My fingers trace across the myriad shapes on the book case
Leaving rejection in their wake.
Tonight I do not fancy the whimsical humour of Billy Collins,
The potent poetic plosive possibilities of Harry Baker,
Or polemics about periods with Hollie McNish.
I wish I was in the mood for Jacqueline Froom
But I’m not.
And tonight I am not feeling Dr John Cooper Clarke.
The four-legged fur ball opens one eye when I say,
“Cat, what should we be reading this evening?”
Between the gaps on the nightstand I spot Wendy Cope’s “Two Cures for Love”
Whose reflections on romance I relish with rapture and
I’m glad she exists
But I think it’s probably a vaccine I’m in need of
The sentient bad mood with ginger fur blinks at me
The ice chinks in a glass as I pour a drink for me
And then whilst carefully placing a single jacket potato in the microwave
I eulogise to the Cat about Simon Armitage
Because tonight I can write the corniest rhymes
In stolen lines like, the air conditioning revolves around the half-empty flat
And lines like
The evening is starry and I am reading poems to my Cat.
Did you know that on the day she wrote “I Will Always Love You”, Dolly Parton also wrote “Jolene”?
Or that another bad break-up was behind Edvard Munch’s “The Scream”?
Frida Kahlo painted “The Two Fridas” after her divorce came through
And Prince gave the world his song “Nothing Compares 2 U”.
Please forgive me
I think that this poem is the best that I can do.
I’m not going to lie, I don’t know where this poem came from. I mean, it was in the folder in Google Drive called “20. Poems” like all the others; but I mean that it started out as a funny poem and then it took this sad, lost love turn at the end that I wasn’t expecting. Poems can do that, you know. Billy Collins talks about it and he’s a total screaming genius.
It's a Queer Old Blog... 