This week – a short poem about death, existence, futility, human arrogance, the pointlessness of vanity, war, greed etc and so on and so forth…
I once read that an introduction to a poem should not be longer than the piece itself. The great thing about a blog is that you can ignore the arbitrary rules made up by other people; you might bang on for pages about a piece that is only a few lines. Also you can take very large subjects and hammer them in thirteen words as in this piece called Clock or you can take well worn subjects like dragons or contemporary relationships and ramble on for hundreds of thousands of words like I do in my novels and no one can slap you on the back of the hand with a ruler (like my piano teacher used to do - not for rambling obviously but for playing really badly and not practising).
Clock
No tic will ever return
The toc will burn
Only the sigh
Lingers
(by amanda baker 2012)
As for last week’s euphemism competition, in honour of the British Honours system I think I’ll just ask my friends who would like to win and who is most likely to take me out for coffee and a bun and post the winner next week. I think that’s best.