Let’s face it, you take it on the chin

            From every angle

 

            If you’re not murdering something,

            You’re making pallid tapestries

            Out of rich whole coloured cloth

            Or worse yet, you’re ‘re-imagining’ a text – 

            Which is supposed to be high praise

            But to me is highly dubious

            Because imagining something in the first place

            Is already more than enough

 

            And then I hear that whenever you guys

            (my way of including both, or should I say all, genders?)

            Get together it’s mainly to disagree,

            A convention of quibblers and sticklers

            Trying to make nice as you sharpen your daggers in full view:

            The circle Dante forgot to mention

 

            At your most successful

            You drive us away from what you’ve sweated over

            (If, that is, you’re really what you say you are) and

            Prick us lazy bums off the cushy sofa of our mother tongue

            Into the arms of a femme fatale

            But even if your critics have a point or two

            They’re missing the barnyard wall

            Which is my point, after all,

            Because I came to praise rather than bury

 

            I know what you do

 

            How you take these words, for want of a better word

            (And now that I think about it, a word by any other word is just as enigmatic

            But I’ll get to that later, I hope) –

 

            How you take these signal mysteries,

            Groups, shards, and reams of them,

            Tribes and flocks and gatherings,

            Strung, unstrung or occasionally alone,

            Perched like a hot potato in the middle of a plate

 

            And you sniff and taste, sift and weigh,

            Pause and ponder from every side,

            Cock your ear and sometimes wait

            Ever so long for the discords in the secret melodies

            That few would dare to snatch

 

            You’ll run your hands over them and feel the sting

            Of a glassy surface

            Or gaze until you see the bite of their eyes

 

            But mostly you’ll breathe,

            Slowly and deeply enough to fill your lungs,

            Now crowded with perfumes,

            To sound a conch and blow a mangled tune

 

            It’s what we all do all the time, isn’t it?

 

            The other night I tried to sing my heart out

            But it didn’t come out right

            It never does

 

            So instead I drew my lover close and kissed as

            Sweet and long as I could bear

 

            She kissed me back in kind

            And in our hush I swore there was enough – 

 

            If not the whole, at least the more of it