The ballots are in, the votes are counted.

Gracious, Nelly! You folks really know how to stink up a place!

In last week's Bad Poetry Contest, we opened our cellar to your versifying spewage. You, dear readers, were only too happy to wallow in poetic debasement. Our panel of distinguished judges have weighed in with their verdicts, and we are now prepared to declare "The Worst Poets in a Field of Very Bad Poets."

The first dishonorable raspberry goes to Goltotoo's "Ode to the People of the Bad Poetry Contest," which captured the zeitgeist of the contestants and won special acclaim from Dahlia Lithwick for its "Wordsworthian grand vision:"

Thee! Vile rhymester who, like a worm, doth into this Bad Poetry Contest creep,
Where your twisted, awkward verses tread on clomping, platform-shoe'd feet.
Thy bloated similes and metaphors lie there, like day-old roadkill on the street.
You slash and burn and sow with salt, the Elysian Fields of the sacred poetic Muse.
It would serve you right if you got trampled by a moose.

And thou, oh denizens of Slate, a child of Blackboard, the wise mentor of our youth!
How dare you debase this Wonder of the World, this Internets, with your contest so uncouth?
Are you MSM, do you not know that 7ru7h 15 b34u7y, 4nd b34u7y 7ru7h?
Poetry, like the Goodyear® blimp, should serve to raise up man.
For this ignoble contest, may the Furies curse you with an Inbox filled with spam!

After hours spent poring over horrid poesy, June Thomas found herself most sympathetic to "Bleed, " proclaiming aimlesswanderer's gripping portrait of suicidal ennui, "sheer genius!"

Nothing on tv,
Nothing to read.
Think I'll slit my wrists
And watch them bleed.

Daniel Politiwas positively repulsed by frowelishnu's anguished adolescent whine of amorous incompetence, "Cooperation." "Just awful!" raves our critic:

Last night I glanced, though our eyes did barely meet.
Last night I left in what I hate to call defeat.
Last night, we didn't talk, we just spoke
But this morning when I awoke-
I was wishing you here, wanting you near.
Hoping to hear your heart beat in my ear.
You see I'm struck with Cupid's infection, which has caused this erotic obsession.
I've an aphrodisiac possession and there's a need for confession.
But if I told you, what would you do?
There's this nagging fear, while I'm wishing you here, are you wanting me near?
Don't let these words fall on a deaf ear.
This was supposed to be for me, this was supposed to be... word's cure, making me lust free.
But this hasty syncopation has only fueled my infatuation.
Do you see my sorry situation?
More importantly, are you down with cooperation?
If I only knew, are you feeling this too?
I'd fall softly into... us.

Like a child of the VH-1 generation, Daniel Engber gravitated towards the worst lines, splitting his vote between twangmonkey2's "Sweating out your bile / On Cupid's Bowflex" and the thrilling conclusion to wgoconnel's "If you were a microbe:"

If you were a microbe of the ilk that aided the digestion of a whale's mother's milk,
Then I'd call you Jonah except if you latched onto any bees,
And tried to escape on one as it flew from under the baby whale's teeth.
And If milk got on the bees, and you made the bees' wings cheesy until they couldn't flap, then
I'll bet bees wouldn't make honey, and people would get stung as they sucked cheese off the bees' bodies.