Don’t beg me to read your poems (they most likely suck)

To whometh it mayeth concerneth,

I would like to implore thee to use thy senses.

Just because I blog does not mean I’m a qualified, bone fide writer (my split personality will beg to differ, however).

I do not have formal writer’s training. My forays into writings are limited to those pretentious essays I write in high school that my teachers seem to like. The more pretentious, the better. Layman terms are a no-no. The closest I come to a writing instructor is my mother who hovers around me brandishing sticks and flog me everytime I start my sentences with “and”, “but” and “or”.

Heh. I kid. She doesn’t brandish sticks around. She doesn’t flog me. But she will disown me just because I started this sentence with a but. Or else. (And ha ha to you, Mum!)

My point here is…just because I write on an electronic journal and left it open for literary, grammatical and whateverya analysis and criticism, I don’t consider myself a literary person.

Therefore, I DO NOT WANT TO READ OR REVIEW YOUR STUPID POEM(S).

Yes. You read right.

The next person who asked me to read and comment on their poem will be cursed to fleas of a thousand camels and itch of a thousand centuries.

What were you thinking? “Ooooh! Ooooh, look at this piece of melodramatic, romantic shit I’ve written! Oooooh! It is so proufoundly deep! Ooooh, I MUST have someone else read it and tell me how sensitive and poetic I am!”

I don’t care much about poem. That was the subject I most despised in both English and Malay language class. My literature diet while growing up, some being poems (thanks for an English teacher mother) I was lucky enough I knew what those major poem by major poets are trying to say in between the lines but heck, I despised beating around the bush in any form and manner. It may have something to do with my straightforward attitude. If I think you’re a fuckhead, I say you’re a fuckhead. I do not beat around the bush and say “thou art intercourse head and thou I disliketh”.

Hang on, that was a little bit straightforward wasn’t it? Let’s try another one:

“thou head is of that unholy activity (unless thee are married)

that bringeth the joy of lives—babies

yet, not in the joyous sense.”

Say WHAT?

Of course, the experience of having an English teacher mother, the phrase “meter! Meter! Flow! Flow!” coming out of her whenever my English teacher send me home with a poem homework. Oh, how I despise it. All I wanted to do was finish my homework and be done with the stupid drudgery of thinking of something that should be tugging heartstrings! I despised it even more when my English teachers, all of them without fail, ooh and aaahed at my poems and proceeded to make an example of it, telling the whole class “this is how a poem should feel!” The shame of that whole thing, man. I tell you. My respect for the teachers just shoots down the drain. Nay, wait…more like…

the drain…it crumbles…

leaving no room for any thing to shoot down it.

It just…crumbles.

Oh.

Dark days.

Dark days.

Say WHAT again?

I do not entirely hate poem I suppose. There have been a few that I like but there are far and few in between. If I have to like poems, I like them to be funny, tongue in cheek or sarcastic.

Poems in greeting cards I can stand because this is greeting cards and they shouldn’t say “thank God he’s dead and now we can get on with our lives!”. In this case we can beat around the bush and go “the living may grieve but life goes on knowing he’s in a better place”. Not if he’s a mobster or Saddam Hussein. Imagine Saddam’s family getting a card like that. “Oh, pretty sure he’s in a better place.” Wanna bet on it? Does he like the 17 frigid virgins he finds up there, who can do nothing cos they know nothing cos they’re virgins? Yeah! A fat lot of good that did him! I’m pretty sure he’d much prefer 17 professional escorts who’d at least know their way around his disco stick.

But ehem, that’s beside the point.

So the thing here is, most likely I’m going to think your poem sucks. Whether or not it does. Most likely, it does suck and just because I love and care about you doesn’t mean I’m going to wax lyrical about your poetic abilities if you write sucky poems. I dislike poems. And if you start writing poems that attempts to stir the emotions, I’d hate you even more. I don’t care if the person in your poem is contemplating suicide! I don’t care if your poem is about a shoe that is about to be thrown out! I don’t care if your poem is written by a stray dog! Stray dogs don’t write poems! Shoes don’t write poems! YOU DO AND YOU SUCK!

If you want constructive criticism I beg of thee, please find someone who would care to read it. Please find someone with poetic-messiah-complex to review it. Do not ask a Mad Penguin Who Think She Is The Awesomest And Therefore Should Not Be Subjected To Such Drudgery to review it.

And don’t get offended when after all that, after pestering me with comments on your poem, that I don’t comment.

Because do that again and I vow to the Olympus of high heavens I shall destroy thy muse and make thee feel like an intercourse head. Or that activity in which joy is made but without joy or whatever.

Erm…say what?

Yours in poetic instability a.k.a Peace out, Yo!

Disturbedeth Waddlingeth Madeth Penguineth