Stop, stop, stop, stop, oh God, please stop.

Sometimes I spend my time trolling around websites that encourage people to share their poetry with the world. One of the best ones is The Poetry Showcase. Sounds pretty fancy, right? The first thing that comes to mind is the Showcase Showdown from The Price is Right, which is (or used to be) a very fancy television show. But do not be deceived by the fanciness of the title! The Poetry Showcase is open to absolutely everyone and their grandma - every wannabe writer who has no hope in hell of ever writing something that anybody but their grandmother would like. So naturally, what TPS has ended up with is a website filled completely with piles and piles and more piles of poop poetry. I mean it's really really shitty. It's actually a fantastic place to visit if you ever need to feel better about your own ability as a writer, or if you just feel like making fun of other people.

And yet, a warning: trolling around on websites like TPS can be cataclysmically depressing. Sure, you're having a good time laughing at the failings of some no name "poet" (ohmygosh, that is the most horrid attempt at dactylic hexameter of all time bwahahaha!!!), but then you come across some poem that prudencefecklessmcsmith37 has written about her ailing tabby, Ms. Tickles, and you just start feeling sad...not because Ms. Tickles is up to four shots per week now, but because you'll realize that this is what humanity has come to. A world where prudencefecklessmcsmith37 calls herself a poet, along with 50 others who leave comments of praise for her so-called poetry along with well-wishes for Ms. Tickles. Oh, but she'll never be successful with her writing you think to yourself, trying to feel better about the world. But it's already happening. Shitty writers everywhere are not only publishing their shit- they're making butt-loads of money off of it. And you? You and your carefully written poetry or your novel that has so much potential? You have writer's block and you are too busy working to have time to write.

Anyways, consider yourself warned. If you're too lazy or scared to troll over to The Poetry Showcase, it's your lucky day because I have brought one of their poems here! This was a lovely little turd of a poem I found the other day - the subject matter makes it particularly relevant for our theme of drunkenness here at The Sloshed Poet. I've only taken excerpts from this poem, since it was so freakin' long. My comments are in red.

Just in case.

Tipsy by Chuck Rickman

La la la la, I'm so tipsy.
It's always so amazing to me
How much more perfect life can be
When you're a little tipsy. (agreed, but I already hate you because of your rhyming)

Why can't the president get tipsy?
Maybe then he'd be true,
Cause lying is just too hard to do
When you're good and tipsy. (this is the point where I just started feeling sad)

WhY CaNT writrz bee tispy?
Id't bee soooo much more fnu
Reeding stfuf that doznt maek too much sense tooooo reed all teh tiem liek this
CuZ YoUUUU Fogret to ryme when tispy! (Oh! Oh! I see what you did there! You misspelled things like a tipsy person would! And everyone knows how hard it is to keep your left pinky away from that damned shift key after a couple of cold ones! Clever to the max, Mr. Rickman!)

And why can't bus drivers and text drivers be tipsy?
Oh cause that'd be stupid. (It's one thing to be silly in your poetry, but now you're just being a racist homophobe. My two favorite bus drivers when I was little - Anita the lesbian and Javier the Mexican - were both tipsy at least every other day, and it wasn't stupid. I don't know what "text drivers" are.)

And why can't scientists get tipsy?
Hmmm.. What happens when you mix these.... BOOM!
I guess tipsy scientists could lead to much doom,
So they'd have to stay VERY lightly tipsy. (Moral implications not appreciated: Science will lead to the apocalypse)

And why can't we all be tipsy?
Cause every woman and man's-a
Better off that way, so just head to the next stanza,
Then we'll all get tipsy! (Stop, stop, stop, stop, oh God, please stop.)

I don't deny it's bad to be too tipsy,
But really I'm too tipsy to care.
Just be careful you don't go out there (...where? Since you didn't say, I'm assuming you mean to California because I might get raped by a gay Mexican. Really? Another tasteless joke? This is just crude now, Chuck.)
If you're a little too tipsy.

WHEEEEEEEEEEE!
Yeah I know that didn't end with tipsy,
Why are you getting so lip-sy?
I'm done here, so I can go WHEEEEEEEEEEE! (...are you peeing?)

Comments posted on TPS for Chuck's poem:

 

Sucky sober poetry

I still occasionally write sober poetry, and again I will emphasize the suckiness of this poetry compared to my drunk poetry. In case you do not believe me, I am going to prove it to you.

First this preface: Most of the sober poetry I write is part of this exchange I have going on with my mother. Every week, one of us picks out 3 words, and we both have to use those words in a poem. On Sundays, we email each other whatever we've come up with (awwww, I know, it's very sweet).

A couple weeks ago, I picked the words "combustion," "Russian," and "womanly" for our poems. Don't ask me why I chose them - they just came to me. Here's the piece of crap sober poem that I wrote. I didn't even title it because it's so shitty.

Combustion, combustion,
light it up like a matchstick
and smoke over the broad view-
the womanly landscape,
thick trunks of white Russian pine
still drunk on the
last licks of winter.
Let it fester and smolder
in the blurry forgettable background,
poking and prodding and stoking-
oblivious to the woman's swiveling hips
until she kicks you in the groin
with her back-draft.

Um, just a sec - I'll be right back. I just have to go puke a little bit...

Okay, I'm back. You agree with me, right? Call the janitor, because that poem was absolutely vomitrocious. Now for the drunk version. I still used the 3 poetry assignment words, but in way that is the opposite of sucky (aka AWESOME):

Sexy Time?

Combustion!

It’s all in the making-

My triumphant mechanics

And your

Respective

Womanly

Parts.

We fit like

Shapes in a baby’s puzzle.

We’ll have babies!

With Russian noses

And your…

Skin.

You have good skin.

What?

That doesn’t go there?

So this is what it feels like

To go spelunking…

Okay, so,

I may have lied about the combustion.

The secret to good poetry is to not be like Nicolas Cage.

People do stupid things when they are drunk. Like singing karaoke. Or getting a unicorn tattoo. Or peeing in the sink. I write poetry. And for some inexplicable reason (it may have something to do with magic), my drunk poetry is phenomenally better than my sober poetry.

Yes, I also write poetry when I am sober. It's where I got started. Unfortunately, the majority of this poetry usually falls somewhere between trash and poop. I guess I can't be too hard on myself. Most poetry out there- probably like 99% - is complete crap. Most of that 99% comes from English majors, I'm pretty sure. Anyways, given the suckiness of my past poetry, you'd think I would have given up and moved on to a more sensible hobby. The problem is that I've tasted that elusive 1%. On rare occasions, I've been able to extract that one sparkling diamond poem out of the trash and poop. It's like Dave Matthews or Nicolas Cage - they were able to miraculously produce that one good noteworthy performance, and now, no matter how shitty they are at what they do, they just keep pumping out more and more shit because they know that glorious feeling of pure shit-free success, and they want more.

But I don't want to be like Dave Matthews, and I definitely don't want to be like Nicolas Cage. In my perfect world, I would be the Lady Gaga or the Meryl Streep of poetry, pulling diamonds out of the poop left and right. I want to find that happy 1% more than just once in a blue moon.

Fortunately, fate has smiled on me. At last, at last, a key to good poetry! All my writing needed was a swift kick in the pants from a bottle of vodka. And lucky for me, I love drinking! It's really a fantastic set up for me.

The future looks much brighter now for my poetry. And while I'm still no Gaga or Streep, I'm probably on par with Robert Downey Jr. and I'm moving on up! The best part of it is - if I still write the occasional shitty poem, it doesn't matter because - hey, I was drunk.