Tonight I played Magnetic Poetry: The Game. Now, magnetic poetry inevitably spawns bad poetry. So, what do you get when you add a 2 minute time limit, assign points, dictate the topic, and throw in quirky challenges? Inspired bad poetry. Yes folks, if you thought the stuff left on the refrigerator was bad, you ain't seen nothing yet. And now, a few selections from tonight's debacle.
Topic: Bug
Challenge: begin poem with a word starting with the letter e
every bug in this dream
creeps between secret things
tomorrow they go under plastic flowers
Topic: Rainbow
Challenge: end poem with the word joy
believe always in gorgeous
storms leaving beauty
thunder water sun
showering joy
Topic: Birds
Challenge: use the word storm in your poem
Birds sing & make for cover
when storm clouds thunder
in the sky
Topic: A Summer Day
Challenge: end poem with the word angel
creation of joy
gorgeous creeping beauty
a perfect girl walks
through a crowded garden
day time angel
Topic: A Romantic Evening
Challenge: use exactly 12 tiles
desire ing a perfect late night
emotion walk s through the skin
Topic: First Kiss
Challenge: begin poem with the words the monkey
the monkey drinks deeply
of kisses on clouds
an ocean of love believes in beauty
Topic: A Lake
Challenge: begin poem with a word starting with the letter s
small and calm
dark as day
skin deep fish
feel the ocean
as they go calling
in the sweet life
I'm not going to fess up as to who wrote what, but if you want to guess which one(s) I wrote, I'll tell you if you're right. I will tell you that I won, however. 98 to 95, it was a narrow victory and won over 3 contested words at that. The other team didn't like a line in my poem and vowed to give me a score of 0 for the round if I kept the words in. I refused to remove them because I liked them so much and reminded said team that I allowed "rose colored chocolates never could/ while making love almost always would" to count as a two line rhyming poem about chocolate. It was a pretty fun game in the end. The biggest challenge wasn't so much in composing poetry, because almost anything counted as a "poem," the problem was in finding the words or endings that you needed in the prescribed time.