Why I Don’t Submit
I would submit but I don’t much wax and whine
about summer dying, planets sighing or an alabaster
moon crying into an indigo sky that wraps
its arms around a wounded earth. I know and accept
there’s a place for Hydrangeas to whisper laments
to a mystical man in a tent with a trenchant scar
on his right cheek (a story there for sure).
Mrs Hall said I had a penchant for poetry.
I thought that meant I had something against it
until I looked it up in my Collins pocket dictionary
and found I actually liked it and could sometimes write it.
I don’t deny ‘Gulags’ in Russia exist or even resist
the stirring of spring or muted light misting out
a fragile dawn? I don’t yawn, I just wasn’t born
to document the dusting of fairy clocks o’er
verdant moors whilst lesser speckled, blue-pied, banana birds
sweep and swoop overhead to the tune of whistling wind
through trembling trees. But I’m willing to learn.
Big gaps and scattered words, perhaps, are the thing
to add impact and optical value, but I’ve come to the
conclusion it’s an illusion. It’s right to write left to right. Right?
It’s hard enough when the Arch Angel Gabriel garners a
cabbage for the star ship Enterprise and is thwarted by
alien savages and effervescent droplets forming
an iridescent space-storm. Good Lord! Granny only reads ‘The Sun’.
I am very accepting of ancient italic sayings in languages
no-one understands but obviously come from some cosmic star
or an unearthed species on the bed of the ocean floor.
I’m terrified I’ll be laughed out of judges chambers
for lack of obscurity, vagueness or cryptic nuances
about the crustaceans on Mother’s feet at the height
of the Pelopennesian Wars, or the heat betwixt
a wilting red wall and a dried, insence’d cactus.
Lord! People read a lot of books.
Mrs Lewis said
I would never amount to anything if I didn’t follow rules.
Nowadays, schools don’t tend to say stuff like that.
They growl but don’t bite. Wrong or right.
‘Poetry needs to be deep to appeal to the inner soul’.
I’ve got one voice. It’s not deep, I admit.
Best not submit.