The other week I found some bizarre items while unpacking the last of the boxes from our military move eight months ago: a flask, which conveniently doubled as a cigarette holder; enough mailing tape to send Christmas packages to every child in the state of New Hampshire; a scary looking Elvis wig; and my Garfield bookmark from the 3rd grade.

Why these motley misfits continue to PCS with us is beyond my investigative reporting skills. As I dug deeper in the box I marveled at more oddball junk.

Then I saw it. Stuck between old receipts and Mardi Gras beads was a scrap of paper with messy scribble for a war poem I never wrote. I’ve always loved war poetry, especially Rudyard Kipling’s “Tommy” and John McCrae’s “In Flanders Fields.”

To me, my notes, written 14 years ago on the back of a battalion operations order, represented A Good Idea That Never Was. Most folks have A Good Idea That Never Was. Real life has a way of putting the kibosh on those types of things. And it’s easy to reason our way out of a good idea. Next week. Next summer. Next year. Next duty station. After a while you’re 14 years down the road.

As a kid, Shel Silverstein was my idol. My mother thought I’d grow up to be a poet. Somewhere along the way I realized I wanted a writing job that paid for three meals, or at least three bowls of cereal a day.

I became a newspaper hack and ate a lot of Cap’n Crunch. Yet, for 14 years, the refrain: “For I was just a boy of 10; Watching the parade down Millington,” buzzed in my brain. Back then, when I wrote the refrain, I had just landed on my sister’s doorstep at Fort Bragg, N.C., fresh from backpacking all around Asia and Australia. I’d been out of the country for some time and returned stateside with no car, no job and no money.

But I had plans. Big plans! I’d write for free by day and waitress by night! If that didn’t work out I’d chuck it all and head to Argentina! Or maybe I’d join the Peace Corps and go to Africa!

At the time, it all seemed quite reasonable. But I had one pressing matter.

“Will you take me in?”

My sensible Army captain sister graciously let me mooch off her as I plotted, dreamed and schemed.

Although my life’s changed quite a bit since those days, what I care about hasn’t. I still wanted to write that poem, my Good Idea That Never Was.

So there I sat in the closet, bad Elvis hair in one hand, my good idea scrap in the other.

What to do? Put off the poem for another year? Or write the darn thing?
Over the next couple of days I wrote the darn thing. I wrote, and I wrote and I wrote some more. Finally, I was done. Then came the hard part. Sharing it with someone.

“For you. Fresh off the press…” I wrote in an e-mail to my husband.

I expected him to read it immediately. When he didn’t, I called.

“Did you read the poem?”

“Not yet,” he said. “I will.”

When he did, our e-mail exchange did not go so well:

Hubby: “Very nice.”

Me: “Just nice? I want to use it for my column.”

Hubby: “OK...these types of things just don’t move me anymore. I’ve seen too
many...sorry. I love you.”

So cruel. So callous. So cold. I decided my next poem would be about Army husbands with hearts as hard as mess hall meatloaf.

I e-mailed back: “Whatever.”

This got his attention. A few minutes later he called.

Hubby: “What does ‘whatever’ mean?”

Me: “You said mean things about my poem. I’ve wanted to write this poem for years! I put my heart into it!”

Hubby: “Wait. That was YOUR poem?”

Me: “Yes, that’s why it said, ‘By Tanya Biank’ at the top.”

Hubby: “I didn’t know you wrote it! I only skimmed the poem. I thought you were just sending me something to read. Wait, let me read it again.”

Amazingly, this time my husband loved the poem. I’m still sulking.

But it got me thinking. Was a 14-year-old idea passed its prime? Is there an expiration date on good ideas? Has every good poem already been written? And what if my Good Idea That Never Was, was actually A Bad Idea That Should Be Buried?

I’d gone from elated to deflated.

There was just one thing left to do. I contacted “Professor Roy of the Amazingly Bad Poetry Journal.” http://reallybadpoetry.livejournal.com/ Professor Roy scours the Internet for not just awful poetry, but uniquely awful poetry to review and mock. He isn’t actually a professor, nor is his real name Roy. He’s a 32-year-old guy in the insurance business in Portland, Ore., who majored in English. On the side, he writes short stories and is working on a graphic novel. I agreed to protect Professor Roy’s true identity because the night we spoke he had a bad cold, and when he’s not insulting poems, he’s a nice, quirky guy.

Lucky for me, war service is a poetry topic Professor Roy won’t touch, along with poems about 9-11 or abuse, which he calls “touchy subjects.” Professor Roy doesn’t review poetry by request, but he gave me some overall comments. I got right to the point:

Me: “Is my poem bad?”

Professor Roy: “It is by no means a bad poem at all. The rhyme is structured and maintained, which is positive. At no point did I read it and think there was a line that was strained. I honestly think it’s a good expression of what you were trying to go for. It works in the spirit of which it was intended.”

Me: “(Whew). “Would you rather read a bad poem than a good one?”

Professor Roy: “Absolutely. For the same reason it can be more fun to watch a bad movie than a good one. Good poetry is beautiful and evokes these amazing images, but a bad poem is funny every time you read it. It’s like looking at a treasured photo of a funny moment.”

Me: “What makes a poem bad?”

Professor Roy: “Cliché upon cliché upon cliché and metaphors bent so far back it’s gonna snap. I like to say something just jumps out at you. I call it the baboon syndrome. In the case of your poem, nothing jumped out at me.”

Me: “Amen. I don’t like baboons.”

Professor Roy: “I don’t think I can be fooled by someone deliberately writing a bad poem. It’s not easy.”

Me: “Have you ever heard from people whose poems you’ve mocked?”

Professor Roy: “Not to my knowledge. Hopefully, I never will. I’m not trying to insult them. I’m just insulting their poem.”

Me: “Quote me some bad poetry.”

Professor Roy: “Your nose, perfect as perfection. Your nails, long as the teeth of vampires.”

Me: “Yikes. The baboon is jumping on a pogo stick in that one.”

Me: “If there were no more bad poems for you to review—”

Professor Roy: “That would be a tragedy.”

By the end of our conversation, Professor Roy and I had a better understanding of each other. My poem was of little interest to him and for that I’m relieved.

In the end, I realized it wasn’t important what Professor Roy, Maya Angelou or even my husband, thought of my poem.

My 14-year-old Good Idea That Never Was now had rhythm and rhyme, line breaks and stanzas.

“I think it’s a really admirable thing,” Professor Roy said. “The journey is what is important.”

Here's a link to Tanya's Memorial Day poem:  http://www.tanyabiank.com/poem.html