Kit Kelen - #366 - 366 - or not going to happen

366

366

or

not going to happen

(indulge this moment's fantasy of self-reflection)

I want them to point and say

there he is!

there's the one who wrote a poem a day

for the whole of the year

and some of them were alright too

I'd know him anywhere

just by style

by voice –

unmistakable!

and it was better than the news

you'd want to hear from him every day

and he was … reliable!

like a paper thrown at your letterbox

but landed right way up

and didn't need too much unwrapping

and he wasn't the only one

there was a whole bunch of them

all at the every day stuff that mattered

what an effort they made!

and they did it together

they were in conversation

they were a community

hard at it

making the heart-and-head stuff –

poetry!

magic – all out of thin air?

not really

more like

they all just kept each other going

like a conversation

really it's unprecedented

who's ever done that before?

were there poetry holidays in there?

any poetry-off days?

well sometimes it

might have got prosaic

and much that was meant

just had to be pictured

but poetry was the spirit of the thing

and the spirit was always there

I want them to say

the punters I mean

I want them to say

o pioneers!

when the world was turning to shit before our eyes

they did this democratic thing

bore witness to each other's truths

and made it part of their day

the work of witness

a kind of standing up to say

I'm in nobody's bottom drawer

I'm present to this world

and sing

it made the day

made mine, made yours

that's what I'd like to hear them say

they were the ones who kept the faith

their politics was poetry

heroes of the deep lost verbiage

heroes picturing

should be borne shoulder high

among adulant crowds

to wear the laurel jubilant

of getting to this day

lyrics licked

and tune enduring

heroes of poetry's community

anthem, jig and flag unfurl

?

but all are victims of a closing cadence

denouement comes to the best

I have this sneaking suspicion

recognition will not

instead

it's more like

look at this sorry collection

they have the poetry disease

him and his sad friends

they have to do it every day

it's like a running nose

this draft of a poem every day

and you're out of the allergy medicine

follow the tissue-strewn path

to the temple, is it

or the ward for hopeless cases?

it was always hard to tell those apart

but what is there to worship at last?

I wonder if there's a way we could help them?

maybe be the best thing we can do

is to politely turn away?

or even if we read

we can pretend that we ignore them

yes they are beyond our help

pretend it hasn't mattered

pretend no difference was made

comrades

let me just say this

bugger the rest of the world

it's off to buggery all by itself

requires none of our help to get there

but

this year was ours too

I wrote for you

you wrote for me

isn't that what counts?

                                                        Shisendo - temple of the poetry immortals