Poetry Friday: “The Grossest Poem, Ever”

“And now for something completely different…”

And by ‘different,’ I mean the complete and utter antithesis of the pastoral, reflective, poem-y stuff I’ve been throwing at you the last couple of weeks.

The idea for this came to me after reading some poems – from somewhere I don’t recall – about dirt and boogers and monsters and such.  Icky, disgusting things.  But the poems, to me, fell short in one area – none of them were really gross.  Overboard gross.  Top-of-the-trash-heap, knock-a-buzzard-off-a-manure-wagon gross.

I decided that what the world needed, at that very moment in time, was the Grossest Poem, Ever…and by gosh, I was just the person for the job.

It was fortunate for me that I wrote it, too, because it formed the basis of one of my current manuscripts – a poetry collection of gross, weird, and disgusting things, from vomit to vampires, mud pies to milk bubbles.  (What’s that, you say?  Milk bubbles aren’t gross?  They are when I get hold of ’em!)  I still need to write another 5 or 6 poems to complete the manuscript, but it has taken a backseat to my current project, that winter-themed collection I’ve told you about.

So as always, I hope you like my Poetry Friday offering; it’s definitely ‘different!’  And for more poems, Marjorie at Paper Tigers has the whole Poetry Friday list!

The Grossest Poem, Ever

The poem you’re about to read
Is neither smart nor clever;
It is, however, possibly
The grossest poem ever.

The plot is thin, the story weak,
The rhymes are very simple;
It hints at things like hairy warts
And how to pop a pimple.

It deals with snot and mucus, too,
And phlegm and giant boogies;
It mentions puke and pus and poo
And slimy yellow loogies.

This poem, I should warn you now,
Might make your belly sicken;
Especially the part about
How toe jam starts to thicken.

It talks about the stuff inside
An ugly, swollen blister
And why you shouldn’t pick your scabs
And throw them at your sister.

It uses words like “stinky pits”
And “vomit,” “barf,” and “spew;”
“Regurgitate” and “smelly belch”
And “hurl,” to name a few.

So there it is – the grossest poem!
Thanks for getting through it;
I only wrote it ‘cause my teacher
Said I shouldn’t do it.

-Matt Forrest Esenwine