By John Silverton
Winner of the Anderida Writers’ Poetry Competition, 2023
Oh to be a poet,
Writing comic verses to amuse the hordes
like a stand-up comedian treading the boards;
Were it not for working like bees in a hive
imprisoning us minions from nine-until-five.
How much better to adopt this time
writing pages of verse in unusual rhyme.
But to use the leisure unemployment would free,
I need a plan to stop working, you see.
Oh to be a poet,
No commuting misery by car or by train
through dreary towns and defaced terrain.
Instead, up with the sun and morning lark
to laze in a glade’s leafy shade ‘til dark.
The flora and fauna will no doubt suggest
imaginative odes and sonnets to digest.
But for now I must consider more prosaic ideas,
like how to stop working for the next umpteen years.
Oh to be a poet,
But this honest endeavour may incur someone’s displeasure,
citing poetry and work to be not of equal measure.
For it seems to be irking for he who is working
to see me writing and assume I am shirking.
Particularly him, the unscholarly, unread,
literary enlightenment yet to enter his head.
And especially them at Social Security,
who would have me work or impoverished with impunity.
So I have come to conclude this sad fact of life,
that to be a poet one needs a rich wife.
Author Bio:
John Silverton was born in 1945, A Man of Kent. He is a former freelance journalist, newspaper columnist and magazine features writer, although most of his commercial life has been in marketing. His first novel, ‘A Pearl Amongst Oysters’, a suspenseful romance spanning half a century, received acclaim and is available from Amazon (books). He is winner of the Anderida Writers’ poetry and short story competitions . A book of short stories, entitled ‘Marilyn and Other Stories’, will be published 2025. A second novel, a murder mystery entitled ‘A Murder of Crows’ should be published 2026.
Author contact details:
| Email address: johnsilverton@hotmail.co.uk |
