THE WORST POEM EVER
WRITTEN IN THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE
It is no easy task to designate one very bad poem as
the absolute epitome of awfulness. But in going through hundreds of selections, one
poem stood out – "A Tragedy" – which, indeed, it was. Our
opinion was shared by the Not Terribly Good Club of Great Britain, an organization
dedicated to following and celebrating failure, as well as by a motley assortment of
friends, writers, and critics.
The poet who inflicted this work on the world was Theophile
Marzials, a poet/librarian with a flair for the melodramatic. Born in Belgium in 1850,
educated in Switzerland, and finding employment in England, Marzials had long blond hair,
a baritone voice, and a continental-sized ego. He once interrupted a hushed library room
by loudly declaiming, "Am I not the farling of the British Museum Reading Room?"
He also had an enthusiastic propensity for giving impromptu public recitals of his works.
The reaction of the public can only be guessed at.
A TRAGEDY
by Theophile Marzials
Death!
Plop.
The barges down in the river flop.
Flop, plop.
Above, beneath.
From the slimy branches the grey drips drop,
As they scraggle black on the thin grey sky,
Where the black cloud rack-hackles drizzle and fly
To the oozy waters, that lounge and flop
On the black scrag piles, where the loose cords plop,
As the raw wind whines in the thin tree-top.
Plop, plop.
And scudding by
The boatmen call out hoy! and hey!
All is running water and sky,
And my head shrieks -- "Stop,"
And my heart shrieks -- "Die."
My thought is running out of my head;
My love is running out of my heart,
My soul runs after, and leaves me as dead,
For my life runs after to catch them -- and fled
They all are every one! -- and I stand, and start,
At the water that oozes up, plop and plop,
On the barges that flop
And dizzy me dead.
I might reel and drop.
Plop.
Dead.
And the shrill wind whines in the thin tree-top
Flop, plop.
A curse on him.
Ugh! yet I knew -- I knew --
If a woman is false can a friend be true?
It was only a lie from beginning to end --
My Devil -- My "Friend"
I had trusted the whole of my living to!
Ugh; and I knew!
Ugh!
So what do I care,
And my head is empty as air --
I can do,
I can dare,
(Plop, plop
The barges flop
Drip drop.)
I can dare! I can dare!
And let myself all run away with my head
And stop.
Drop.
Dead.
Plop, flop.
Plop.
as appearing in Very
Bad Poetry 
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