Poetry as a Competitive Sport
We brawl in the bookshops over scraps of bursary.
Firemen flip coins for a burnt child: ‘heads I’m hero!’
Gardeners nibble their neighbour’s carrots at midnight.
Musicians pour cola down competing Cello holes.
We used to believe in the job itself. Mime artists
built invisible campervans from united limbs,
now they wall themselves into singular boxes.
Chuckles the Clown pissed in Koko’s confetti-bucket.
With my basket full of severed thumbs, I bumbled back
from the strawberry-picking competition. We’d rather
eat naked cheesecake than share the fruit of our labours,
ever since that little birdie told us a story:
There’s a place reserved for you in a horn-gabled hall
where dragons flex their book-spines in shadowy alcoves.
Come with me, said the birdie, to the Land of Prestige
where the sound of your name carries water from the sun.
But the moat is soupy with bones, immigrants who rode
by tandem bike or passenger car, ignored the signs:
‘IF YOU SHARE A SEAT ON THE FUNICULAR RAILWAY,
PRESTIGE WILL BE DENIED.’ Samaritans are labelled.
The locals flaunt Olympian hats on the boardwalk,
enamel-white Ipods spurting gunfire in their ears.
Property developers receive upgraded wives
as theatre critics bake in moleskin conservatories
and this is the world of giant sunflowers, big cheese,
the world we swapped a kidney for. I clutch my talent
in the holding room, nose-to-neck with previous friends.
Every time the turnstile clicks, we bubble at the mouth.