...and in its honor, I give you what is, pobbily*, the worst poem ever written in the English language



Found via the Bad Poetry Index.

A Tragedy

Theophilus Marzials

    Death!
    Plop.

The barges down in the river flop.

    Flop, plop.

    Above, beneath.

From the slimy branches the grey drips drop,
As they scraggle black on the thin grey sky,
Where the black cloud rack-hackles drizzle and fly
To the oozy waters, that lounge and flop
On the black scrag piles, where the loose cords plop,
As the raw wind whines in the thin tree-top.

    Plop, plop.

    And scudding by

The boatmen call out hoy! and hey!
All is running water and sky,

    And my head shrieks -- "Stop,"
    And my heart shrieks -- "Die."

*          *          *          *          *
My thought is running out of my head;
My love is running out of my heart,
My soul runs after, and leaves me as dead,
For my life runs after to catch them -- and fled
They all are every one! -- and I stand, and start,
At the water that oozes up, plop and plop,
On the barges that flop
                              And dizzy me dead.
I might reel and drop.
                                                Plop.
                                                Dead.

And the shrill wind whines in the thin tree-top
                           Flop, plop.
*          *          *          *          *
A curse on him.
                            Ugh! yet I knew -- I knew --
If a woman is false can a friend be true?
It was only a lie from beginning to end --

    My Devil -- My "Friend"

I had trusted the whole of my living to!

    Ugh; and I knew!

        Ugh!

    So what do I care,

And my head is empty as air --

    I can do,
    I can dare,

    (Plop, plop
    The barges flop
    Drip drop.)

        I can dare! I can dare!

And let myself all run away with my head
And stop.

    Drop.
    Dead.

    Plop, flop.

                                              Plop.









* like "possibly," only more so.