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Overloading the Machine
Hotel Weather Report
No, it wasn't the same as my canyon-outlook,
But its stickiest fragment, a toe wiggle or a cough,
I pocketed. I remember
Drawing on red feathers the lost receipts
Of thrifty photographs, now adrift
In which direction? Isn't anyone
At the hole for us? We match well.
Thoughts resume their art. Autumn rakes
Are knee-deep. My son writes,
"not yet." Much interference is dialed-in
As the eavesdropper knows, but my own feeling
Is better viewed from a cliff.
Why no respite from outsider predictions,
From these dandelion idiots? This passion for blinds?
Coincidentally the hailstones, falling like crumbs,
Will always aggressively ask the window for seconds.
Not the case with my catalog picture of you
Under the mistletoe. Bundled there
Are whodunits and nibbles of cookie—
Lumpy potatoes, lumps of pillow for one head,
My years of random slurring and chemistry.
Don't run from the season premier
(However I turn is soon to be done),
Or the pebbles cavorting in your wake.
They spit on the suitable offer, the current
Beneath cordial like blankets quilted under picnics,
Wailing buckets about has-been coupons expired,
In lesser venues and crowds—so we may never get to check out
On a day like today, or yesterday.
Like an expensive sports car, fine-tuned and well-built, Portia was sleek,
shapely, and gorgeous, her red jumpsuit moulding her body, which was as warm
as seatcovers in July, her hair as dark as new tires, her eyes flashing like
bright hubcaps, and her lips as dewy as the beads of fresh rain on the hood;
she was a woman driven -- fueled by a single accelerant -- and she needed a
man, a man who wouldn't shift from his views, a man to steer her along the
right road: a man like Alf Romeo.
-- Rachel Sheeley, winner
The hair ball blocking the drain of the shower reminded Laura she would never
see her little dog Pritzi again.
-- Claudia Fields, runner-up
It could have been an organically based disturbance of the brain -- perhaps a
tumor or a metabolic deficiency -- but after a thorough neurological exam it
was determined that Byron was simply a jerk.
-- Jeff Jahnke, runner-up
Winners in the 7th Annual Bulwer-Lytton Bad Writing Contest. The contest is
named after the author of the immortal lines: "It was a dark and stormy
night." The object of the contest is to write the opening sentence of the
worst possible novel.
This page was last modified on 2011 December 20. "Hotel Weather Report" by John Sullivan is Copyright ©2003 - 2011, and licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 United States License.