The Fourth Annual Horrible College-Student Poetry Competition: And the Winner Is…

Oh, dear reader, today is the big day. For in this humble installment of “The Hatemonger’s Quarterly,” we shall announce the official winners of the prestigious Fourth Annual Horrible College-Student Poetry Competition (details of which you can read here). This competition is, if we must say so ourselves, among the most heralded bad poetry contests in North America, and winning it outright will likely change your life—for the better, of course.

Now, before we get to the winning poems, we must stress what a difficult time our Official Contest Judge, Anonymous, had in ranking the entries. This year our humble contest received an ungodly number of submissions—even more than in years past. Accordingly, there is a darn good chance that contestants will not find their poems reproduced and praised below.

For this, of course, we’re deeply sorry—especially given the impressively high quality (that is to say, low quality) of the submissions. We wish, dear reader, that you could all win. But, logistically speaking, that simply wouldn’t be possible.

Okay, okay, okay, you say: Enough of the hand-wringing. Bring on the horrible college-student-esque verse. Your wish is our command.

Fourth Runner-Up

Our fourth runner-up is the spirited “weblogger” Phoenix, whose entry, you’ll agree, is delightfully atrocious.

Landry List of Filthy Dirty Super-bad Evil Warmongering Neo-Con Conspiracies by Phoenix

Corsets, PMS, Bloat
High Heels, hoop skirts, no vote

Pantyhose are evil too
Blame it all on the Jew

Very nice, is it not? We particularly esteemed the lines “White penis power/Denies the victims of the clock tower/Like Cho.” That is some dandy tin-eared balladry.

Third Runner-Up

Our third-runner up is good ole’ Gordo, better known as the Internet’s famous Cranky Neocon. We think you’ll agree that his entry has a certain, as the French say, “I don’t know what.”

From The Shadows by Gordon

From the Shadows
You oppress
Darkness cast from behind the Mountain of your Billion$$
Burning Stell, Injecting AIDS, Buying Lo and $elling Hi.

Take us From the Shadows.

Darn good, no? We especially esteemed the line “I can only stand aloof, weeping,” as it strongly implies that the undergraduate author doesn’t know the definition of the word aloof.

Second Runner-Up

If our fourth and third runners-up are that good, you can only guess how strong (that is, weak) are the bigger winners. Second runner-up status has been granted to Cathy Mossholder, a longtime reader from Setauket, NY.

GO TO WAR by Cathy Mossholder

Shall my darling,
My dear dog Peachy
Go to war
For the machine?

Shall she romp
And play no more
Another lost soul
For nothing?

Yeah, that was really touching. Is there anything as insultingly trivializing as envisioning one’s dog being drafted? If you ask us, signs point to No.

First Runner-Up

It was a real dogfight (no pun intended) for first place. As you’ll see, we received two really dynamite (that is, horrible) poems, and Anonymous had a bear of a time picking between them. Here, dear reader, is the first-runner up entry, which nearly took home the bacon. It’s by Alex Preston, another longtime “Hatemonger’s Quarterly” fan.

(un-titled) by a womyn

years of rape will not stop me
cutting, bleeding, crying
i will rise to your challenge, to your quest
to defeat
me

yes,
that you can be sure of

Man, that was good! Or, perhaps we should say, Grrrl, that was good! Mr. Preston’s entry positively screams “I just took one women’s studies class and it has changed my life.” The lame line-breaks, the horrid misspellings, the vapid feminist clichés—this poem has it all!

The Winner

As you might very well imagine, if Mr. Stroman’s submission is of that caliber, the winner must have entered a simply heavenly poem. And such was the case. To devoted fans of our annual Horrible College-Student Poetry Competitions, our winner will be well known: Michael E. Lopez, Esq., the winner of all of the previous years’ contests.

What makes Mr. Lopez’s entries so compelling? We’ll let you judge that for yourself, dear reader. But we think that Mr. Lopez never fails to get the tone just right. He doesn’t hit you over the head with vapid sentiments and obtuse pontifications. Rather, he writes poems that seem realistic—as if they came directly from a college poetry magazine.

we are the one by Michael E. Lopez

it only takes a single voice
and we are the one who stand against the lies
against the powerful

and i shall be the first
to take my stand against the dark
with this poem.

Oh, that’s simply delicious! How spot-on can you get? The poem’s so perfectly attuned to the self-satisfied undergraduate psyche that we wondered whether we wrote this thing as college sophomores. And the pseudo-clever ending? It just doesn’t get any better than that.

Accordingly, we, the crack young staff of “The Hatemonger’s Quarterly,” are pleased as punch to crown Michael E. Lopez as the victor of our Fourth Annual Horrible College-Student Poetry Competition.

Can Mr. Lopez make it five in a row? We’ll have to find out next year.