Daily missive for Wednesday the 5th of January

‘How well you write.’

The young man said

As he browsed the piece

At the writer’s group meeting

English was not his first language

But it must have been a compliment

As left-handed writing

Is never a pretty sight

Re-read it a few times to improve

The timing

But also feared the piece would be

Seen not as pure poetry but as doggerel

How different it was in the past

From Chaucer to Auden

Breaking the rules before they were

Bent out of shape by the advent

Of newsstands with prose

Given away as a freebie in soft porn

Magazines

Nobel prize winners writing on

The back of a napkin

Rhyming ‘home’ with ‘stone’

Poetry displayed on a tube train

Slam dunked by performers

Learning their words

Verbatim

Acting the part of the bard

Love them or hate them

It takes nerve

In the olden days it was joie-de-vivre

Educated men with a dash of panache

Read by their peers

The educated classes

Were all very well-bred

Had devoured Homer for breakfast

They understood symbolic representation

Before it became a cognitive function

Critics were always ball-breakers

Woe betide a writer who

Misunderstood Euripides

Confused Oedipus with Electra

Perhaps it was easier then

When a quill was a pen

A keyboard was a place

To hang front door keys

When a privileged man believed

He had a god-given right

To succeed

I thanked the reader

For being so kind

Picked up the piece

And left the room behind

Went to the pub instead

Perhaps I’ll be remembered

When I am dead.