It's not often a new poem is repeated quite so quickly here. It's very rare. It's not happened before.

But I liked my new poem, which is all that really matters, before it got a better than usual response from the few I showed it to, e-mail being such a tempting device by which to intrude on the private time of others.

Of course the previous title was makeshift. It would have been given a better one had it ever found itself destined for print. Why, then, shouldn't it have one now.

It wasn't obvious, no phrases from within the lines suggesting themselves as candidates and so, as often can be useful in the creative process, one lets one's mind become malleable plasma and see what happens. That is how the poem was written after all. By not caring. So, here it is with its new, or latest, title. That process might never be over but eventually it needs to stop so I hope this is it.

You Won’t See Me Follow You Back Home

And poetry is like the sort of girlfriend

That leaves you on account of all your drinking 

Which you say isn’t half as bad as she says 

But still she won’t come back until you stop.

I know the Köchel numbers of sonatas,

The name that Alpha Cyngi’s better known by, 

The scores from long-forgotten cricket matches 

And that is all the use I claim to be.

 

We commit to no more than rainy Wednesdays 

In suburbs where the library’s always closed then 

And I perform repeats of all the stories 

She’s heard before in slightly different versions 

And then, if I’m polite enough to do so, 

I ask her how she is but not to dance.