Botch

Two Writing Teachers is hosting the Slice of Life Challenge for March.

Today is a day for me.  Well, I have one appointment at a school this morning, but then it is a day for me.  And I am going to breathe deeply and enjoy it!

This afternoon my happy cleaning lady friend will be here and she will make my house look like new...plus I think I'm going to work on the dreaded hall closet!  Boots, coats, hats, work gloves and miscellaneous things that I don't even want to know are in there.  Some of my daughter's dance recital costumes are there, I believe.  Tomorrow you will know what we found!  This will be soooo embarrassing, but I'm going to do it!

But right now, I am watching the dogs gnaw on one another, watching the cat watch them from the stairs, looking at a dozen yellow roses my husband brought home for me a couple of days ago because I was making him a Shepherd's Pie, and sipping a nice hot cup of black coffee!  Nice way to start a full day of me!

The results are in and I am not disappointed.  Just look, I was close AND I got the classroom vote!  This was better than I'd expected...so I'm going to take another sip of hot black coffee and open my eyes wider today!

Yesterday was a waiting day - waiting for the voting to close for my March Madness Poetry 2015 bout with Renee M. Tulippe.  It was fun to wake up and see the new numbers.  It was fun to go back and look at other bouts and see how they were coming along.  Buffy Silverman and Michelle Heidenrich Barnes both came through with wonderful poems and are going on to do great things I'm sure!  Watch for their next poems coming out in approximately 36 hours!

There is still a bunch of fun to be had reading and voting on poems!  I know I'll be reading.  I want to thank everyone who voted, whether for my poem or anyone else's!  You are the ones making this a fun tournament.  I love that I got the classroom votes - that's who I was writing to.  I can't be more pleased, really, and I am glad that I got this opportunity to write poetry under duress!  I guess I just love a challenge.

If you haven't yet gone to Ed DeCaria's site to read some poems, you really need to do that.  You may even get an idea or two for a good slice after reading some of the newly created poems there.

Heidi Mordhorst at My Juicy Little Universe is challenging poets with words ending in CH.  Today's word? Botch.  I thought it would be fun to see if you could botch up a poem.  I guess you can.  It's actually hard to do on purpose.  Try writing a truly terrible poem.  I'm not even sure it is possible when you are trying!  Even the 'botched up" sections kind of came out poetic in a manner...at least I've seen some poems like it that were called poems. I've written some.

Botched Up Poem

Can you botch up a poem?
You betcha, yes, I think you can.
Like if it is not having a rhythm and
It is not having any rhyme even

though you can, have a poem
without a rhyme
but if you cannot get it to flow;
right then maybe it is a new format

called a Botched Up Poem.
I'm not sure it is really easy to
write in the Botched Up format
I mean, it's like just saying stuff then...

I can't do it any more,
This poem's now a bore -

So -

Can you botch up a poem?
You betch-a, yes, you can.
Just ignore any rhyming
and skip all the elan.

We'd name it Botched Up Poem
a new unique format,
but if I had to write it much
I'd think "it's not all that".

I'll try it once again:

Yes you, can, botch up a poem
but you almost really have to try!
harder to botch it up
than write one that isn't.

Nope, it's too hard:

You can botch up a poem,
but it's harder than you'd think
to write a truly Botched Up one
and leave it there to....
    umm...stink? 

©Donna JT Smith, 2015

Okay, maybe tomorrow's poem will be better!  I thought that would work out to be funny, but I'm pretty sure it's just botched up.