Different versions of me

I've been thinking about, and reading, poetry, rather than writing it, lately. I've been looking back at lots of my old poetry and wondering how I manage to have such an inconsistent style of writing. I didn't come up with an answer. Nor to the question why so many different types of my poetry have been published - and so many haven't. Right poem, right place, wrong poem, wrong place, rubbish poem, etc... 

The following poem, which is unusual even for me, got accepted for publication, but I withdrew it after about 18 months of waiting for it to be published, because I was having a bit of a breakdown at the time and just got cross, which was unfair on the publisher (maybe?), but I couldn't deal with it then. I could resubmit it somewhere else, but I think it stands as good a chance of getting read here as it would anywhere else, so...

The end of the world happened

in a hotel bar on the edge of somewhere

where a man of a certain age

had just been told, without a hint of irony,

that he could check out any time he liked,

and having polished off the nuts

and another double, decided

to say yes to the woman in the lipstick

the same shade his wife had worn before

and knew for once he wouldn't have to pay

and

in a carpark outside a pub in Dungeness

where a woman of a certain age

had just been told, without a hint of irony,

that she could check him out any time she liked,

and having had her cod and chips

and Sex on the Beach, decided

to say no to the man who looked like

all the others and the shag on the shingles

and settled for a fag on the edge of nowhere.

In the beginning (a child's puzzle)

Dad: Look at this poem - what do you think?

Me: I think it's about love.

Mum: Poet emerges from fish?

Me: Keats.

Brother: What shape was Keats' DNA?

Me: A troubled Felix.

Frustration

I wasn't going to write a post this week. 

It's been another week of frustration. Trying to fix the gas boiler - the hassle, the expense, the lack of resolution - 'a new one is a better option' - yes, if I happened to have that kind of money, which I don't. And then seeing what not having it working has done to the electricity bill which has just come in. 

And then trying to get a doctor's appointment, and a hospital appointment, and medicines, and any kind of comprehension of the stress that's causing.

But then, I thought, as I'm already fuming, I'd write something about how annoying some tweets and posts are when it comes to poetry. Don't get me wrong - there are some open discussions about poetry - where people are genuinely asking for ideas, and discussions about a poem or a pamphlet which accept their subjectivity, and/or are descriptive rather than judgmental. And there are really supportive people out there too.

But the ones that make me angry are the ones where people don't just say what they think. They say, or imply very strongly, that they're right, and therefore everyone else is wrong. You don't like something - fine. Don't tell me I shouldn't like it. And vice versa. You don't think the form of the poem is right - fine. That's your opinion. It doesn't make it a fact. And so on.

It's hard enough for people to put their work out into the world, or to try to connect, without being told that what they've said or done is wrong, when what is really the case is that one person's opinion differs from another's. Some things are facts. Some are just opinions. I wish people would remember that. And be kinder.