This is rather embarrassing, but, I’ve been conned. Some twats have pissed over my life’s ambition and passion. Pissed all over Adrien Brody and Johnny Depp then? No – but they might as well have. They’ve pissed on my writing…
On searching the web for poetry competitions/poetry publishers etc. I came across one that was dishing out dollar prizes for poems and I thought I’d give it a go. A few weeks later, I was told I hadn’t won the competition, but they would like to publish my poem. AMAZING I thought, until I read further… They would like to publish my poem, but ONLY if I was willing to buy 5 copies of the book they would be published in (an extremely overpriced, glorified pamphlet)
And then it hit me… this was full on, no bullshit vanity publishing. The only people that were ever going to read this book ‘Spotlight’ were other poor poets like me: on the game, struggling for recognition, only interested in seeing their own name on the page, and bankrupt from buying endless books that aren’t actually books.
So I aint’ paying them to have my words, I’ll put them here instead:
An Impossible City
Crumbling curtains of sky high bricks
hide a palace of rotting sparkles
and monkeys, who swing from bridge to bridge,
over a stagnant river which lies
stubborn.
like the cafes, who char your panini
your pocket jingles while your head shakes
dust gathers on laws who are frustrated
and stuck at traffic lights,
the radio rendered speechless by a clown
crying in the rear-view mirror
white powder dripping and marking tarred roads,
who smoked Benson & Hedges at the age of eight
and cough up men in uniforms
and they, with the government body of lies
form teardrops in the beholder’s eyes.
