Update: Winners announced: https://classicalpoets.org/shortest-poem-contest-winners-announced/\
Scroll down and read the comments section to enjoy all of the submissions.
Write the shortest possible rhyming poem that still has meaning. Post it in the comments section below under your full name and general area of residence (“Bob Smith, Denver, Colorado”). You may choose any topic, but please be respectful and no dirty humor. Two entries allowed per poet.
When: Now June 9, 2018 midnight EST. Winner Announced June 18, 2018.
Who: Anyone in the world, any age or background, may participate. From within the Society, anyone not involved in judging the contest may participate.
Prize: $100
Judge: Advisory Board Members who choose to participate
Entry Fee: None
Examples: Our first example comes from Joe Tessitore of New York City, New York, who came up with this contest. Thank you, Joe!
Cooperation
One ant can’t.
A classic example comes from Strickland Gillilan (1869-1954). It has also been published under the name “Fleas”:
Lines on the Antiquity of Microbes
Adam
Had’em
Cathy Watness
Indianapolis, IN
Trump America
Tariff risen prison.
Cathy Watness
Indianapolis, IN
Death’s Oxygen
Meth breath of Death.
“River Bodies”
There are shadows,
In the shallows.
End
WATER LOVE
Ripples kiss the pool’s edge.
The Epigrams
The epigrams of Wilde
console the tortured child.
Damian Balassone, Australia
ineluctable legal tender
one Benjamin current enticement.
Melancholy –
Alone in crowd
He is nobody,
But proud.
Love Will Never Do This Wrong
Still
Thrill
Lawal Jimoh Ishola, LJ, L27, Lagos, NG
Many
One done cone.
Two too
three.
Lawal Jimoh Ishola, LJ, L27, Lagos, NG
Shadows shadow shadows
Me. We.
Vanity. Humanity.
Choose, ye.
Abdul Wahab Lawal, Lagos, Nigeria.
[When the sky’s so blue]
When the sky’s so blue,
I can’t be, too!
Trip of a Lifetime
The place within.
Shall we begin?
Abdul Wahab Lawal, Lagos, Nigeria
Mother
She almost murders her soul
To mother your whole
Mother her.
Jack Wolfe Frost, Wales, UK
Madness
Society.
June 2, 2018
Here, for better or [much] worse, my pale effort:
True poets’ lot:
To be forgot
And in defense of the above, slightly longer, but by any standard brief:
True, a shorter might be found
But none such fun, or more profound
Ted Hayes
Elkton Virginia
JahB Prescott, San Diego, CA
“Wassup”
Yo!
Yo?
Justin Zhang, Rockville Maryland
The end transcends to infinity
Hi
Bye,
Theodore Eisenberg
North Caldwell, NJ
Limns
Palms alms qualms psalms
Tomes domes oms poems
Justin Zhang, Rockville Maryland
Title: on a boat in the white sea
seasick with the Bolsheviks
Brady Alexander, Louisville, Kentucky
“Blueprints for a All Life”
1.) Fizzy
2.) Dizzy
3.) Busy
…
4.) Done
5.) and Gone.
I’m so sorry, I totally goofed.
The title should be “Blueprints for All Life.”
If anybody knows how to edit my comment, you can totally hit me up
-SALVATION AWAITS-
B.C.
-SILENT POET-
Mime Rhyme.
old days and
lives
for what I
long
with tear stained
hands
the cold stone
kept
Ann Can
Kathmandu
I love you
Timbuktu