A Poetry Recital
The hardest thing to do,
Is to make people read your poetry.
You wait eagerly through prolonged dinners;
Where the shrimp tasted like death,
And the vegetables raw.
Hell, the wine was not chilled.
But you made it through.
Hungry, bits of the shrimp rice left on the plate,
Like the seven islands of this city, Salsette.
And you gulp down the warm wine,
And scan across the room, nerves ticking.
You wipe the moisture off your palm,
On your grey jeans, matching the skies of London.
You remember your first poetry.
Incidentally, it was about a Ferris wheel,
And about life, how it goes round and round.
Oh, you didn’t know about life then.
You look into the eyes of your friend,
His bloodshot eyes,
He is still broken, he took his break-up hard;
Harder than you thought.
He wouldn’t care for your poetry.
You never wrote one for him.
Break-ups are easier than this, only if he could see.
But poetry is personal, you plead.
And you sip unnervingly from the remaining wine.
Will they like what you wrote last night?
Will they want to hear how you see the waves?
How you feel about the sea, about the sun,
Or about the God you don’t even believe in.
But the words are your children,
You want the world to adore them as you do.
Let them caress their nonexistent cheeks.
Even let them try to understand what your poetry means,
Babies and poems are so hard to comprehend.
So you look at your other friend,
She has always liked roses and lilies.
She will have an interest, she had some in you.
She looks at you, a smile on her face, she is poetry.
No, this one won’t tell you,
Not, if your poetry is shit.
Nor it is moves something in her, like it did in you.
So, here I stand waiting to read my piece,
In front of a crowd of fifty, chained to their seats.
They wouldn't hear me if they were free.
