pudge's Journal: Pudge Is A Bad Man

Long before the All-Star Voting thing or Jesux, I was in high school and played one of my best pranks ever.

It was my senior year, and the school's literary magazine was accepting submissions. I submitted a few under my own name. Ironically, the point of the ones they accepted was that imagery and symbolism are nonsense, which was a direct assault on most of the works in the magazine. But that wasn't a prank, I just liked those verses, which happened to be from a song I wrote called Images (live performances by my band available at that link).

I decided (in keeping with the aforementioned anti-imagery in Images) to write the worst poem that I could, and submit it. I don't remember exactly how I decided to write it, whether it was free-from or whether I came up with theme first, but the result was pure crap. I submitted it under a pseudonym, and ... it was chosen for the very last page of the literary magazine, which, as you may know, is normally reserved for the best, most poignant, piece.

When I saw it, I was in English class and I laughed out loud and told a friend what happened. One of the editors of the magazine overheard what I said. She probably still hates me to this day, but man, it was funny.

Without further ado, here's the crappy poem I wrote:

Roofers

closing in, allowed to fall
Night sweeps over the land like the
blanket I pull over my
quavering head.
Things I have done
Dreams
        (nightmares)
                I have acted out
haunt my soul
shout my sin like so many
roofers,
        stepping
                dropping things
                        (nightmares)
                                on the
roof
        (conscience)
sins I have forgotten reform as
debris, falling through the
air-conditioning vent
reminding me
not letting Me
forget
the
        (sin)
                debris.

--Randolph Hsilgne

Frisbeetarianism - When you die...

[johndiii]

...your soul goes up on the roof and gets stuck. :-) Seriously, though, that poem seems tailor-made to appeal to people on a high-school literary magazine. A bit of angst, a strained metaphor, a little non sequitur to inject some dissonance...

Gotta be careful of those air conditioning ducts [cnn.com].

Re:

[turg]

Though I think perhaps that you (pudge) are/were perhaps not too familiar with just how bad teenage poetry could be. This metaphor is too original and too complex to be in the bottom 50% of submissions.

Re:

[pudge]

But it certainly isn't back-page material!

lol

[nocomment]

The first few lines I was thinking that it wasn't so bad. When the roofer metaphor began I was laughing the rest of the way through it.

Close...

[Talinom]

But not quite up to Vogon standards [wikipedia.org].

Still... Smashing job!