Poetry Contest: Haiku and Lowku From the Left Coast

“Cowabunga dude!” Thor said.

Moe sighed. “He’s been reading the California entries for your poetry contest,” he told me, “and I think it has affected his brain.”

“Eeee-uuuuu,” said Thor. “This one is gnarly to the max!”

This is the first year that my poetry contest, the theme of which was “hard times,” was opened up to the whole nation. The immediate effect was to get about 10 zillion entries from California, a place where nobody has to work for a living because they can pick oranges right off the tress, which means they have a lot of time to write limericks and haiku.

And though the Left Coast people did really well this year, the judges--me and my two poetry police, Thor and Moe--gave the laurel wreath to an Easterner, George S. Friedman of Towson State University in Maryland, who won with:

In this world of pollution and rubble,

I see nothing but sorrow and trouble.

So I’m searching for hope

Through my new telescope

(Had it made by a fellow named Hubble).

First runner-up, who will become Miss America should anything happen to George, is David Thomas Atkins of Los Angeles:

The four horsemen that gallop so pale,

Are faced solely by George Bush of Yale,

But what’s in the news

To give me the blues,

Is that pacing the wings is Dan Quayle!

Second runner-up goes to Peter Larsen, Lake View Terrace, Calif.:

There was a bad hat named Hussein

Whose greediness rotted his brain;

He marched without pity

On rich Kuwait City

And claimed it as capital gain.

Third runner-up is Gerald Rhoades of Agoura Hills, Calif., who wrote a very chilling haiku that you have to think about a little. (Hint: What if the birds are not birds?)

White birds trace an arch

Through the garden of the sky

While I watch TV.

Another haiku that gets special mention for its rich irony is from T. A. Williams, Garden Grove, Calif.:

I’m being killed by

The cigarette taxes and

The high cost of beer.

Also special mention to:

Douglas W. Clark, Los Angeles:

Slick politicos.

Oil. Mid-East. Oil. Palms. Oil. Well?

Machine guns. Oil well.

E. Kahan, Rolling Hills Estates, Calif.:

Become literate

Utilize the alphabet

Read beyond his lips.

Daniel L. Thomas, Baltimore:

Oleaginous

Smarm Meister General, George,

Oozed down razor’s edge.

Herbert Fisher, Stevenson, Md.:

My Porsche and TV are in a stew,

My kids can’t listen to 2 Live Crew.

O for the good old days,

When my parents could laze

Through the Depression and World War Two!

Lynne Eastman, Avon, Ohio:

There was a young girl from St. Paul

Who would not study at all,

She giggled and laughed

Till I knew she was daft,

But she wept when she flunked study hall.

Matthew Petties, Beaumont, Tex.:

Racism and Hate:

Deep in the heart of Dixie

or omnipresent?

While I got hundreds of poems attacking Saddam Hussein, there was one who took his side. It is from Johnathan J. Lewis, Los Angeles:

In spite of their might I refuse to fight.

Insight shows light that it’s all for the House of the White.

Saddam is a friend to me.

Not an Arab enemy.

Despite all the planning, only understanding

will make the night bright.

There was also this from Br. John, Apache Mission, Whiteriver, Ariz.:

Everybody’s drunk

Tryin’ to forget the ways

White man . . . it up.

But on a lighter note, there was the entry of Jane Stagner of Joshua Tree, Calif., who wrote:

My job took me out of my state,

The Realtors are making me wait,

With broke clientele

My house will not sell,

I’ll throw in my in-laws for bait.

But let’s end this on a hopeful haiku by Gary Richman of Baltimore, a stockbroker at Shearson Lehman:

Despair of winter

Must precede in ev’ry year

Spring’s heightened colors.

If a stockbroker can be optimistic, you know there’s hope.

And here’s hoping that the theme of my next poetry contest will be good times.

Have a better New Year, everybody.