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Your poem can be serious, silly, or something in-between. List the “random words” you chose as your poem’s title and feel free to use whatever poetic form you’d like. Then post the poem in the comments section below.

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“Rhyming, Rhythmic, Rapturous . . . and Random”

A Poetry Challenge by James A. Tweedie

“Occultic” and “bulimic” almost rhyme,
But also make a most intriguing pair;
Perhaps suggesting vomiting the slime
Of witches’ brew or other spell-cursed fare.

Indeed, if one should chance to juxtapose
Two random words that rhyme or nearly-so
Like “tragedian prose” and “pantyhose”
Imaginative thoughts would start to flow

Of Shakespeare’s Juliet in modern dress
Soliloquizing in Act Two, Scene One,
How Romeo’s embrace had made a mess
By causing her silk hosiery to run.

The challenge? Write a poem based on un-
Related words and post it just for fun.

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Sample

“Crane” “Brain”

The pachyderm had a large brain.
Extraction produced so much strain
That when the beast died
The coroner sighed
And lifted it out with a crane.

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The Society of Classical Poets does not endorse any views expressed in individual poems or commentary.


CODEC Stories:

46 Responses

  1. John E. Norvell

    Dawlish Jig

    I.

    erudite aphrodite
    elegant eloquent
    opulent company
    summer ball Albert Hall
    anecdote petticoat
    diamond crown formal gown
    pleated vest coat with tails
    collared shirt Prince of Wales

    fluted stem pink champagne
    roasted duck quiche lorraine
    talented orchestra
    tenderloin in the raw
    innocent consummate
    passionate candidate
    debutante night at a
    vanity fair–

    II.

    summertime clementine
    bachelorette suffragette
    seventeen Aberdeen
    exercise new-moon rise
    wooden stool billiards pool
    muddy boots vain pursuits
    knowing glance new romance
    hand-in-hand Irish band

    lantern light winking sprite
    dervish twirl rakish girl
    fiddle bow toe-to-toe
    battered trout Guinness stout
    magical interlude
    curious collude, while
    dreaming one night at the
    hie Dawlish Fair–

    Reply
  2. Anna J. Arredondo

    Delicatessen Poetry Lesson

    Young Francois owns a delicatessen
    He’s inherited from his late father.
    But life changed when a poetry lesson
    Shook him up and he realized he’d rather
    Spend his moments on more than cold meat,
    Quite delighting in all rhymes and meter,
    Fascinated by rhythm and feet –
    But he does have a wife, and must feed her.
    Now, while Frank’s busy bundling beef,
    In his mind there’s a virtual party –
    He’ll wax lyrical just for relief
    As he slices through Swiss and Havarti.
    While he’s certainly no Keats or Milton,
    He’s the best bard to serve up your Stilton!

    Reply
    • Cynthia Erlandson

      This is delightful, Anna! Meter/feed her; party/Havarti are a lot of fun; and it’s a short story well told, also!

      Reply
    • Susan Jarvis Bryant

      Anna, I’m with Cynthia. This is an inspirational delight of a poem. I love the random words. Huge fun!

      Reply
    • James A. Tweedie

      Anna,

      Awesome. I can’t wait to have some Miltonian Stiltonian for lunch!

      Reply
  3. Mia

    I have been trying for a while, to write a poem
    from random words of Greek etymology.
    hope it isn’t all Greek to you!

    Genesis
    Alpha and Omega spoke and lexis translated
    Into praxis, a harmonic synergy of symphony
    And melody. Through a magical syntheses
    Of dynamic energy, He breathed a musical
    And poetic chorus across the cosmos.

    In time Man spoke, Alpha, Delta and Omicron
    And through man’s cacophony, catastrophe
    And pandemonium ensued, through a strategy
    Called, hypocrisy and melodrama, bringing a
    Pandemic of agoraphobia and misanthrope.

    A psychosis of ironic proportions mushroomed,
    Into a phlegmatic bathos even a stagnant miasma
    Of chaos. Now melancholic, facing an uncertain
    Future, awaiting both the Omega and a metamorphoses
    In the ellipsis, turns out to be a Herculean task.

    Reply
    • James A. Tweedie

      Mia,

      Your metamorphoses of random words from a Greek lexicon went viral, indeed! Fun and well done.

      Reply
      • Mia

        Thank you, perhaps I should try bilingual poems next.
        Still trying to be proficient in both languages as far as
        poetry is concerned. My excuse for not being a good
        poet in English was that it is not my first language-
        until I read other poets on here that is.

      • Mia

        I don’t know why my comment is set out as it is as I did not write it that way.

      • Mia

        Thank you, you have really made my day.
        I really appreciate that you liked it and you commented.

  4. Roy E. Peterson

    Blast and last:

    If nuclear war should
    befall earth at last,
    I want to tell my friends,
    I had a blast.

    Reply
  5. Mia

    Perhaps this fulfils the challenge a bit more.
    Either way this is a lot of fun, thank you.

    Subterranean Machiavellian

    Alice in wonderland’s a fairytale,
    The rabbit hole is subterranean,
    Supposedly inhabited by a warren
    Of Machiavellian, misanthropes.
    What a yarn, surely it remains
    A classic for I feel trapped
    Turning the pages one by one.

    Reply
    • James A. Tweedie

      Mia,

      You rose to the challenge that a rose. I really like the image conjured by the clever combination of, “Machiavellan misanthropes!”

      Reply
  6. K. Price

    Feminist Larcenist:

    She drank society’s cacophonous beat
    and danced upon computer keys.
    Oblivious to grand-theft feminine
    the appeal of power drew her in.
    With austere proximity, she felt like a
    vocational refugee, plunking and sinking
    while not truly thinking for herself.
    “Go! Seize!” they cried in her ear.
    “Get yourself a respectable career,
    despite the inclination that contradicts.
    Break the walls of your house and disappear.”

    Reply
    • James A. Tweedie

      K,

      Thanks for the terrific tangle of rhythm and rhyme. Perhaps not rapturous but most certainly random!

      Reply
  7. Susan Jarvis Bryant

    Orange Blossom / Unhinged Possum

    If you’re appalled by galling rhyme,
    embrace the message – it’s sublime.
    😉

    Neath the bud-fringed orange blossom
    I espied an unhinged possum
    Snuggled on a pansy pillow
    With an addled armadillo,
    Cuddled up, a scene so awesome –
    Cock-a-hoop I came across ‘em.
    If they’d cozied neath the willow
    I’d have missed this dozy duo…

    All I saw there was a dodo
    Tuning up a hobo’s oboe.

    Reply
    • James A. Tweedie

      Susan, you caught the spirit of the challenge and created a very jammed jam session. No doubt the addled armadillo was playing the orange blossom special on his fiddle! Good fun

      Reply
  8. Paul Freeman

    myopic / microscopic … biopic

    As Hollywood grows more myopic,
    it’s just hired a star microscopic.
    His stage name is ‘Sherm’,
    an intestinal germ,
    in a true life colonic biopic.

    Reply
    • James A. Tweedie

      Paul,

      An epic pict-
      ure you depict.
      You’d have been tricked
      To rhyme “indict.”

      Reply
  9. David Watt

    Uppsala Koala

    Benjamina the reckless koala
    Stowed away on a ship to Uppsala
    For a diet of lush Nordic pine
    Tasting sweet as a Eucalypt wine.

    But alas, after just a short while,
    She determined the needles were vile,
    And the temperature more to the liking
    Of a mammoth or cold-loving Viking.

    She made haste to the Uppsala Zoo
    Where pine needles are thankfully few,
    And each day leaves of gum are supplied,
    And her pen nicely heated inside.

    Reply
    • Paul Freeman

      More like a modern nursery rhyme, and educative, to boot, I’m mightily impressed, David.

      Reply
    • James A. Tweedie

      David,

      Clever as always. rhyming Upsalla and Koala! Not too many choices there. I probably would have settled on tikka masala!

      Reply
  10. Camilla Marx

    I love this! The rhymes are clever and funny, and the imagery is lovely.

    Reply
  11. Camilla Marx

    I meant to comment on one poem, but posted in the general thread instead and can’t edit! But all of the poems have been good!

    Reply
  12. Aaron Ezekiel

    I am delighted to post my Poem ” Winds of Destiny” sharing the website with other wonderful poems, thank you.
    While wondering about life and events, I was inspired to write the following Poem.

    The Winds of Destiny

    Winds a blow gentle and light
    Caress and touch journey’s flight
    Coaxing and guiding unseen a path
    A journey by man, unknown along

    Winds a blow tranquil along
    Follow a path, certain and sure
    To keep sight of journey’s path
    all along down the road as I plod

    Strong winds by and now
    Pushing and shoving side to side
    Like a dog herding a flock
    To change a way to stubborn path.

    Wonder often, how the wind
    Now a rage, then a storm
    Taking a view renewed along
    Beseech a change to course of path

    Wonder, often the wind
    Whispers thoughts own so free
    Forcing a view in many a ways
    Of struggle and strife many a kind
    Down the road as I plod.

    Wonder often the ways of wind
    Now from side, then behind
    Pushing and goading all along,
    To change a path of struggle and strife
    Down the road as I plod.

    Uncanny its ways make my path
    Aside the pits and rocks along
    Down the road as I plod,
    And wonder often when the wind
    Stops and summons a journey’s end
    An end of path and all.

    Aaron Ezekiel

    Reply
    • James A. Tweedie

      Aaron, I thank you for sharing your poem. I am also one who wonders when the wind will stop and summon a journey;s end and all!

      Reply
    • C.B Anderson

      If nothing else, Aaron, I admire the extreme to which you have taken incoherence.

      Reply
  13. ray

    arc and oligarch

    On Noah’s Ark the Patriarch,
    had laboured hard from dawn til dark
    to so embark a cask of sharks
    who, acting like a pair of narks,
    refused to leave their water park.
    And thereupon the lark said ‘Hark!.
    (Quite a shy lark for a skylark),
    ‘Perhaps were we to sink the Ark?’
    Beau Crow said, ‘Arq, oh what a lark’
    (He had a quark as his hashmark).
    ‘Oh what could spark such stark remarks?’
    ‘Were you then ever with Bismarck?’
    ‘I hope you’re handy with landmarks.’
    Then flew a parabolic arc
    to peck the aardvark oligarch,
    now eating ants from the Ozarks,
    before he carked their Matriarch.

    Reply
  14. Kathy Bahr

    Double Cream

    Milk room shack; an inadequate sum of milk shake snake.
    Hilariously rolling about like a cow.
    In the meadow, an inadequate dose.
    Long days beneath one’s feet and sweet smell of double ice cream.

    Reply
  15. Christo

    Sysiphus contracted syphilus
    Where did he find the time
    To sire the raucous Glaucus
    Then tossed from the equine

    Reply
  16. Mo Ferree

    The Card/Lard Connection

    A card can always make one smile
    Along with birthday cakes and candles
    And to a party, we’d likely trek a mile
    Even if we’re wearing mighty lace-up sandals

    But when we speak of lard, we have to stop and think
    That in the end, it might not make us happy
    It clogs the arteries and fills up every chink
    And just might make the heart stop, within a second’s blink

    So when we think of mismatched words
    As card and lard for sure, there is no pair
    Yet never underestimate, if milk can turn to curds
    Then from card to lard, I think is very fair

    The choice is not that hard
    I’d much prefer a card to lard

    Reply
  17. Morrison Handley-Schachler

    Printer/Winter
    I incautiously placed my new printer
    On my desk, which proceeded to splinter
    And collapse in a flash,
    With an audible crash,
    And will now provide firewood for Winter.

    Reply
  18. Keith Evetts

    Thinking to rhyme
    something with moon
    that isn’t jejune;
    but I haven’t the time.

    Reply

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