Things that should almost never appear in a poem:

[jpgray]

Ellipses.
Spontaneous outpourings of "honest" emotion.
Philosophical metaphors from "the Matrix."

[ohiosmith]

1. Stewed okra.

[RetroLounge]

4. Haiku

Eating Stewed Okra?
I would rather eat a peach.
So would Duane Allman.

RL

[JVS]

2. vwls!

[miss_american_pie]

3. ...

:spray:

[RetroLounge]

5. Okay, here goes...

Circles and ovals are easy to draw,
squares and parallelograms too,
but Ellipses and rhombuses, these are too hard,
I just cannot draw them, can you?

RL

[jpgray]

6. I'd change the meter.

Now take me to third street.

[miss_american_pie]

7. You forgot dreams

Poems should never been written about dreams. ;)

Last night I dreamed
we were kissing
so sweet and wet
that I melted into
a lake of honey.
And you dove in
and drank
and emerged with
drops of me
sticky in your hair,
clinging to your skin.
And when I cooled,
and formed back into flesh,
my mouth was still on you

[jpgray]

8. I dunno--Yeats's Cap and Bells is okay by me

Mostly I agree with Oscar Wilde on this one though.

[swimboy]

9. Peeled hard-boiled eggs.

[rockymountaindem]

10. It's hard to keep your feet dry / when you're kicking in a skull... n/t

[XNASA]

11. Brackets, Bullets, Daggers or Interrobangs.

[Misunderestimator]

12. mayonnaise

[meegbear]

13. rhymes ...

they just ruin the whole flow of the work.

[sweetheart]

14. elipticallly miscounted the bastards

Circutitous proud and dismally lost forever,
a prophet's cookies broke keanu's wooden stare,
unable to accept the new repuke voting lever,
are any voting machines counting out there?

only on the surface morepheus grinning wide,
we count dem different beneath the surface layer,
while backwell's farts keep the polling snide,
only white votes counted, virus consuming terr'r....

Whatever fucking lies they told to get elected,
the people surely smell the skanky crap they share,
Goddam bastards should (below 30) feel dejected,
not bankrupting us all with anther giant error.
Soundly defeated in a noble time of war,
kiss my ass bush bleated as i stomped some more...

[hfojvt]

15. is that all?

"I admit to two orders of poets, but no third; and by these
two orders I mean the Creative (Shakespeare, Homer, Dante)
and Reflective or Perceptive (Wordsworth, Keats, Tennyson).
But both of these must be first-rate in their range, though
their range is different; and with poetry second-rate in
quality no one ought to be allowed to trouble mankind. There
is quite enough of the best - much more than we can ever read
or enjoy in the length of a life; and it is a literal wrong
or sin in any person to encumber us with inferior work. I have
no patience for apologies made by young psuedo-poets, "that
they believe there is 'some' good in what they have written:
that they hope to do better in time," etc. Some good! If
there is not all good, there is no good. If they ever hope to
do better, why do they trouble us now? Let them rather
courageously burn all they have done, and wait for the better
days. There are few men, ordinarily educated, who in moments
of strong feeling could not strike out a poetical thought,
and afterword polish it so as to be presentable. But men of
sense know better than so to waste their time; and those who
sincerely love poetry, know the touch of the master's hand
on the chords too well to fumble among them after him. Nay,
more than this, all inferior poetry is an injury to the good,
inasmuch as it takes away the freshness of rhymes, blunders
upon and gives a wretched commonality to good thoughts; and,
in general, adds to the weight of human weariness in a most
woeful and culpable manner. There are few thoughts likely to
come across ordinary men, which have not already been
expressed by greater men in the best possible way; and it is
a wiser, more generous, more noble thing to remember and
point out the perfect words than to invent poorer ones,
werewith to encumber temporarily the world." on Modern Painters Vol. III Chapter 12]




"Didactic poetry is my abhorrence; nothing can be equally
well expressed in prose that is not tedious and
supererogatory in verse." Unbound, p. 6]

Which pill should I take the blue or the red?
If I make the wrong choice I could end up dead.
Illusion's so sweet with parties and steaks.
Reality so harsh with battles and aches.

Am I a drone or am I 'the one'?
Should I battle machines or try to have fun?
I decide in my head
to myself being true
either way I might one day rue
I think I'll choose ...

:P

Best I could do on short notice. Better than this one?
http://umsis.miami.edu/~tdallman/poetry/matrix.htm

[Orsino]

16. The word "pudendum"...

...unless it's a limerick.