ROSES ARE RED, COW SKIN IS LEATHER

Nobody Wants to Read Your Poetry, Ever

All poetry is bad, especially yours

I hate poetry. All poetry. Just seeing the word poetry brings a furrow to my brows. Every poem by every poet I’ve ever read. Rhyming or not. The only thing worse than reading poetry is having someone recite theirs to me.

People ask, “There must be some poetry you like.”

Yes, it’s poetry recited or sung over music. They’re called songs. It’s why every radio station plays either songs or news. Not poetry.

“Surely someone like you can appreciate the poetry of…”

Fuck Bukowski. He was a pathetic misogynist who drank himself to death only not soon enough and his poems sucked. The best poet in the world still sucks.

Wanna know the worst thing I can hear from someone I’m starting to date?

“Oh, you’re a writer? I write too! Wanna hear all of my poems?” As she opens an atlas size book to the first page.

Everyone: “How can you not like poetry?!?”

Me: Lies down on tufted brown leather couch

I put my ex-wife through college and she was a poetry major. After four years she graduated. The result was her poetry being even more contrived and it was contrived as fuck to begin with. We spent 30k so she could use the douchiest adjective possible while writing in metaphor.

Then she got a job at a bank. Where the hell else are you going to get a job with a poetry major? She was forever working on a book I’m sure still isn’t published.

She would read poetry she wrote to me and I’d say, “Hmm. Very Vogon.” She had never read Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy.

Vogon poetry is a variety of poetry, often considered to be one of the worst. It is sometimes used by the Vogons as a torture method, as it causes physical pain to the hearer.

According to the Guide, Vogon poetry is the third worst in the Universe. The second worst is that of the Azgoths of Kria, and the worst is by Paula Nancy Millstone Jennings of Sussex, who perished along with her poetry during the destruction of Earth, ironically caused by the Vogons themselves. Vogon poetry is seen as mild by comparison.

The only people that enjoy poetry are people that write it, and it’s an “I’ll sit through yours if you sit through mine” thing. Otherwise, it’s all Vogon to me.

I’d like to end my story with a terrible poem dedicated to my ex-wife. I call it, Best In The World.

(ahem)

Fuck you.

Fuck the pencil and paper you use to write.

Fuck the store that sold them to you.

Fuck your teachers,

Fuck everyone that has ever humored you by sitting and listening.

Fuck your metaphors.

Fuck synonyms.

Fuck adjectives.

Fuck the word like.

Fuck pronouns.

Fuck your inspiration.

Most of all fuck me for putting you through school to get a degree in poetry.

Poetry spelled backwards is yreop.

Do you know what that means?

Nothing.

It’s just a bunch of random letters.

Random words.

Together.

She never asked if I wanted to hear her poem.

But when it's done I grin.

Because it’s finally over.

Please don’t ask what I think.

But you do.

So I tell you,

“You’re as good as Shel Silverstein, Bukowski, and Maya Angelou!”