A Requiem to the Lordes of Poetry

Poetry is my blood

it's full of pretension,

that's a word, don't look it up,

it's a word. Trust me and trust my pen.

scrap that, cliché

Poetry is my saviour

No, too generic, too obvious

It saved me from a lifetime of boredom,

of a lifetime of failing to connect the sounds and rhythms in life.

More pretension, more distraction.

When really that is to say that

~

Poetry is that part of me that has something to say

that wants to scream from atop the highest foothill

or belfry down to the masses, down to my adoring fans

adorned in the latest Paul Stewart merch "Arsehole",

waiting for something.

A word, a sonnet,

a foot without sock raised and dipped in the chalice of the finest gin or whisky.

Neat, we don't need water, ice, or a mixer.

Let the amber glow light your chin and throat.

Let the burn rip through your oesophagus

down to bring warmth to your stomach.

~

I felt it was important

to at least give a good college try

at a straight-up trad sonnet

or else people could say

in a letter watermarked

by the lordes of poetry:

"But thou art an arsehole, a charlatan, and, a crook, and, cad, and, coward. Withering behind your preposterous words of indignity, pointedly pointing at a time period, a style you would so profane without giving it the time to settle in your mind and see if your poetic genius, your poetic scribblings can produce something that stands with the very gods themself."

~

Maybe I should make more art,

more, more art, get more critics,

find them, hunt them down with a sawn-off or a chisel...just a chisel.

And tell them.

"Critique me, critique my mind. I don't care."

~

I shout in despair

that I don't always say

the what I when to say.

~

"A poet is a social construct of flesh, blood, sinew, and a whole lot of hot air, waste, and magic. Magic and verbiage. Magic and consonance radiance. Magic and vowel movements."

~

I disdain. Do you disthesame?

Does that rhyme make you sane?

Are we ever the same?

~

To stand and say, "I am a poet, feel the wrath of my words as you flap your giblets in the wind."

~

is about as profound as a paper bag being wrestled to submission by an angry badger.

~

There's cobwebs growing around the grey matter and synapses, and I feel the need to clear them.

Clear them and the clusters of tiny moth larvae festering among them.

Festering and eating my best ideas.

—

Eating my Lord of the Rings,

—

eating my To Kill a Huckleberry Finn of Wrath.

—

To Fill, kill, and eat the rodent.

—

The trash rodent.

—

The badger is the east, and Juliet is the asp.

—

"I am a poet. Feed me salted meat and stale bread.

Feed me Dvoretzky, no Dostoyevsky - Crime and Punishment.

Punishment to read it.

To breathe Raskolnikov into my lungs and feed off

his indignant self-righteous entitlement and watch that

dissipate, filtrate, and ferment to something more abhorrent, that of a conscience."

And so the curtain starts to fall,

the tragedy has played out,

the cursed and profane of the god's own creation,

have walked the savage wasteland of an empty theatre

to give their blood and certain parts of their intestinal tract

as a rite of passage that might bring forth the light of safety

—

(…)

(…)

—

or the blight of devastation.

*

Thanks for reading!

Author's Notes: Needed to get this off my chest. Plus, John made me do it. Miss, Miss, John told me to. "If John told you to overthrow General Pinochet, would you?" Yes, of course, Miss. John's a co-conspirator. Even if he doesn't officially realise it.

"Fine, go and have a donut and try to behave. Avoid the profanity of the old greats. You'll never be Dean Koontz or Dan Brown, let alone Keats or Shakespeare."

So yes. In the bowels, the comments section of my bona fide trad sonnet (eat that Shakespeare, you're not that special anymore.) I responded to something John said with a partial scribbling that became part of the poem above.

The truth is, I already had some semblance of a poem as we were chatting.

Additional AN, I was already considering recording this, and then Mr Shaun A gave me a bit of extra encouragement. So please find below, the link to me reading this:

Want to read something truly beautiful? I am not even joking or blowing smoke up your asses.