GoodPoem!BadPoem!

Poetry contests are wonderful things, and cannot be forever ignored. Not if you've ever taken a shot at writing a poem, or even just reading a winning entry. You have to be heartened to the point of already spending your fortune-to-be, when a $20,000 winner contains lines exactly like... and I MEAN it...

Your belly's a beer barrel's paradise

... and...

I notice a little mole under your armpit and...

I have been trying my whole life NOT to say things like that, certainly not around women I haven't dated awhile, anyway. I had no idea this was deep stuff.

So you start to salivate -- which apparently can be the central theme of the next $20,000 winner, figuring the judges are one of three things: (1) complete, total morons; (2) complete, total geniuses; (3) related, closely, to the winners. Which is only slightly different than being complete, total geniuses.

I think too highly of people to believe in skullduggery. I believe that if you are going to run a poetry site, you must at least LIKE poetry, and have some inkling of what good poetry is. And what isn't. So I am left with the scary, thrilling idea that maybe I'm more of a genius myself than I ever imagined. Believe me: I CAN DO THIS. I know all about beer barrels, and beer bellies, and the relationship between the two. I've got moles. There, even.

People need to be encouraged to be themselves when they write. If they do, we will have a world teeming with poets, which really beats a world teeming with about anything else you can think of. Poets tend to be non-violent, vegetarian-type folk, who don't always smell all that good, but certainly mean well. Entries like the above demonstrate our vast spiritual potential, and our ability to capture such important concepts in so few words. Don't try to rhyme: you'll lose your audience, and anyway, lines like these have their own melody, rhythm. They present the human race with more poetic options than "A horny old blighter named Worm..." And that has so many possibilities.

Back to our award-winner, how would YOU complete the thought? (Don't peek now)

Got yours? This is how SHE did it:

I notice a little mole under your armpit and
You try to peer with all your might. I laugh.

I'll bet you came up with something REAL CLOSE to that. Might well have topped it. When I did a random online poll, asking folk to compose a follow-up line, I had entries that I thought shone far brighter than the winning one. These included:

I notice a little mole under your armpit and

I don't feel so good all of a sudden, and make one of those barfy kinds of coughs.

Decide not to tell you, but also never to sleep with you again, or certainly make you keep your arms DOWN at all times.

You tell me I've got a wart on my butt. I sneeze.

It's growing hair. Lots of hair.

I wanted to buy the rights to that last one. The thought was so simple, so real. I could almost pluck it.

People warn against poetry contests: they say the sponsors are just trying to take you, by hinting you've (all of you've) got mystic, rare, Frost-ian talents even greater than those you were told you had when you drew that little turtle guy. I say, don't be an idiot and go through life wondering whether you HAD it, but didn't KNOW it. If you're going to be an idiot, go WRITE like one and maybe, if the sponsors are running out of relatives, you can win something. You know you can't write your way into, out of, or even onto a paper bag. Uncle Bill, however, may not. To be a great poet, you must pull together emotions and experiences that create images we sense more than read, images that speak to the philosophies that reside deep inside us. That little mole is something else. Something much other than a little mole. It is the RIGHT path. The RIGHT word. It is a WINNING mole.

And that makes all the difference.