I exit the supermarket, approach my conveyance
A bicycle with a combination lock, juxtaposition: a tree.
Planted on an island buried in snow, in the middle of a parking lot.
Decrypting the secret sequence, I yank the pedal bike away from the tree.

He looks at me, a stranger in the parking lot.
He says, "You're Crazy!" He looks at me in jest.
I just stare at him, and reply, "HAHAHAHAHAHAHA" and go about my business.
The cars are coming fast and reckless; careful they are not.

CRAZY, HE SAYS TO ME!! CRAZY, I MUST BE!

What you might think a lunatic, is saner than perceived.
Forget about your status quo, you may have been deceived.
My modus operandi isn't common to your ken, and so confused, you must be!
Who would ride a bicycle in winter? Well, obviously me!

No

You're mean, it's a decent poem all things considered.

I wrote it autobiographically about events that occurred 4 hours prior and did not embellish a bit.

i liked it :o but i'm a sister

I'm not mean, I'm critical.

These points stick out:

-The capitalization is unnecessary.

-Riding a bike in the winter is far from "not normal" and isn't "against the status quo". It's actually quite normal and doesn't make anyone special (especially in the northern climates).

-"you may have been deceived" kinda tosses the whole point of the argument against status quo; should be more set in stone using "you have been...".

- "modus operandi"....really?

But hey what do I know, poems, music and all artsy shit is a subjective medium. I will though give it a small applauds for writing something "decent" based on a simple event.

The capitalization is entirely appropriate. In most poetry, the first letter is always capitalized, and using all-caps for certain lines provides a visual enhancement as an imaginative aide for how shit went down.

I've never taken a course in proper literary prose as per poetry, or haven't actually paid attention enough to learn. Riding a bicycle in winter is extremely uncommon where I live, specifically the town I'm in and it's cold as balls here. I sometimes have to weave through traffic just to not die and often end up riding on six to twelve inches of plowed ice and hard snow because there isn't enough room on the road.

I agree with the set in stone argument and hey, a poem can be changed right? I am willing to alter that considering that I one-offed the thing in 30 seconds.

And yes, modus operandi.

Capitalization for entire sentence is gay. Capitalizing every line is fine.

Here is a poem to inspire you.

Roses are Red
Weed is Green
If I get you in bed
You won't be so mean

Like all real poetry, it has a consistent rhyming pattern!
ABAB > ABCB ABCA AABB

Here is my favorite pattern ABCDEFG....

Meh, I present:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E._E._Cummings




This guy very often stepped outside of the so-called "real poetry" rhyme schemes and pwn'd face:

http://www.cs.berkeley.edu/~richie/poet ... uth10.html

I win.

Two things. One, no one past elementary school actually thinks "real poetry" has to rhyme. Except me. Two, the poems you shared don't support your point. The first one is about as traditional a rhyming scheme as you can get (ABAB, CDCD if you grant some poetic license on "go" // "now," but even if you don't then one quattrain is ABAB and the second is CDED, both pretty standard). The second one doesn't rhyme, which is also perfectly acceptable. It just becomes questionable when you rhyme inconsistently. Also it bugs me a little that lines 2-5 end in "tree," "parking lot," "tree," and "parking lot" respectively.

But you know what, I'll take the liberty to assume you weren't writing this for me, so it doesn't really matter what I think.

I forfeit.

@Judicator

The selections by e.e. cummings were just put there for lols, not for example. I am aware of the disconcerting way I doubled up on words. I don't like that either but it works in this one for some reason.

Just to throw a bone in Kwangs direction, I did freeform poetry throughout my senior year in High school everything before that had a writing pattern.

but still

NO.

I still am DEEPLY troubled, to the point of losing sleep, by the unsteady rhyming and the repetition of line endings. That being said, as a mode of self-expression it expresses, so it succeeds.

I'm still troubled in the idea that biking in the winter is such a big deal enough to base an "F*CK the status quo" subject poem.

oh yeah that too

You haven't been here then. Every time I ride my bicycle, people beep their horns, yell at me, etc. Some ppl stick their head out the window and yell HOMOSEXUAL or 'NICE BIKE! ASsHOLE!". I'd say that about one in every 4 motorists is actually comfortable with me being on the road with a bike. Now, that's throughout the year, but when it turns winter I get harassed even more because I'm literally one of maybe two people riding a bike over ice and snow. Everyone else either has ATVs or just walks. Just being a pedestrian alone, trying to cross the street AT a crosswalk, people in this town will actually SPEED UP while I'm in the middle of the crosswalk to try and make it across before I get to their side of the road. That's how the people are. So while in your neck of the woods it might be commonplace, here it's considered an insane and wrong thing to do. People have a superiority complex when it come to their cars. It's almost as if because I ride a bicycle, that I'm some sort of deviant or that I need to be pittied.

Sounds like you need move more than write a poem how you hate being a second class citizen for riding a bike. Sure that leaves the debate open that riding a bike, or in your case even being a pedestrian, is fundamentally "against the status quo" because of the backlash that you get for being a bike rider. A counter-argument that you're more over just being pain and doing things against the culture of the area just for shits and giggles. I'm more focused on the whole "winter riding being against the status quo". Riding a bike which is customary, in a lot of areas, seasonal is not entirely true. In my case, in both here in Europe and in the agrarian state of North Dakota bike riding is done whenever the bike rider wants and not a F*CK is given. This in turn creates a fact that status quo can be restricted to certain areas. This than makes your poem more annoying to me as you're making the statement "I'm riding my bike in the winter, I'm going against the status quo", in which in my realm is complete normal. So in my vision you're making a statement out of nothing which just throws me into a dimension of F*CKING annoyed.

Now with this I've shown that the mess that subjectivity and difference in cultures can create which makes my dick(s) hard.

oh and thumbs down on you having wordfilter still on.

Yeah, my opinion is that my poem is extremely subjective and specific to the location I'm in and the mental state of the average citizen in my area.



Fixed.

tazzler's on the mother F*CKING war path.