Best Bad Tempered Poems
The cruelest of all villains lives on Mount Crumpit
for when it comes to Christmas, he says, "Dump it!"
He keeps trying to "Pooh pooh" that sacred holiday,
but so far everyone's efforts have kept him at bay.
Oh, he's a real mean one, that monster, Mr. Grinch
A devilish fiend that I would love to catch and lynch
I'd gladly dump his body in a cactus patch or ditch
if someone would tell me where he is. It's ok to snitch.
To celebrate Christmas, he has never been willin'
to let children enjoy the day. He needs to be chillin'
and stop trying to ruin the holiday when Santa comes,
and if he's a good grinch, he might get a set of drums.
He's big and he's a beast, bad-tempered to say the least
so, he's never been invited to join in a Christmas feast.
Oh, he's a vile one, that Mr. Grinch with flesh of green,
a supervillain without a heart, meanest of the mean!
He's such a grouch, wanting to commit the dirty deed
of stealing Christmas and that makes him a bad seed.
What an evil wretch to kidnap Santa and children's toys.
That's one of his sinister schemes and dastardly ploys.
If I can catch him sleeping before December rolls around,
I'll find a way to bring that thieving horrible creature down.
Oh, he's a mean one with a twisted soul, that Mr. Grinch.
Will you help me rid the world of him if I get into a pinch?
September 4, 2022
Superhero or Supervillain Contest
Sponsor: Robert James Liguori
Do you sometimes see a Zulu Warrior
Staring back from the mirror in the morning!
A nasty fierce looking bad tempered dude
Obscenities flying out without warning
Crabbing bout having to make a living
But enjoying all the many accoutrements
If it wasn't that, it'd be something else
People just love to complain and vent
A shower and shave, you're almost human
Not one person will ever suspect
That a member of the Zulu Warriors tribe
Was a coworker of great respect
Do you sometimes see a Zulu Warrior
Staring back from the mirror in the morning!
© Jack Ellison 2012
I am empty of empathy
come sympathise with me
Cue the violins,
or just fiddle
like a bad-tempered Roman
Offer me hope:
bring flamboyant symbols,
cheap gold pendants with wings
Maybe a big gaudy
unflappable albatross
nothing too flash,
mind you!
Take my hand,
lead me towards the edge
it’s time to fledge
Sidle me onward,
watch as I waver
Try not be over-critical
of the albatross
He’s become a hanger-on,
too far gone
and addicted to flattery
If I drag you down
or appear inhumane,
it’s all secondary
I’m merely feeling depressed
by a pouch in my brain
A séance sensed
it was next of kin,
X-rays revealed tiny pleats,
masses of tissue within folds of skin
An exorcist said it’s
my vestigial twin
Google diagnosed
(Visual agnosia)
taking shape from within
Oh! And the indifferent
chatbot I confided in,
has begun self-harming!
It comes across as anger
But really it's despair,
It may seem bad tempered
But it's just because you care.
For you know where they are going
You know what's up ahead,
And you know that you have no control
And it fills your heart with dread.
Once again dragged down a path
Where you don't want to go.
Anxiety for company,
Watching your worries grow.
But you bite down on your worries
You push aside your fears,
For there's nothing that you won't endure
For those you hold so dear.
Maybe you have no control
But what you do is care.
So whatever path they stumble down
Your love will take you there.
This tempest of emotion
In time will surely ease.
It very nearly broke your heart,
And brought you to your knees.
But God, he gave you courage
The strength to endure all,
To be there for your loved ones,
And catch them when they fall.
Jesse Forbes
1893 – 1911
Black Canyon.
Now, there was a place to be!
It is true I was born a brute in a Quaker Town.
Born a bad-tempered brute of a boy
In the two-room digs on Bailey Street and Comstock..
My father fathered two other families,
Unbeknownst to his wife..
And I was the first one disowned.
But my father was a great believer,
And I loved the man like a fool.
I took up the milkin’ business at fourteen,
And made my morning way from Orange Drive down to Penn Street.
Delivering the dozens of clinking milk bottles.
Delivering the dozens of morning salutations,
To neighbors and friends in the glad and dismal days.
I had but one romantic interlude in my short stay,
Just one futile attempt at Carpe Diem.
But was left slapped and standing by a disheveled Ethel Hurst
There in the dark shade of Black Canyon
That inauspicious August day in 1910.
Ethel Hurst did not accept the entreaties of a 17 year old brute.
Did not accept my wild stares
Or my insanely puckered lips.
It was to my surprise that I died.
Died so young and so unready.
Still desiring the perfumed kisses of Ethel Hurst,
Still desiring her heart-quenching embraces,
There, in the dark shade of Black Canyon.
Satsuma, were you Man's first attempt at cloning,
neither orange nor tangerine,
misshapen orange, misspelt tanggerine
as you left the Japanese test tube,
ends flattened through lack of genes,
did they call you Fatsumo
ready to be fed by the thousand
into the bottomless pit of the revered wrestlers,
or did they call you Squatsuma,
yes, that would be more accurate,
no 'r' to confuse with 'l's
no 'l's to confuse with 'r's,
olange would not fit the birr,
tangeline, no-one would buy.
Your skin takes the traditional colour,
it hides a unique aroma,
and a deadly shot of acid
released when a manicured finger invades your very being.
Oh bad tempered offspring
you do not appreciate it when the pith is taken.
Within you resemble your fourbears,
segmented, regular,but one taste,
one simple taste, for the aficionado, heaven,
fulfilling the promise aired when your skin was violated,
for others, 'Yuk'
a taste not to be acquired, a failed orange,
a poor impression of a tangerine,
Satsuma, Fatsumo, Squatsuma,
Toysuma, Suzsuma, Madzuma,
only the japanese could have invented you.
Metropolis…
a cackling cacophony of confusion
energizing some and enrages others.
Concrete and steel giants,
loom forebodingly over the masses;
blocking out gifts of the sun.
The maze that tires me from constant searching;
why am I here in this overcrowded and hopeless abyss?
The bang-clang trucks and trolleys,
beat out their metronomic, one…two...beat
and the drone of engines,
sings a tired ballad of the modern world.
Cities are the lairs of bad-tempered dragons;
harboring too many precious trinkets.
Vulnerable souls are the noonday snacks,
devoured by cold-blooded sharks.
Do you sometimes see a Zulu Warrior
Staring back from the mirror in the morning!
A nasty fierce looking bad-tempered dude
Obscenities flying out without warning
Crabbing bout having to make a living
But enjoying all the many accouterments
If it wasn't for that, it'd be something else
People just love to complain and vent
A shower and shave, you're almost human
Not one person will ever suspect
That a member of the Zulu Warriors tribe
Was a coworker of great respect
Do you sometimes see a Zulu Warrior
Staring back from the mirror in the morning!
A bad tempered brat from Nantucket
Drops her phone, but claims that a thief took it
The girl will not calm down
Her swearing makes dad frown
She raises her fist shouting ‘suck it’!
The meaning couldn’t be misconstrued
Her father says just quit your foul mood
She says she trashed her phone -
dropped it on her way home
She’s grounded for lies and being rude
5/20/18
Zotëri Count Dracula
is a terrible, Transylvanian host
Mister Tarantula Fangs serves watered down
fermented, sour liver compost
I know
because my Planet Terror peep Tarantino
said so
Vladdie’s batty bandë
campy lip sync way too much on the fly
Playing air guitar riffs
that’ll make any party stiff Mummy die
This I know
because my dungeon babe Elvira
en-crypt texted me
the down-low
Domnule Wolfman
Were a bad-tempered, English bog bloke
Mister Aristy Lycantrophe takes liquid
anger management medication
This presto change-o firewater potion
got a mean Romanian bite
It ain’t no Jekyll-and-Hyde Howling joke
Please Pumpkinheads, don’t ask me
how I know ...
Because my cannibal pal Hannibal L.
said it’s a sacred doctor/patient violation
to divulge this info
So my tasty Mikey Myers marshmallows,
gather ‘round
the strobe light, crystal ball cellar campfire
Get Jiggy Saw off the hook Hostel
Just how slasher far,
Rocky Horror Picture Creepshow
do you wanna go?
Old school, vintage reel macabre Blob snuff action:
Vic and Frankie Boy, lab cadaver number one son,
will do a drunken, shrunken head dance
with Morticia and Harley Quinn
Be advised,
not to Monster Mash skull butt in
So have some Terminator fun
you Alien party animals
Lose all Nightmare on Elm Street bladder control
Take a Bughuul trickster treat
out of the Jeeper Creepers Candy Man belly bowl
There’s only one parasite Thing,
death notice Lurch doorbell ring, to remember
at this Pet Semetary open house invitation:
When you give a Skeleton Key
Premature Burial ghoul greet,
the proper zombie etiquette scream
must be 1408
ten shivers delivered
Hellraiser late
Cower in fear,
when you see the floating head
of Jacob Marley's ghost ...
his haunting eyes telling you —
Don’t cross the host,
at his own Halloweenie roast!
Gluteus Maximus
That Gladiator of Rome
Got into such a rage
That his mouth did foam,
He cursed and snarled
And snarled and cursed,
Yet things didn’t improve
But got much worse;
His fists beat the ground
And he spat into the air,
No one dare come close
When his temper did flare.
Obviously struggling
To undo a knot so big
Wasn’t his strong point,
He couldn’t give a fig!
Unable to get to grips
With those darn leather laces
His sandals caused such scowls
And grotesque grimaces...
So, aren’t you grateful
That he isn’t alive today?
That bad tempered warrior
Your life he would slay
Just with one of his black looks
Or a growl at your face,
You’d probably explode
With only a trace
Of smoke and shoes
Left where you did stand,
Nothing but grey ashes
On the Coliseum’s red sand!
Neptune boasts the strongest winds
And the wildest storms
Deep blue Neptune
Similar to the sea on a stormy day
Its angry, uncontrollable storms
Make Neptune perfect for its name
Cold, light-hours away and uninviting
Neptune holds many secrets
Only a fraction of which have been made known to man
Such as its faint, dusty and icy rings
And companions as icy and unfriendly as their planet
We’d better leave this bad-tempered planet alone
As bad-tempered as the god from whom it took its name
We don’t want to go near
An icy surface where the most powerful storms ever existed
It were bonfire night in 1910,
when fireworks first lit the night,
streets that were dark in shadows,
now suddenly fulsome and bright.
Bairns scattered as the bangs blew o’er us,
we giggled and ran for our lives,
and clutched as the noises grew louder,
at the skirt’s of our father’s wives.
I were twelve when I held onto my mother
scared by the lights in the sky,
mother said, ‘don’t be frit son,
it’s just fireworks, flying up high.’
I remembered that night six years later,
as I lay in the shadows, all dark,
as a flare lit up the Somme wasteland,
to aid bullets in finding their mark.
Entangled in wire, some were screaming,
others, quietly accepting their fate.
All knew, as they lay in the quagmire,
that morning for them, was too late.
I heard some call out for their mothers,
while others called out for their wife.
All called out for God, who’d deserted,
he’d gone, and he’d taken their life.
In the twenties when war it had ended,
I could never tell what I’d seen.
To explain to a child,
how men could go wild, would be
brutal, vile and obscene.
So I locked all these thoughts in a chamber,
and buried them deep in my mind.
Locked them so deep, it was only in sleep,
fired the torment to which I’m consigned.
I’d remember the noises while dreaming,
the shells and the light in the sky,
exposing my friends, who were screaming,
and begging to live, not to die.
I were judged for being erratic,
bad tempered, a worrisome bloke.
All because I picked up a rifle,
to protect all us ord’nary folk.
I won’t ever talk about battles,
or those that were lost or were maimed,
yet I’ll always remember those brothers,
when bonfire night comes round again.
The Last convict
I sit in the front yard it has a high fence that
make the privacy intense I have created
a prison and now it is too late.
I see the top of a Cypress it looks like
a Christmas tree blowing in a bad tempered
Nordic wind. I think I will go to Norway this
year, mother died at that time and I hope it
will snow, overcast and rain make me sad in
a way that is morbid. I will bring her flowers
and I will cry, she was a lousy housewife but
a great mother. In the chair next to me sits
loneliness and says: so this was your dream
to flee, find freedom yet shackled to the past.
You will die alone not as a whisper in the wind
and you will not be on the plane going north
she pips in fear for lateness like her peers,
hauteur cloaked with reticence,
her-boo-boo-vague, though walled around and palpable
official Narcissist disguised in rude affronts
Bravado of naughtiness in candor yet tacit
“Free me free me”, rants in melancholy
as ignorance upsets sorts of sort
Insensibility of differentiate as angels often tastes the gall
By routines of cataract long glare
Sends nostalgia down their spines
Though forgetting the milk and candies of supposed rivals
Doubling as friends in conning angst beggarly in their nature
Nagging and ganging a gang of gossipers
Finding Mutual grounds for their victims
Causing higgledy where there exist no war
For a suspected compromise of morals
Or a hunting taint of a past paints on Z walls
Where decorum is not a schoolmaster
As official time wastes in visits to motels at un-break break time
With holy bible at desk view to mask hypocrisy
First venerable “Etis” Migrants tasted buds of vinegary as noised by witnessing chauffeur
And guilt cautioned not her thigh with avalanche of showy attire of a seductress
advertorials of “buried innocence”jagged in curved carbuncle front and back
Banging shoes in unending visits secreted in kitchen
double faced, loud calls to clients for managerial gratitude
as empty office fill vacuums of fast quickie (sharp-shap) appointments arranged or rearranged
Ill mannered, bad tempered not marriageable, never listen, never patient making enemies
Commandeering, verbose, self-conceited, presumptuous, stout and arrogant