It’s not what you are
It’s what you are not
Also that you know
The distance between them
Is vast, immense
Such that to envy
Or to struggle to achieve
Is as powerless or as pointless
As is trying to overcome
The craving for tobacco
It’s what you are
Not what you are not
So forget completely
About talking clearly
In educated English
Instead
Pull together your energies
Push out your clear focus
Into the deeper realities
Of just where you are now
Was that you
Looking out
Over the eighteenth green
On captain’s day
In midsummer
Or did you never share
Such joy or celebration
With your fellow players
Choosing instead
Always to hit the long drive
Is there surprise
In your eyes
That you came here
For breakfast
With strong coffee
The egg
Fried just right
And mushrooms
With the extra portion
Saying something about generosity
There’s a gap
Under the door
There’s a point
To its detection
More than a space
For the thrower
Time to anoint
A true reflection
There’s a light
On the hinge
With a reason
For further inspection
More than a beauty
With strength to singe
In this the season
Of faint intention
There’s a shadow
Of window’s lead
There’s a flower
To the true deception
More than a morning
Of bower to tread
There’s the power
Of words with correction
By the pier
But with no real money
So quite unable
To play the slot machines
Much then as it was
As a ten-year old
On Blackpool’s golden mile
Of penny arcades
Which in turn remind me
Of the girl who I asked to wait
at the South Shore pleasure beach
While I went back to Albert Road
Unfortunately the memory
Does not remember why I left
Or what was so god-damned important
That I needed to go and collect it
I am the I-click Marco Polo
Of this the open sea
I am the non-stop seagull
Confirming my territory
There is no end to my belligerence
Or my lack of dignity
Though I am thankful for the sparrow
Which appears to be on a par with me
A going nowhere Friday afternoon
Lost in that, the thoughtless haze
Of approaching rearrangements
Of that, the life as it once was known
In search of near calamity
Or for ceramics made in the rain
On the podium for past reality
With a look-out to the claim
