First Annual SSIC Poetry Contest

We at Snow Shoveling in Canada are proud to announce the winners of the First Annual SSIC Poetry Contest.

Submissions were judged on originality, style, poetic structure, and order in which they were pulled from the hat.

And so, without further ado, here are the winners:

FIRST PRIZE:

MID-DAY CRICKET

Do you dare attract a mate, O mid-day cricket,
Calling all alone from your light-dappled thicket?
Chirp, chirp, chirping ‘neath a hazy, August sun;
You’ll find more competition when this long day is done.

SECOND PRIZE:

ODE TO THE BLACK JACK

Spank me when I’m born and toast me when I die,

Breakfast in the morn and a snort when evening’s nigh.
I’ll eat KD for lunch, and drink JD for dinner,
All’s fine on the outer, when Jack Daniel’s warms the inner.

THIRD PRIZE (this entrant could have claimed top prize, but they tried to sneak in four poems masquerading as one. As such, the entry was penalized, which may have cost this contestant incalculable fame and fortune):

GRAND LEGENDS OF THE OLD WEST

General George Armstrong Custer

Oh, that bastard cuss Custer
just couldn’t cut the mustard.
And thus the dastard bit dust.
His last stand was a mass bust.

---

Wyatt Earp

What is a man?

Consider Wyatt Earp; why he wasn’t worth a burp
when it comes to the measure of a man.

Real men are good and kind; they show love; are more refined
than those thugs such as Wyatt and his clan.

---

Wild Bill Hickok

You cannot say it’s fact that he enjoyed to kill,
but many men were slain by the guns of Wild Bill.

Yet, just desserts are served when brutes like Hickok fall
at the hands of punks like the vengeful Jack McCall.

---

Billy the Kid and Jesse James

When compiling a list like this
of such legends, I’d be remiss
if I did not mention the names
Billy the Kid and Jesse James.

Were they heroes, like Robin Hood;
misunderstood, and mainly good?
Ruthless killers is what they were;
Filthy dog and a loathsome cur.

Have you ever read such "poetry"? Words like these are rarely seen or heard nowadays. Whenever I pore over such lyrical versification as this, I'm reminded of  Robert Frost (a favorite of snow shovelers everywhere), or that great poet of the environmental movement, John "Green Wit" Leafier. Other poets also come to mind such as  William Butler Keats and John Manservant Yeats. 

Oh, no one beats Yeats and Keats

For words so sublime and rich.

But of those greats, Keats and Yeats,

I'm never sure which is which.

The poem above received an honorable mention in our contest.

While we're on the subject of mentioning, I'd like to mention one of my favorite poets, Emily Dickinson. A biography of her on Famous Poets and Poems  reads in part, "Dickinson assembled many of her poems in packets of 'fascicles' which she bound herself with needle and thread." It's a wonder those fascicles didn't make her poetry collection a sopping mess.

Two other poets I should call attention to are e.e. cummings and T.S. Eliot. Mr. cummings is probably best known as the poet who had a defective shift key on his typewriter. Mr. Eliot is famous for writing poems for which the musical Rats was based. The most famous song from this play was that ballad to a cuddly little sewer rodent, Ben.

You may be interested in knowing that I've done a little dabbling in poetry myself. But my poems are more likely to begin with words like, "There once was a gal from Grants Pass..."

Email me if you want to know how the rest of it goes.