Friday poetry challenge: So bad it's good, but not quite good (or bad) enough

Once again I've found buried treasure while cleaning out old files in my office: 

• my very first tenure-track contract, which offers definitive proof of my nonexistent negotiating skills
• a cache of envelopes, both letter size (bedecked with the college logo) and manila mailers, all rendered unusable because the moisture in my office glued the flaps shut
• expense reports and receipts from every conference I ever attended with College funds, back when I regularly attended conferences (and the College had funds) 

But the most unexpected item I located in the current sweep was the 2002 JAM Anthology, a printed collection of prize-winning poetry from the Julia A. Moore Bad Poetry Contest sponsored by the Flint, Michigan, Public Library. Although I doubt that this fact ever appeared on my Vita or in my tenure file, it is nevertheless indisputable that my poem "Shopping for Words on a Snowy Evening" was a finalist in the 2002 Julia A. Moore Bad Poetry Contest.

And the crowd goes wild!

I had entirely forgotten entering a bad poem in the Julia A. Moore Bad Poetry Contest, but I certainly remember a research project that required me to read a lot of bad poetry by the likes of Julia A. Moore ("The Sweet Singer of Michigan") and James Whitcomb Riley (the perpetrator of "The Happy Little Cripple"). Julia A. Moore is perhaps best remembered (?) as the author of "The Great Chicago Fire," a poem of monumental awfulness that ends with a resounding thud. I mean, go and read it. It's really bad.

My poem included in the anthology is, I hope, not quite that awful, which is why it was merely a finalist rather than a prize-winner. I know I could do better today, which would make me even less likely to win a prize, which is good, I guess? Anyway here it is, fresh from the JAM Anthology that has been nestling within the moist and moldy confines of my desk drawer since 2002:

Shopping for Words on a Snowy Evening

Whose words these are I think I know:
He's listed in the footnotes, though
He will not see me stopping here
To copy sentences--and mo'!

My editor might think it queer
To cut and paste words without fear
Out of that text, from which I take
Whole paragraphs, and move them here.

If caught, I'll say, "There's some mistake!
I never really meant to take
Those words! At least, not take for keeps.
Oh please do not my books forsake!"

The words are lovely, dark and deep,
But I have contract terms to keep,
And books to crib before I sleep,
And books to crib before I sleep.

I don't know which is worse: the badness of this poem or the fact that it wasn't bad enough to earn a prize. But what sort of person wants to win a prize in a Bad Poetry Contest anyway? (That would be me.)

So go ahead--try to do better!