Seven Reasons To Stop Writing Poetry

1. It sings to itself, calling
Into the throat of a well
And thrilling in the bounceback echoes
As if they were the hails of some jaunty raftsman
Hello, hello,
You are real sir
And a very fine real sir too

2. Fuck bait
But bad, awkward,
Like Dad's fifty-piece mousetrap
That ran off the mains
Because he thought himself too good
For poison;
Killed one, eventually,
When it tried gnawing through
The power cable

3. It's not as if we're all
Love chums
Bumping knuckles
In the bright bright sun;
Humans don't need
No more obfuscation
For serious

4. Sitting prettifying your brain
Fat accumulates in thick sheets
Round the bag of your heart;
Listen to your breathing –
You stay here by the good grace
Of a meat conspiracy
And it needs exercise
Please

5. We lack many things
But nobody stalks this earth
Feeling a dearth of verse
Like gut suction

6. I just want to talk to you

7. Dialling down through the shotsilk
Pores of temporality
One alights in a universe
Where poetry propels millwheels
And shunt-starts fag-knackered hearts;
It is their petrol, their mother's milk;
It has a heft and a gravity
And we, the greedy poets,
Are bleeding them dry,
Sluicing their fuel down through ever grosser levels
Till it comes out black and acrid
Rank with meaning