Soy un perdedor

Over at The American Street, they held a poetry contest: build a poem around Rumsfeld's infamous "You Go To War With What You Have" line. And now, the winners have been posted. Go read them.

My entry, while clearly deserving it, was not awarded any honors save for an "honorable mention" - something all non-winning entries received. Harrumph.

Here, unbelievers, judge the fruit of my labor for yourself:

Into the morgue, a truism strode
Nobody turned to look
“You go to war with what you have!”
Eyes stayed closed, hands cold

Who could question that this is satisfactory in every way, exceeds all reasonable expectations and undoubtably merits high marks for rhyme, meter and imagery ? Who ? And, while the winning entries are surely adequate and worthy of, ahem, recognition, once again, we find that true genius begs at the back door, while peers and pretenders pat their full bellies by the fire. I'm sure the judges' failure to count it among the top three was due to the pernicious pro-length bias that's all too common among common poetry judges these days, and not for any shortcoming in my splendid verse. After all, it is quite well-established among serious thinkers that poems in excess of 8 lines favor flourish before finesse.

Read all the entries, here.