An Addition to the DSM

There are many things that poetry is not. Big business. A way to earn a fortune. Trending. Something millions of people look forward to all day. What scores of foolish young hopefuls move to the city to make it in. What keeps Waterstones going. The cause of a sudden publishing phenomenon that fills warehouses and crashes websites. The force raising lines of tents from the ground outside ticket offices. Something to which personal assistants, or casual staff hired to deal with fan mail, owe their jobs. An art form generally loved, respected and, indeed, gone to by the public. (Oh, and what I should be doing with my life).
Nope, poetry is obscure. Poetry is minority interest. Poetry is... what ought to go and stand over there, in the place that, if we really admitted it, we all consider a bit weird and pretentious. And unnecessary: that's it, it just doesn't have anything to add to our lives after the novels and the music and the films have been in and bestowed their lavish gifts. Thanks for the stanzas Poetry: just hang on to them for the time being if you would, over there in the weird and pretentious corner. Yes, all the other art forms have office space within popular culture as well as without, but not you, I'm afraid. And by the way have you considered using a rhyme once  in a while?
Still, precisely because of that, Poetry should have the saving grace of being sparsely dusted with actual practitioners, of being easy to break into compared to the other more popular art forms. Shouldn't it? Surely the most underrepresented and non-lucrative field of artistic expression there is couldn't be twice cursed by also being one of the most oversubscribed, competitive and generally teeth-gnashingly difficult to actually make it in? Could it? And if that were the case, why in God's name would you ever want to try? What sort of masochist are you to endure poverty and prohibitive odds both at the same time?
A poet, that's what. And here I am: a poet. It surely qualifies as a genuine psychiatric affliction under the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders. There are other forms of writing - ones that in all probability I'm better at - that I would practice instead, were my madness not of this incurable kind. Let's hope they can begin to cure some other people of it, then I might just have a chance. 

Some Rejections

I recently submitted some poems to Magma for their clothes-themed 56th issue. I must admit, I was rather miffed to get the inevitable rejection, at least until the dim apprehension that my ability to send off the very, very poorest of my work for consideration had struck again, and it would probably have been worse for such embarrassing stuff appear in print under my name.
Naturally, then, there is only one thing to do: post the poems here instead. Two of them, anyway. The third one is another sartorial confection I created specifically in the hope of getting into this issue - a not-so magic bullet, I suppose. Judge for yourself whether I should have included that one....

Iron

This is the steamboat that sails the lake flat;

this is Time’s arrow, forced to point back

to the shop and the promise. This the

implement we take to new skins, this is our everyday cosmetic surgery -  where do the creases go this pallet knife scrapes over the edge?

  

The Between-Coat The zip is stuck. It’s stopped doing up and the teeth behind it have peeled apart leaving my coat as its spreading wake. It hangs on me dead with mouth open. What if there’s no way to get out of this in private or public? I’ll pin on the looks. Inhabit the halves that no longer fit. It will be the spectacular frill I raise to terrify, my flying-fox cape as I swoop tree to tree, clerical robes of a surely absurd religion, and garbed in the moment of transition I will observe people in seams, unknitting.

Letter to the Editor, Scarf Enclosed

Sir, a certain haruspicy is possible

with all the ties, scarves and socks

we have received as gifts but never worn.

I have pulled mine from the drawers  like viscera

and, observing this heapof misbegotten largesse on the floor

seen rivers, seen motorways – maybe characters –

seen definitely, all of the train and criss-crossing

car routes that bring them to me

on Christmases, Birthdays, and other miscellaneous gatherings,

seen the bonds of a lifetime of inlawship and polite acquaintance.

             Sir, one cannot help but prognosticate

with all of this evidence before one

what a mess polite acquaintance will make.