now to Mike's frustrations with ilovepoetry.com

Klyd, I know you will appreciate this.  I was just taking a break from the rigors of the day
 and I decided to go online and visit a poetry site.  I found ilovepoetry.com and decided to submit a poem. 
You can read the poem for yourself and know that when I clicked on submit, a message appeared that said:
  you cannot submit this poem because it has an 'unacceptable' word in it.  Take out the 'unacceptable'
 word and resubmit. Please display this on your site and ask everyone to go 
to ilovepoetry.com to show their disgust for censorship.
 
NEWS FLASH
by Michael Bernard Panasuk

Early yesterday morning,
popular Tele Evangelist Johnny Sweghart
was admitted to an undisclosed
Dallas psychiatric hospital
following a nervous breakdown:
apparently brought on when he found out that
God was a fat black woman with a pimple on her nose!
What if God was a fat black woman
with a pimple on her nose?
Would you still put a dollar in the basket
when you find out where your soul goes?
Would you get down on your knees
and worship her Virginity?
Would you get down on your knees?
Would you get down on your knees?
What if God
was a fat black woman
with a pimple on her nose?

© 2004 M B Panasuk

Klyd here: I am going to argue with my buddy Mike about a couple of issues.
To me the main point about the note from ilovepoetry.com is that no human
eye ever read the poem. They did not accept and publish the poems because
the computer found a forbidden word. Probably "fat" was the word. It follows
that if the lines had read "plump black woman/ with a pimple on her nose"
the poem would have been accepted, with no one ever reading it. ilovepoetry.com
seems to be a greeting card bussiness, using classic poetry that is out of
copyright portection. They publish any contemporary poem sent to them
free of do-do words, no matter how bad it is. It is not censorhsip that
troubles me here but the assumption that poetry can be published without
being read, ever! Second point, I don't know that being a fat black woman
with a pimple on the nose is such a bad thing. I can't speak for 'Rev. Johnny Sweghart'
but, truth is, if I weren't a happily married man, there's many a fat black woman
I'd get down on my knees for. She wouldn't have to be God.

from Laurel Johnson
"Hi Klyd,

"I was thrilled to see that you featured men on your latest website update.
Loved David's fantasy poem about the wobbler [below].
It was inventive, entertaining, and told a good story.
The ending with its repetitive use of "water, water, water" made a nice finishing touch.

"I thought the objectionable word in Mr. Panasuk's poem
might be -- gasp, choke -- "Virginity." (the lady fans herself, overcome by the vapors.)
Nice cadence in this poem. I am a sucker for rhythm and cadence.

"Re: the comments about censorship and poetry -- there are very few poetry sites I visit,
preferring instead to run across unique sites like TTG."

Laurel

from Reed Richards "Hey, Klyd – Hey, Mike – 

My thought reading Mike’s poem [below] was that the offending word must be “virginity.”
“Virginity” makes people think about “sex,” and we can’t have poetry making people
think about “sex.” Shelley, Byron and Keats would be appalled, especially Keats."

cyd sez

"Klyd, I think the word that kept Mikep's poem from
being accepted is God. In this day and age of
evangelical politics and patriot acts it would neither
shock or surprise me to find the offensive word is
god. God n censorship go hand in hand, besides I find
god or the subject matter of god to be offensive to
begin with."
             cyd

May be, CyD. Whatever, we can all agree with Mike that
rejecting poetry because of the words it contains is a
piss poor way to do it. On the other hand, a site that
selects poetry that way is not worth appearing on anyway.
If the editor doesn't even read the poetry it would only be
from wildest chance that an actual reader of poetry 
will light on it. The quality of the work is going to be too bad
for serious readers to show up. The site may get a lot
of hits from people who like to see their own work on line,
but experience has shown me that such "poets" have no time
to read work that is not their own.  Klyd