At a bar with two friends
Drinking warm beer but it’s a cold night
Slowly soaking up the crowded room
I’m introduced to a wide eyed guy
With a huge chest, filled with heads
He works his way into talking about poetry
‘I used to write poetry –
I used to be great:
Our responsibility begins with the power to imagine’
He says, quoting Auden or Yeats or
Some dead.
‘But I had it, man I had it
I wrote this poem on the back
Of this napkin in a coffee shop
It had it all, women, sex
Power, death, oceans –
All that makes a good poem great’
The table is enamoured
‘What happened?’ a voice
Behind the table enquires
‘the waitress spilt coffee on it and
I lost it all, every word; could not remember
It killed it for me’
I think on this little death,
This little piece of gibberish.
Every poem should be that
Feeling that you cannot write another
You are shackled to the pen
Hands glued to the paper
With a knife point held to your eye
And a warm gun to your ear
So that each word you get wrong,
Those makers of your own destruction
Move a little closer and if you finish
Badly,
You lose an eye or an ear
And for every one you get right
You get nothing
Just the chance to write again
And so it goes.
As you might imagine,
I’ve spent many bullets,
Bloodied many knives and
I’ve had a lot of surgery.
In fact, I think I hear behind me
The cocking of something now.
I close my eyes and
Let go of the pen.
