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Contests : Wergle Flomp Free Poetry Contest : Past Winners : 2008 : Matt Babcock
NEVER LIKED GINSBERG
Never liked Ginsberg.
Never liked Howl.
Never liked tomatoes or Y as a vowel.
Never liked summer squash.
Never liked pumpkin pie.
Never liked when eyelashes got in my eye.
Never liked Ginsberg.
Never liked Ferlinghetti.
Never liked sinuses or being compared to yeti.
Never liked erudition.
Never liked puns.
Never liked loaded semi-automatic guns.
Never liked algebra.
Never liked math.
Never liked politics or Sylvia Plath.
Never liked suicide.
Never liked "confession."
Never liked proofreading as a profession.
Never liked syllabi.
Never liked grades.
Never liked walking barefoot on razor blades.
Never liked feedback.
Never liked Strunk & White.
Never liked thunderstorms while flying a kite.
Never liked Emily.
Never liked 'Because I could not stop for Death.'
Never liked most faculty members
because it seemed they always had bad breath.
Never liked the GRE.
Never liked the ACT.
Never liked the IRS.
Never liked those who profess
to like sandwiches with watercress.
Never liked lectures.
Never liked "form."
Never liked constructive criticism or living in a dorm.
Never liked seating charts.
Never liked friendly advice.
Never liked making my thesis statements clear and concise.
Never liked Whitman.
Never liked Leaves.
Never liked leotards or those poofy Renaissance sleeves.
Never liked iambic pentameter.
Never liked literary perameters.
Never liked being mad at my mom, but I am at 'er
because she sent me peanut brittle
again for Christmas this year,
and I never liked peanut brittle.
Never liked revision.
Never liked style.
Never liked people you could smell from a mile.
Never liked Eliot.
Never liked what it means to exist.
Never liked plotting the spiritual wasteland of the modern humanist.
Never liked Ginsberg.
Never liked "The Beats."
Never liked plumbing or unlaundered sheets.
Never liked peer response groups.
Never liked "voice."
Never liked tautological feminist readings pinpointing the problematic sociopolitical sense of domestic alienation in James Joyce.
Never liked Ginsberg.
Never liked Howl.
Never liked decorum or using someone else's towel.
But I never once stopped,
in my attempts to be free,
to think that before I never liked them
they never liked me.
Sent as a joke to Poetry.com, this poem was a finalist in the 2008 Wergle Flomp humor poetry contest sponsored by Winning Writers.
About Matt Babcock
Matt used to write advertising copy for a New York publisher; now he teaches English in Idaho. He's married, has four daughters, and one pug puppy, Bobo. He has the honor of being Central Elementary's two-time spelling bee champ and "Mr. Jerome High School". After twenty-five years of being a self-taught unicyclist, he gave his one-wheeler to his neighbor, Randy, who has since moved to Colorado. He still dreams about the afternoon he rode the log flume ride at Knotts Berry Farm, just inches ahead of the car in which Michael Jackson rode with his bodyguards.
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