Poetry about Poetry ... original or previously published poetry, June 2001
They Call it Metromania
So I've got poems again -
itchy red blotches
that prevent me from sleeping at night.
A rash on the arse of literature.
I'm looking for a white cream
to soothe the painful rhymes away,
and for some antibiotics to cure the infection
that's causing me to lose words.
It's ugly, it's embarrassing,
and I don't know where I caught it.
No-one I know has poems like these.
Perhaps I caught them from cheap,
unprotected publications
in second-hand bookshops.
One by one the lines break out.
Sometimes they leave question marks,
each more virulent than before.
I must see a graphologist
expert in the pathology of scribbling,
or just take it easy for a while -
avoid browsing, try some prose
(a page at a time), and see how it goes.