You know, for some reason this post popped into my head today. Now that I have some more time here on Steemit, my perspective has changed a bit. I came to the realization that withholding your vote actually helps to reward bad poetry. The reward pool is the reward pool and your upvote helps to decide how much of that pool goes to each post. When you abstain from voting, you are essentially relinquishing that power to the rest of the community. That would be such a bad thing if you agreed with how the community was distributing those rewards, but as you have stated, they aren't exactly rewarding talent as you. So the best thing to do would be to upvote any post to which you would rather the funds be distributed. That will, over time, decrease the payout for the crappy poems and give it instead to any poems you feel are more deserving.
PS,
Please disregard the request I made of you in your wallet. It was only for if you were planning on staying inactive for a while.