Fake Poet

Keats, Wordsworth, and an Iliad

Homer’s English class of rote

Only made real by sarcastic vitriol 

of an English teacher’s will,

ground and polished to obsidian 

By an abrasion of the disinterested 

Class of 6b or 6c

devoid of empathy for any a bard

Staring aimlessly at the

Haiku top shelf detritus 

Twenty years teaching 

Lifetime student labour 

Ambition crushed life

Turned off - tuned out

Wilfred Owen weary words

Spoken with all the passion

Of the subject stone dead

Jabberwocky nonsense 

vibrant as the Dead Sea scrolls

Mind numbing moments

Seared with lukewarm irons

Into a mediocrity of compliance

Of the uninspired masses 

Twenty years hidden

Gestation - a single seed

A word viewed in periphery

Inspiration like an ear worm 

Reverberating inside your head

Rushing down rabbit holes

To a furtive pencilled line

On a spiral bound pad.

But still the long dead words

Like cleopatra's asp 

monotone whispering

of a deadly nightshade tone

This is not for you

Your words mean nothing

Fake poet

Fake poet

F a k e p o e t