Junk Mail

Whatever possess-
ed me, I gave my address
to a shifty-eyed man in a pub,
a rep (so he said) of a poetry club.
And sure enough
I got all the guff.

Oceans of brochures, flocks of fliers,
and endless glossy catalogues
of wherewithals for versifiers
of epigrams or Latin eclogues.

Terza rima for beginners,
a six-step method for sestinas;

a kailyard kit full of couthie bons mots,
a machine with a handle for chopped-up prose;

the most diverse poetic gadgets,
metonymies, exotic zeugmas;
oxymorons and all such widgets,
lexical gems, unique syntagmas;

the keys to masterly self-expression;
the Lego-bricks of fame.
(Which leads me to a wee digression
on honour, plaudits, and acclaim:

One of my favourite words is squamous;
it means scaly, reptilian - and rhymes with famous.

I'm not convinced I want to be famous.
George Bush and Tony Blair are famous.
They shame us, the famous.
Apart from the famous Seamus.

Would be great if I coulda
been famous like Pablo Neruda
but by and large the famous is
a bunch of ignoramuses).

Concrete poetry, ideal outdoors or in.
A graceful ornament for bed or border.
Easy home assembly and a chance to win
a Nissan Haiku every time you order.

Your tired old feet will step far fleeter
in lightweight anapaestic metre.

No more tossing or counting sheep;
read Tennyson for restful sleep.

Well, this was all a dream, of course,
for if poetry were a market force
we'd be talking money, a pretty penny;
but the trouble with poets, they haven't any.