Today in poetry class we had an assignment to write a "bad poem" and read it aloud. I was sad to find that people had written great poems disguised to seem mediocre by using careless word choice and diction. Some even took the time to go through their newsfeed and cleverly put together a series of emotional-diarrhea-y statuses into stanzas. Very reminiscent of trash art. But then again, I realize, an assignment to write a bad poem could never truly be bad. Theres too much artifice involved in the activity for true, honest, fucked-up-beyond-belief badness. And of course I faked it too; its just that others did it better. That made me genuinely upset! Does that make sense? Is there too much push-and-pull there? And, more importantly: does an attempt toward genuineness often foster artifice, and then bam, a genuine response, then some fake action, then some more genuine laughter...


Attached is the poem I wrote for class. My personal guidelines for writing bad poetry included forced rhymes, vagueness, lack of focus, and just bad writing in general, but a lot of my peers utilized a various combination of cliches and stupid metaphors that I really enjoyed as well. Smart kids.


Books, sit on a shelf
One sits, on wrong side, by self.
Alone. We cannot help.
Why not stand and Yelp?
Who am I, but an immobile shelf.


Guichanaso. Notice how I ranted anyway?