A poem about writing poems...

[Greeny]

My poems and lyrics don't mix. Lyrics (to me) are the most simplified and direct type of poetry that I can write, and not really poetry at all when I compare them to the actual poems I've fretted and slaved over in the past. I can write a lyric in ten minutes if I'm lucky, but a poem could stretch out to weeks. Every word and every line has to dovetail in some kind of magic and elusive combination.

I don't write much poetry these days, but there was a while when I did. Haveing a book of them published and doing some readings totally put me off though. Believe me, you do not want to know the type of people in the UK poetry 'establishment'... 

**********

SKIVING WITH APLOMB

I've written poetry
In factories, shops, and offices;
Surreptitiously, on folded scraps
Of paper stuffed in a sweaty back pocket.

The jeans that carry them
Have come and gone,
In changing fashions and worn-out crotches;
But the words jump ship,
Like fleas transferring
Their allegiance from one rat to another
(But carrying the same disease).

Instead of doing the job I'm paid for,
I'll beat my head against cul-de-sacs
Of non-compliant lines, like sheep
That won't go into their wattle pens.

I've wasted time
On production lines,
And a hundred desks where my body's been present
But never my mind or imagination.

I've slept in parks
And disabled toilets,
Whiling away the working day,
With haiku's hidden from the boss.

At times, I've written poetry
In obnoxious fat black marker pen,
On cardboard boxes and stockroom shelves,
And I've written THIS in the middle of a meeting,
To toss aside with all the rest.


Tim Green, 2009

[Oldrottenhead]

magic tim, to show how much i can relate to this my back pocket is always bulging with the scribbled lyrics of the songs i might be working on at any given time.

[bannybassman]

classic 
great one!!

[Geir]

I need to write a poem about this !!

[Geir]

A great poem Tim !

[Bluesberry]

I can almost hear your voice singing this Tim, it has so much of your style all over this, the phrases, the patterns, the feeling here. 

[Flash Harry]

I think you wrote that one for me. I have been there. Not writing poetry, but being elsewhere, not applying myself to the task in hand, but applying myself to the world in my head.


I love it.

[Satchwood]

Very well thought-out poetry Tim!

[Nelson]

Jesus, Tim
This is just a great piece of poetry. I can totally relate... I've felt this way my whole life but to make it worst, I was always preparing to write but never did. While you where writing on and with what ever you could get your hands on, I was procrastinating about writing. I can't tell you how many fresh new note pads I've purchased through the years, only to watch them pile up and become stained with everything but ink. 
That's probably why I'm doing so much writing now.
The pictures you paint are so vivid, you have a true gift , my friend.

Love the passage about the fleas... just brilliant.

-Nelson