Bad Poetry

Bad Poetry is a term I use to refer to a series of tragic, ironic and consistent events that occur within a character’s life, without conscious reason, but simply for the pleasure and entertainment of the Gods. It can be found on that particular morning when your alarm clock fails to go off, where you miss breakfast and opt for coffee because you’re running late. It dances into your life when you rejoice at the fact that you’ve packed lunch and picked an outfit the night before, but in assuming you have the upper hand, Bad Poetry spills your scorching hot saviour of Columbian hazelnut all over your suit. It makes the cottage cheese in your lunch go bad earlier than promised and makes the strap of your satchel give out on your way to your car. That maniacal laugh you hear at the nape of your neck is not your own, it comes from a throne, or round table, or palace in the sky. Bad Poetry is the awful events within your life, which inspire your most powerful writing and the ugliest art. It is the bad poetry that makes for the best poetry. It is the catalyst for a romanticized legacy like those of Mark Rothko, Sylvia Plath and Marilyn Monroe. Your life becomes a sit-com for the Gods, and yet that makes you somewhat special, but its only after you are dead that this ‘specialness’ is realized.

‘I had too much bad poetry this morning.’