Bad Poetry: Mindful Walk in the February Thaw

Yes, technically writers can keep rejected poems and stories and re-submit them somewhere else. I do that with real-world submissions. I prefer to skip the potential hassle in cyberspace. Putting it up here is my way of affirming that it's mine, just in case somebody tries to claim it as theirs...because when I sent a real-world publisher a real-world manuscript on a bet, as a teenager, my precious pages came back to me from several people other than that publisher. Which taught me something, all right--and not how bad the manuscript was: it was consciously and deliberately bad.

The lines below aren't deliberately bad. I don't know that they're good, beyond merely meeting the requirements of the form, but they were written for a contest hosted by a site that seriously encourages mindful meditation. The winning non-haiku were free verse, so I wouldn't say they were better. They were different; they painted more eye-catching word pictures. (Click here to see the winners.)

The writing brain will not be still?

Then let it whirl into the dance

Where Spring delights its senses fill.

The pigeons coo in mad romance;

Above, competing sparrows trill;

Below, an early daffodil

Nods, petals not quite open still;

A dandelion lifts its lance.

The writing brain need not be still;

Thinks through each word. Beneath the heel

A pebble rattles, cast areel

Across the pavement from the plants.

There’s time to focus every glance.

One step may last ten minutes, till

The writing brain in peace is still.