It Kept On Raining And At Last The Levee Broke

I wrote my first poem in a year last night. I'm holding onto it for a while so I can get a proper distance on it--before I present it here or anywhere else that might be appropriate I mean--but it was a great relief to get one out. My focus at the moment is on my book (still no title), which is a kind of alternative history of the 1980s seen through my eyes, with a special emphasis on music, literature and politics (my three major interests); but I used to write poetry every day. Sometimes they were even worth reading, such as the ones Norbert Blei featured in his book "Other Voices" (sorry Norb, I don't have the publishing details to hand), or the many I got into British magazines like the legendary "Outlaw" .It would be awful to think that for whatever psychological or physical reasons I just couldn't do it anymore.

Well, the poem last night suggests I might still be able to do it, from time to time, with the right stimuli: I'd had a lot of black coffee before I wrote it, and a banana, and I'd watched a great movie which got my mind pulsating (it was my awe of certain singers and poets and film directors which pulled me into the arts in the first place). I'd also had a short, funny conversation with a woman I'm extremely fond of, last night, while I watched the film. And then the poem just came out, if I could really claim it to be that much of a sudden and miraculous event when I had to take the thing through three drafts to get it to its current state.

But it is here, and that's what matters. Even if nobody ever reads it, or if those who do don't like it. They will like something that I write, at some point, if the inspiration proves to be consistent. And it matters more to me than I let on that my writing is accepted somewhere, though the Nobel Prize may be a step too far for somebody who can alienate even himself without intending to...you think?