This poem has no point:
It won’t be read.
You see, it’s not my place to go around
Clambering from my rut.
And if I did
Then I’d deserve the coldshouldering
And resentful sideways glances over shoulders
Both their own & others’,
I’d be receiving on full beam
From the rabble of comedians, poets, novelists & painters hugging the walls to
Blank me,
A massive thinks bubble
Tethered like a great grey Zeppelin above their heads
Its fat flat flanks festooned with words of fire, silently burning:
“Don’t look, but Leopold Fuckoffski just minced in,
The carpetbagging showboating piece of shit”.
Which most of me should reckon
Is absolutely fine
For no one clasps clear demarcation
Closer to their breast
Than I,
And each time I hear how
Another much-loved TV comic’s
Published their new novel,
A poet’s painting water colour still lifes
Of their sadness, a painter’s
Smeared themselves in sticky sonnets
Or another novelist is doing stand-up on the Fringe,
A never ending funeral cortège proceeds once more
Processing through my heart,
Its sullen pallbearers grinding their stubby teeth
Down into dust.
Because, obviously, I know
A baddish fairy breezed up at my birth,
Swaying a tad to obviously
And balancing her champagne flute atop my crib
With just too much deliberative care,
Doing her bit of business with her scuffed and cracking handbag
Forcing back in the cascade of burning rabbits fur,
Empties & cigar stubs,
Before thinking for a bit,
Narrowing her red eyes,
Spitting in my face & drawling
“You’ll be a cartoonist, cunt.
Don’t step out of line and
Be thankful for small mercies.”
It’s like a longlost brother said, so drunk that he could hardly speak,
“If you wern ma brother you’d be
Jus another drawin’ faggot.”