Something Else
It’s
other than the maverick
that
dissents from the orthodox
and
other than a three card trick,
a
glimpse of a suburban fox
or
all the fakes that might conspire
to
undermine the uncouth dire.
It’s
other than the latest thing,
some
aria one can’t quite sing,
it’s
not the first thing or the last
that
says it’s an iconoclast.
It’s
not the voice that you can’t do,
it’s
not even Albert Camus,
it’s
something else we’ll never know
however
far you want to go
because
we’d never recognize
each
other in each other’s eyes.
--
It can go into the file of poems towards the next booklet and take its chances when the time comes.
I fondly, fondly, imagine that some readers visit here in the hope of news of my frugal poetry career and are doughty enough not to abandon all hope when there is so often so little. Well, the folder that contains the poems for The Perfect Book now has 21 poems in it, which is 23 pages worth in the usual format so before the customary four year cycle is completed and the next title would be due, there's more than the usual dose of 14 poems. It doesn't seem like I've done much but they accrue like dust. Maybe some will miss the cut but the intention is to troll on regardless to produce something almost pamphlet-sized in 2019 rather than the usual mere sliver that represents four years of occasional decadent effort. They looked okay when I read them last weekend but on another day one can be beset with doubt and wonder if they are anything at all. I have wondered whether to enter a pamphlet competition which would save me the trouble of taking it to the printers if successful but such publishers seem to want you to promote the commodity by doing readings, signing copies and making yourself available, all debonair and gracious. I can't see me doing that.
But today, while walking about, I have been rehearsing the Portsmouth Acrostic in my head so, if need be, I can do it from memory if called upon to recite it once it is installed in a conference room on completion of the office refurbishment. There is to be only one other poem honoured in such a way, in the other conference room, and its author has already read her poem to her immediate colleagues. It always looks a bit as if a poet knows what they're doing if they can do it without the text in front of them and I wouldn't want to appear less than consummate if I were required to do the same. But I flatter myself if I entertain the idea that anybody will really want to hear it.
So, not much, very little of my time is spent writing poems. It is time well not spent if one refrains from writing bad poems and invests rarely, only when it seems the idea is worthwhile. It's not for me to be the judge of that.
But having now surprised myself by having written the novel I thought I'd never write that is the subject of the ironic poem, The Perfect Book, perhaps it will need a sequel, perhaps The Flawed Book, to acknowledge how the first poem was only pertinent to how it was at the time of writing. I'll give it some thought.
