicious and hot
one night with Spock
would be.
To sit at a table eating cookies
and tea
(or coffee, if he preferred).

But to insinuate the his heart,
fluttering,
might leap at my own skipping heart,
I would be
dreadfully daydreaming.

Fifty year old man says to twenty year old girl
Have dinner with me and I'll rock your world.
His iPhone was sticky but the text was clear
His heart skipped a beat thinking she was near.
She approached from behind with a wink in her eye
And threw off his toupee as she waved bye-bye

Awaken by your delicious kiss my fierce heart surviving with it's beat and constant flitter,
Anticipating my fingers tapping my iPhone to tweet my happiness to all 1,932 followers on Twitter

Your body moving like a snake in water reminding me of our romantic rowboat weekend ride
Reassuring me the leap of faith I took was definitely love and not just a fools pride

Hot, sticky, muggy day.
Thighs stick to CTA bus seat
Sweat mingles with other residue
Coffee spills, other people's perspiration
I love you, Brittney

Coughs fill the air
inside the metal tube
H1N1, not a game of Bingo this.
I Tweet my love to Lindsey
I need you, you video kook
Spell my name correctly when you win the
Academy Award for Best Animated Feature
You accepting kudos for your portrayal of
Bipsy the Lovelorn Snake in Disney's
"Adam and Eve - The Movie".

Baby drools down the back of my neck
as I sit and send love texts
to Gwen on my iPhone
Sticky, long strand of baby saliva
from my nape to its mouth.
Should I tweet this?

My stop.
I stand to get off
leaving some of me
on the bus seat.

Miley.

BAD HAIKU WITH LEONARD PINTH-GARNELL

Delicious cookie
In small bites, excitedly
Hot, like sticky goo

When mixed with coffee
Fierce pain results, feels just like
Gerbil in my gut

Use iPhone to call
Dr. McGillicuddy
Thinking he can help

Winnetka office
Says he's sleeping late today
"See you next Wednesday"

They insinuate
That I have a bad toupee
"Take care, it's windy!"

I send out a tweet
Calling doc a giant snake
Now he might sue me

I deactivate
My Twitter account, skip town,
To run from the law

Leap into rowboat
Taking only my toothpaste
And Mr. Spock ears

My cousin Melvin
Says I can use his treehouse
I think I'll be safe

Birds fluttering by
My arboreal refuge
It's scruffy, but safe

Dinner? I eat crow
Smothered in some HP sauce
I miss Chicago

Two more things I'll miss
I have no table, nor my
Big-ass monitor

As this trite verse shows
I'm hardly a Dickinson
Won't make me famous

But maybe I'll win
An Academy Award
I've got this cartoon

Nominated for
Best Animated Feature
Do I have a chance?

Scruffy, stinky onion bed
Surrounded by arboreal potential
Attract eager investors
Trading tomorrow’s toothpaste
While in another universe
(the one where Spock is a verb)
Thinking gerbils insinuate
A Big Shoulder idea
Roof-top gardens growing HP sauce
Deactivate their father’s glory

Delicious, sticky, scruffy, arboreal Chicago
Like a snake you deactivate my big-ass monitor
Fluttering, sleeping, thinking, I hurl my gerbil toupee at my iPhone on the table
Willing it to excitedly ring.

Wednesday it tweeted, announcing the Academy Award for Best Animated Feature,
Spock bites, read the review on Twitter.
Don’t insinuate that there is toothpaste in Winnetka that can remove the coffee and cookie flavor from my morning breath.

I run and skip and leap but this windy, fierce, hot city bites me in the ass.
So I try a giant rowboat loaded up with Dickinson and HP sauce, but it doesn’t help.
Everything seems trite in this city where people named Melvin and Dr. McGillicuddy are more likely to win Academy Awards than Spock.
Might as well row out on the lake and stay there.

skip and run, run and skip
oh how i long for
the CTA cool air
a relief it would be
from a hot Chicago day

skip and run, run and skip
the sun is so fierce
and my skin is so sticky
oh how i long for
the Blue line cool air

skip and run, run and skip
"if only i am more like Spock"
i mumble to self,
"cool and detached to this weather i'd be"
"and win the Academy Award for best animated feature i would!"
excitedly i skip on

skip and run, run and skip
windy the L tunnel
cool as can be
deeply i inhale,
quickly i regret
foul air i smell
bus i should have chosen!

BAD HAIKU

Windy Winnetka
bad for fluttering toupee
rowboat saves Melvin

His scruffy gerbil
sits back on his giant head
sticky, now it stays

On Wednesday, I run
in the park –
I run away from the man with
the big black toupee –
Who chases me
Chases me
through the streets of the city
His giant, scruffy beard
sticky
from the toothpaste he dripped days before –
I skip down the grey, windy streets of the city –
Chicago, where squad cars tweet
like Emily Dickinson at the piano.

He bites – nibbles, really –
at this moldy cookie
dipped in HP sauce
and sips
from a dirty Starbucks coffee cup
that he filled with Dr. McGillicuddy Mentholmint Schnapps,
hot and spicy and delicious to him,
but me? i want to deactivate my gag reflex,
before my fluttering stomach
can leap into my throat –

Am I dreaming?
There goes a rowboat
Like a river snake excitedly
Hunting a gerbil
I am thinking…
I must be sleeping
Or have I just won the
Academy Award for Best Animated Feature?

My giant snake moves ever so slowly; you follow the video camera trained upon him with your big-ass monitor. Yeah, you do. You watch him excitedly, ever so aware of just how hot and sticky the room has become. Your heart is fluttering; you feel it skip a beat, imagining the snake making a mighty leap, thinking that if he bites your tiny gerbil, your cries would surely alarm the neighbors. As these delicious Wedensday-afternoon dreams roam through your mind while you drink coffee at your table, you long to Twitter this idle fantasy. Let the people know!! From Chicago to Winnetka, let them insinuate what they will about this dream. They will call it trite and tell you to take toothpast and wash your dirty mouth for even uttering this thought on your iPhone: pay them no heed. As your stroke your rowboat through the river of this fantasy, you will get your cookie in the end.

Here is a sonnet. 14 lines, 10 syllables per line, free verse.

Wednesday Morning in Chicago
A sonnet by Kenneth Lapins

Atop fierce, windy arboreal streets
Chicago blackbirds twitter on Wednesday
While river-goers enjoy a cookie
And some coffee in a rowboat that morn.
A snake: river insinuates city,
While fluttering above the blackbirds tweet.
Taxi makes a sleeping policemen leap
He bites his lip thinking, "Should I run?
"Catch that toupee-wearing gerbil driver!"
Dr. McGillicuddy-stoned giants
Go back to watching big-ass monitors
Excitedly for the score of the Cubs.
"Scruffy outfielders out dere, eh?" one says.
Another checks his iPhone for the Sox.

Me as the Giant Rowboat Saving the Jack Dawson’s of the Earth On the Hot Sea of Government / Corporate Oppression

The pedophilic gov’ment
With its Dick-in-son
Ways—
Its sticky snake
Itching to swallow our freedoms like so many
Mouses.
I will be the tonic—
A modern-day Shaman for you—
The poor, wretched masses
Sleeping
As you are
In blissful ignorant bliss,
Being drowned by Dr. McGillicuddy and
Trite sitcoms,
In tweets and twitters and iphones and
Sasha Fierce and bumfights,
In Martha Stewart and
Japanese bukkake films.
I will not let my freedom be
Bukkaked
By the thinking machines.
I start revolutions on Wednesdays
For the hell of it!
I rip the toupee
From the bald skull of society
And reveal the weird, sort of egg yolk colored glue beneath!
I will deactivate the system!
I block the cookies that would enslave me!

Leave a comment...

Goin' Nawth

She said
that it was so hawt down in Alabama,
and fiery, windy, giant hurry-canes
were fixing to hit shore on Wednesday.
Wadn't safe to get in no rowboat
so she said she was heading out
for the Windy City. She ain't never been
nawth before, and she was covered,
really covered with mosquito bites,
and she thought the wind up there
on the lake would blow them off her,
and she laughed, chuckled, snickered,
went ha ha and he he and said
"Chick-in-the-car, and the car
won't go," and she patted her hubby
on his toupee, patted him awake
and said: "Sugar lump, Cookie,
my little gerbil let's head
to Springfield. I'll drive
while you tweet our friends,
your hear. Tell 'em, 'Hey yall,
we're gittin' out of this here
snake-infested, moccasin-ridden
swamp land where it's blowin'
like Aunt Mable chawin' on her bubble gum,
blowing like a Rhino in the Brookfield zoo.
We can do 'Venetian Nights'
and play like we're on our Honeymoon.

Susie66q

On a hot, sticky, fierce August day
The Mayoral snake oil salesman did say
I've been doing some thinking
Our economy's sinking
So I grant you all time off without pay
Fluttering branches, they'll wait
for arboreal work another date
Melvin's off, library books are late
No Dr McGillicuddy at the free clinic
Cuz of those taxpayer cynics!
So now we're up that proverbial creek
Our rowboat has one giant leak
Even the big ass (hiring) monitor can't save us
I know Reality bites, but gimme the Olympics I seek!

Table the twitter
Skip the tweet.
Chicago or Rio?
Windy and Heat.
Japan and Madrid?
Fierce to compete.
Bring coffee, bring toothpaste.
No sleeping - just haste.
From gerbils to giants,
No time to waste!
Toupee or too scruffy,
sticky as snot,
it matters not -
the political cookie
will find it's spot.

Ode to Chicago and Its Baseball Fans

It was a hot and sticky day
He knew the Cubs were going to play
Excitedly, he shut the door
His work today would be no more.

The windy city beckoned
Like a long-lost friend
He loved baseball, he reckoned,
Like a gerbil’s wheel: no end.

He picked up Melvin on the way
They took their coffee to go
They soon would chase their blues away
O’er crackerjacks, beer, and nacho.

They found their seats behind home plate
Behind a man who talked like Spock.
“Baseball plus logic ain’t that great,”
Melvin said as the third up walked.

The wind was fierce for the Chi-town nine
So fierce the flags were fluttering,
But they’d skip, leap, or run down that line
To leave the other team sputtering.

Melvin bet on the game with his bookie
But nearly cried when they put in a rookie
So crumbles the proverbial cookie.

Then some guy named Tyrone
Pulled out his iPhone
And started to Twitter away.
Along came a bird
Who without a word
Sat on Tyrone’s toupee.
They started to tweet
With the game complete,
A hair-raising event, how sweet
It is….

Chicago, I have never been to you
But I have
been to you
I imagine you to be
delicious and arboreal
when I drive the Loop
just off of lower Wacker

Chicago you are like toothpaste in my soul
you brush me clean
of twitters, dupes and fakes
Even though your winds blow my toupees
hither and yon

Chicago, if you were a loving movie for me
it would win Best Animated Feature
You are so arboreal I can't begin
to tell you what it means
The word "arboreal" I mean
not you. I know what you mean, Chicago
I have never been to Chicago
but I have been...to Chicago.
I have never been to you
but I insinuate
that have been to you
by writing that I have been to you
and by writing about Lower Wacker
like I know your geography or something
I have been to you
but this is a poem about feelings
and hair-raising events
Like Mister Spock said
we should beam out of here
with our babies on board
sweet home Robert Johnson song Chicago
you make me have no idea
what I'm talking about
And that's what I think about Chicago
I have never been to Chicago
but I have been to Chicago
and somehow that's just Sandburg enough for me

Mayor Zues
Hizzoner gets excitedly windy when talking up the Olympics,
Will his deal go down like a house made of toothpicks ?
When taxpayers ask about clout, he skips the specifics.
He just flashes a Spock salute and says it's silly hysterics.

It's getting so sticky
The snakes with toupees excitedly fluttering
thinking we don't know Melvin
(but we're so acquainted with Dr. McGillicuddy!)
Echoes of "Deactivate the Masses" heard over and over
It's an Academy Award for Best Animated Feature,
starring the Gerbils (um, excuse me, I meant our local Chicago Politicians!).

pop my words in the toaster
like a pop, pop, pop-tart
the scent of the blogosphere lingers
like an old man dog fart

your law degree is a bigger problem
than your drinking problem
so how come i can't forget you?

snoring like a 4am bar
on the corner of halsted & armitage
i roll you over to stop the snoring
you stop, stop, stop then start again
like a cab meter

i can't make the fare
i can't make you happy
i can't make the toaster
pop, pop, pop

burnt
like the color of our president's skin
through the eyes of a birther
burnt
like a jumper
on 9/11
burnt
like a parking ticket shoved up your ass
then shoved under your nose: "pay it, bitch!"

there are over 25 pop-tart flavors
that is not a metaphor
that
is
a
fact

A little late, but from some graffiti at the Villa Park Metra stop:

"And the world will quake,
like the legs,
of a drunk."

A hot rush sweeps through my loins.
Excitedly, I board my rowboat and set course for Winnetka.
A meeting with Dr. McGillicuddy awaits.
What will he say?
What will he think of the fierce burning within me?
Will he blame it on the gerbil from last Wednesday?
I sip my delicious coffee in anticipation.
Questions left unanswered as Chicago twitters on the horizon.

A haiku, entitled "Dr. McGillicuddy"

Run scruffy toupee,
fluttering excitedly.
Windy Chicago.

Webster's dictionary insinuates
love is like a trite snake cookie
if u know what i'm thinking about
.
are u sleeping or something?
wake UP
!
...things R happening
my big-ass monitor
that's m-o-n-i-t-o-r, Chicago
it has a first name:
it's HP sauce, Oscar
and it's sticky DELICIOUS, Winnetka
.
u r soooooo not ready
DEACTIVATE

tweet THIS
.
u know u want 2
(drop the microphone: that's hawt)

Chicago summer
Giant delicious coffee
Skip tweet; too windy

Giant sticky HP sauce twitters my big-ass monitor
Scruffy Melvin bites the gerbil
Hot Chicago excitedly tweets Winnetka as Dickinson skips delicious coffee for trite iPhone fluttering
Fierce toothpaste cookies insinuate into Dr McGillicuddy on Wednesday
Sleeping Spock toupee leaps arboreally from the table thinking to deactivate the Academy Award for Best Animated Feature
The windy snake excitedly rides the rowboat

I'll try again... another haiku, entitled "Macbeth and Conan the Barbarian"

Melvin is a snake.
Conan the Barbarian
Giant sword goes swoosh.

there are no Hawt Dickinson readings to tweet here
home of a hundred trite toupees
Lost in a prairie of Wednesdays

Kewannee sux

GO TIGERS!