Day 178. Thursday 11th October 2018

A Million Years of Poetry

© 2018 Steve Cook

I've just realised I'm a poet.

Good or bad it's what I am.

So I might as well embrace it

And do the best I can.

The problem with being a poet is

It never makes you any ruddy lucre;

Oh, why couldn't I have been a business wiz

Or a hustler at freakin' snooker?

Cleaning loos would have made me a bob or two

And I swear to God I didn't plan it

To make it my life's work to do

The worst-paid job on the planet.

I must be a glutton for penury

Or poetry has some kind of spell

For I've been a poet for centuries

So far as I can tell.

I was a bard in 1593

And I thought Shakespeare a clod,

Yet while no-one's ever heard of me

The smug bastard's treated like a god.

While the pharaohs were building follies

There sat I on a nearby hill

Watching the starships hover

And chewing the end of my quill.

I was stuck for a rhyme in Antarctica

When it was green and much further North

And my epic about my pal Noah

Got water-damaged during the flood.

When the asteroid made rubble of cities

And we left Mars for Earth in a hurry

A whole load of my very best ditties

Got lost enroute with my luggage.

By now they're heading out of the Galaxy

In a small valise frozen in ice

A waste of some darn good poetry

'Cos no-one can hear you rhyme in space.

The funny thing is that something similar

Had happened only a millenium before

When I lost seriously brilliant pentameters

During an invasion by alien spores.

All this keeps happening annoyingly

And I never seem able to stop

Wearing the battered floppy hat of poetry

Instead of taking a proper job.

But poets are a bit like criminals

In that they seem unable to learn;

Both keep hoping for the miracle

That this time the fire won't burn.

Now if all this leaves you incredulous

I guess I better demure into silence

For the only thing I kept through all of this

Was my grip on my poetic licence.

I am very pleased to welcome guest Poet, Ger White, who recently graced one of my Facebook Posts with this lovely poem of her own.

I follow some of your poetry

Some I like and some I don’t

Sometimes I feel like commenting

And sometimes I think I won’t

But this mornings lines are wonderful

They journeyed me near and far

Reminding me of distant horizons

And even of my favourite Star

So though you’ve loved and lost some plots

I am glad you’re here among us lot