Chel Owens – Poetry, Short Prose and Walking

Terrible Valentine Sonnet

Occasionally I post nonsense verse as comments on blogs such as on Esther Chilton’s Laughing Along With A Limerick or Chel Owen’s Terrible Poetry contests.

One day I might repost some of those limericks. Today I’m reposting what I submitted to Chel’s Terrible Poetry Contest: Valentine’s 2025.

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A sonnet is too long for me to write.
Besides I can’t remember how one goes.
Though rhythm, rhyme and such might bring delight
I cannot write another one of those.

Be happy, for a change, is all I ask.
Is it too much for smiles to bless your face?
A frown is such an ugly sort of mask,
so smile a teensy bit and show some grace.

We’ll soon be dead and then some say we’re gone,
but others say we’ll have to face a hell.
If heaven’s not the road we’re fighting on
we probably should repent of that as well.

In hell we might be roommates, don’t forget.
So smile, my dear, we haven’t got there yet.

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Bad Driver – Terrible Poetry Contest (WINNER!)

I am grateful to Chel Owens for selecting my free verse poem as the winner of the most recent Terrible Poetry Contest. The award winning poem and my attempt to explain it are below.

Also a new Terrible Poetry Contest has started. You may be the next winner!

Bad Driver

I told my shrink that the cops brought me here because of my bad driving and he said I had no record of ever driving a car in my life and I told him, not car, spaceship, S-P-A-C-E-S-H-I-P, and he said I had no spaceship and wasn’t an alien because my DNA test, D-N-A, showed I’m human enough and I told him, well, then why am I in that padded cell and he said I wasn’t in any cell and I asked him if he was trying to drive me crazy and if he was he wasn’t doing a good job of it and then he said I was brought in because I was scaring the neighborhood kids and the judge assigned me to him and I told him that I had a lot of fun turning my head 360 degrees like an owl and he said I couldn’t do stuff like that and I asked him whether he ever saw me and he said no and so I asked him if he wanted to see me turn my head 360 degrees and he said, “Sure, Marvin, go ahead turn your head 360 degrees like an owl, go on show me” and so I turned my head 360 degrees like an owl and he called the exorcist.

This poem is in imitation of Gerald Stern’s American Sonnets. These “sonnets” have no rhyme nor meter (and often no sense that I could detect). They are mostly one sentence long allowing the reader to put in line breaks or not. I would call them terrible American sonnets, but he won some award for them and they are occasionally entertaining.

And now I’ve won an award for one as well!

Chel Owens' Terrible Poetry Contest Winner Award

Resolutions

Chel Owens challenges us to write a funny, clean limerick about “resolutions”.

Those demons look deeply demented.
Based on deeds, none of them have repented.
Resolutions to keep
Are not won on the cheap.
With such demons you’ll turn up tormented.

Unfortunately I doubt that limerick’s funny. Here’s another attempt.

How I wish I could make resolutions
That would stick when they’re stuck in solutions
When solutions go weak
Resolutions will streak
At the cost of some nasty pollutions.

And that limerick doesn’t make any sense. Here’s another attempt.

Every plan I attempt goes to pot.
Every dream I cook up has a spot.
Resolutions today
May resolve in some way,
But they’re not, though, the kind that I’ve got.

And so I give up my resolution to write a limerick.

Linked to A Mused Poetry Contest.