getting to the gig
car full of poets,
babbling and quibbling,
noone wearing seatbelts
because of the metaphor,
noone knows where they’re going
because of the metaphor,
one has to be home by midnight
because of the spouse,
the woman with the big scarf is saying
I’ll know the way when we get there,
and the man with the che guavara t-shirt
is banging on about walt whitman,
2 quiet ones in the back rehearse
a haiku-rap set in a club called persephone,
and they all know the gig is somewhere in this city
so they pull over, jumping the kerb,
roll down the car-window, ask directions
from a man with sad eyes
and an interesting but faded suit
whose clearly on the run from something
and whose directions they don’t remember
because his missing back-story is so interesting,
and one of them says
let’s ring brian the organiser
but noone has his number
so they turn left, by instinct,
and of course, political inclination,
at the next traffic lights
and there’s the venue shining
like the pub in the advert that appears
from over the hill, and they all laugh
at the directional magic of poets
(though in another version, more lost,
it takes forty minutes longer
and they all arrive sweaty and bothered)
and they do the gig
to 5 general public, 4 local poets,
3 organisers, 2 bar-staff,
1 dog (barks all the way through the haiku-rap)
and on the way home they all agree
it’s a stormer.
Matt Black lives in Leamington Spa. He was Derbyshire Poet Laureate (2011-2013), his next book is The Leaking Boot (Iron Press, 2017), and he is currently working on commissions about camouflage, and extreme weather. www.matt-black.co.uk