At the Poetry Recital.

Sitting in the corner at the poetry recital I don’t know. How many more sessions I can go to before it has to be my go.

Three are experimental but one poem that we hear is fairly sweet. It’s about mathematics told like poetry but not to any beat.

These kids are clutching notebooks I’ve my own but hold it dearly to my chest I’d write it down but feel I’ll give commentary a rest.

Is this really the state of the poetry scene Why are they not using the meter I’ve used since I was 13

Am I out of my depth or just swimming in a different pool.

A few months down the line and I am upstairs in the lounge The organiser’s reading Larkin on a chair and we all clap like it’s his own. Years later I’m slumped in that corner, as a man stands by the microphone.

A beard and notebooks, expectations set, I’ll smile for a second but I’ll soon forget, What I was smiling about.

The audience is fidgety but silent and it quickly starts to swell, Claps and giggles when he talks but I don’t hear the first words all that well.

But then the first few verses finish and my cynical brain’s Got the feeling that its sleeping spine’s been plugged into the mains,

I laugh inside, my senses wide trying to take in everything they see, His name is A.F Harold and he blasts my bloated ego out of me.