hello all of you
brilliant poets and poetry fans
such appetites etc
I was thinking
tomorrow morning
how about you
walk out of your jobs
and those without jobs walk into them just up and toodle-ooo
just up and hello nice to meet you
take the staple gun
fantasise interiors
my name all of a sudden is
if you could redecorate
one thing
my name all of a sudden is
I want to quit my job
and start negotiating
(I like my job)
take the coffee machine
that’s going nowhere
trellised rose wallpaper
take the water cooler
I’m so anti-it I can’t put
it into words there’s a kind of exit
that never really happens
that is just ongoing –
like saying all the time the whole party
I need to go soon I need to go soon and
people keep offering you stuff and telling you stories
negotiate till doomsday
negotiate till kingdom come indulgence is desperate
I’m such a flatterer
You are all so brilliant
You’ve written good poems
many of you have
I want to print out all your poems and scrunch them up
and stuff them in my clothes maybe read them first!
just maybe / no promises
my favourite Romantic poet is
Anna Laetitia Barbauld
I wear my fear around me
I fan it out on my pillow
and spray my pillow with it
I’ve never been moved by staff meetings
I hated Call Me By Your Name
except the conversation with a fish
and the clothes
the conversations with people
all through were so horrible
and then I watched it with someone who
hated it and I started to like it more
but God’s Own Country I didn’t have so much beef with
except the crouchy
wash was borrowed wholesale
from Brokeback Mountain
my name all of a sudden is Mark Kermode
good evening to you all
it’s the audience that makes a performance
you are sleeping with stuff attached to you
you are car-less and sometimes annoying
but I don’t hold that against you

Image © Phil Richards