National Bad Poetry Day

Every morning when I slide into the studio chair and flip on the microphone, I remind myself that not everybody is awake yet. Some folks are just pulling on socks with their eyes half-shut, while others are nursing that first cup of coffee like it’s an IV drip straight from heaven’s percolator. My job is to nudge them into the day gently—like tapping a snooze button that tells a joke.

Well, this morning, the calendar whispered something I couldn’t resist sharing: National Bad Poetry Day.

Now, most holidays are about food. You get hot dogs on July Fourth, turkey on Thanksgiving, and Candy Canes at Christmas.

But bad poetry? That’s a feast of a different sort. It’s calories for the funny bone.

So, I did what any red-blooded, sleep-deprived radio host would do. I picked up my pen, scribbled a few lines, and unleashed upon the unsuspecting public my masterpiece of terrible rhyme:

My shoe is loud.
It screams like cheese.
Hanging on a mashed potato cloud,
Flapping in the garbage breeze.

I let it sit there a moment, like an old dog fart nobody wanted to claim. The studio went quiet except for the air conditioner humming like a nervous cricket.

Then I chuckled, because if you can’t laugh at your bad poetry, you’re probably taking yourself too seriously. The phone lit up.

“Tom,” said one caller, “what exactly does cheese sound like when it screams?”

“I reckon it’s somewhere between a cat with a hairball and a screen door in a windstorm.”

That seemed to satisfy him, though I’m not sure why. Another caller said my poem reminded her of high school cafeteria lunches. She wasn’t clear if that was a compliment, but I’ll take it.

Now, here’s the thing about bad poetry: it’s honest. Nobody sets out to write a bad poem; it just falls out that way, like when you try to fold a fitted sheet.

You give it your best, and it still looks like you wrapped up a toddler in a cotton burrito. And somehow, that effort makes it better.

Way back in the day, my grandma used to write little rhymes on scrap paper. She didn’t call them poems—she called them “notes for the soul.”

Most of them didn’t rhyme right, and sometimes they drifted off without an ending. But they always made you feel something, even if it was confused.

That’s the spirit of National Bad Poetry Day. It’s not about impressing anyone with Shakespearean sonnets or Emily Dickinson’s wisdom. It’s about giving words a chance to tumble out, crooked and clumsy, and letting them wobble around like toddlers learning to walk.

Truth be told, I think we all ought to celebrate more bad-poetry days in life. Perfection is overrated.

Imagine if every biscuit had to come out of the oven perfectly round and golden. Imagine if every family photo had to be frame-worthy.

Imagine if every joke had to land. We’d all be starving, pictureless, and humorless.

Instead, life’s better with a few burned biscuits, crooked smiles, and clunky poems about squealing cheese on potato clouds. It keeps us humble.

It keeps us human. And it sure gives us something to laugh about.

So after my little poetic performance this morning, I invited listeners to call in with their own. One man recited a heartfelt ode to his lawnmower that always quit halfway down the yard.

My lawnmower wheezes, sputters, and stops,
Right in the middle, where the grass still flops.
Half the yard’s tidy, the rest looks wild,
Like a barber who quit on a screaming child.

A woman shared a dramatic haiku about her husband’s socks.

Holes grin at my face,
laundry basket overflows,
footprints of defeat.

By the end of the hour, we’d filled the airwaves with some of the worst poetry ever spoken into a microphone—and it was beautiful. As I packed up to leave, I realized something: bad poetry might be the truest poetry of all, because it’s not trying to be perfect.

And that, my friends, is worth more than any polished sonnet ever written. So here’s my advice: grab a napkin, grab a pen, and let your thoughts tumble out.

Write the kind of lines that would make your high school English teacher wince, then read them out loud to someone who needs a smile. Because in the end, life ain’t perfect stanzas—it’s measured in mashed potato clouds and garbage breezes.