Paul Verlaine’s pistol

By | 13 May 2024

rings out through poetry
like a town hall clock in a village where poetry
hides like a pill in a cabinet
(entropy & all that)

leave your text messages unread
your heroes unsung

suggests the band in long coats
supplying off-key brass

here is your bouquet
here is your bucket

I’m dressed like Rimbaud coming back from the shops
there’s doing it (poetry) but in a punk way
subverting form & tradition
spitting at the audience et cetera
but this is not the same as doing nothing at all

I can have as many tabs open as I like
in the gold rush I don’t think anyone really
stopped to brush their teeth

sometimes anxiety is googling weighted blankets
& derealisation other times it’s a fighter plane
refuelling in hostile airspace
piercing the peach-gold sky

announced by the taste of coins
here are fourteen different lenders
who want to give you & your poetry a home loan

Baudelaire uses a word which means cracked bell
that doesn’t have a correlate in English

it was an art teacher of mine who once said
don’t take the money

This entry was posted in INVISIBLE WALLS and tagged . Bookmark the permalink.

Related work:

Comments are closed.