Poets

 

                                                                                                     Maple Dewleaf

When I was at college at sixteen

My favourite poet was Dryden

‘MacFlecknoe’ was rude

Johnny wasn’t a prude

Like that ‘Paradise Lost’ bloke, the blind one.

At eighteen I bought lots of records

Bob Dylan was my superhero

‘Hard Rain’ was a bastard

and that’s why it lasted

Those Faber fucks couldn’t come near-o.

Back then all the libraries had books in

Not playgrounds and tables for coffee

I found Allen and Jack

On a shelf at the back

And the last flakes of normal fell off me.

My reading, though, took me down alleys

That some of you good folk have questioned.

I liked Ezra Pound

Though his views were unsound

If not crazy (and that’s why the Section).

When the internet came I met writers

Who were working all over the planet

Wild Bill, Church and Speer

Weber, Baatz and Vermeer

(Yes, I threw in a painter to scan it.)

Their stuff told me how to dump caution

And be me with invention and guts

Once I knew about them

I wrote gem after gem

And our brittle Brit bull drove me nuts

Then I found myself back in a classroom

Learning writing to stay off the dole.

The professor was keen

That he ought to be seen

As eccentric, and acted the role.

His own poems were snoringly average

He never took risks and it showed

He was all surfaces

Like the middle class is

You were writing to lighten his load.

So you couldn’t be heavy or complex

Or he’d put you down there in the room

Then he’d give you a C

While your friend got a B

For a thing about dogs and balloons.

Round the corner from my house a bloke lives

He’s a poet, though he’d never say

He performs what he writes

On his Drum & Bass nights

And they rhyme, and they sound like today.