Well ...
I've entered my poem in the National Poetry Competition.
'Yippee!'
The judges' statements -
'Just one thing, boss ...'
What?!
'Where's the PR email?'
Ha, ha, ha! Listen to him, kooks. Where's the PR email? Ha, ha, ha!
Anyway ...
The judges' statements are quite encouraging, so ... let's see what happens, yeah?
'Will you win it?'
I don't know. [I know it's a great poem.] I might. Or maybe I'll win one of the smaller prizes. Or maybe I'll get on the longlist.
Whatever!
The important thing is ... this time next year, I'll enter the National Poetry Competition and The Bridport Prize, and ...
I may have thirty or forty or fifty poems to choose from by then.
I'm playing a long game.
'How long?'
Decades, man. The rest of my life.
'What about your music???'
Christ! Decades, too. I can't take me guitar to Cornwall. That's going to be screwed up for a while, ain't it?
Never mind.
Anyway ...
My poetry. How will I go about it? I mean, writing it.
I've been thinking ...
Listen ...
I reckon most of my poems will be somewhere between twenty and fifty lines long. I'll use metre and rhyme for them, or blank verse.
However, I'll try to write three or four big poems in each volume, with ... eighty lines?, a hundred lines?, more?, I don't know ... AND(!) ... these poems will be written in free verse.
'Oh. / Why, Mikey?'
Because I really like The Hollow Men, Voice, and that poem would be rubbish if it wasn't in free verse.
So, I'll use free verse when I feel - instinctively, like - that I'm working on a special masterpiece.
Free verse for the big stuff, you dig?
'Nice one!'
Eliot himself said that Yeats was the greatest modern poet, BUT(!) ... none of Yeats' traditional verses can beat The Hollow Men or The Waste Land. There's just something "special" about those two poems.
Anyway ...
Whatever happens in Cornwall ... I may have it rough, or have it smooth ... it's the best place for me to be a poet.
A new identity in a new place!
Do you dig?
'Yeah!'
Laters.
I'm super-pissed at the moment about this blog and my music and my circumstances ... and I know it's the plan of the cosmos - and maybe even my astrologer in cahoots with the cosmos, and the ghost of Yeats - to make me feel like this ... to force me out of London ... and to force me into poetry. / So, I have a plan. My plan! And that is ... to become the greatest poet in the last five thousand years within in the next ten years. 'Ha! Can that be done, Mikey?' Yes, it can. I know of two characters who could have done it, but decided not to. 'Really? Who?!' Rimbaud and Eliot, Voice. 'Right.' You see, Yeats couldn't have done it, because that guy pushed himself to the limit to become the greatest modern poet. He had nothing more to give. However, Rimbaud and Eliot didn't push themselves at all. I mean, our Arthur packed it all in at nineteen. Bloody ridiculous! And our Tom took his foot off the pedal after The Waste Land and The Hollow Men. / So ... I'm just saying. 'But who is the greatest so far?' Well, we're talking pure poetry, aren't we? ... Dante, probably. I mean, Shakey is known as the greatest writer in general. 'Yeah.' I tell you: it's all to play for, man.
