No Atticus Finch
You’re making a box out of a pen, Pandora.
I unleash all your suppressed clichés,
and twist words uncontrollably.
I am you. You am I.
What are you playing at, scatterbrain?
You’re not extraordinary. You’re another-
day-another-dollar ordinary.
Yet the notes in your wallet are wrong: standard
Post-its, complicated
by chicken scratches of the self.
External is the opposite of internal.
Where’s your insightfulness?
Dusty cogs are struggling
for a consolation.
Did I hear you right? At least
you’re a good dad,
a bit like Atticus Finch? His
children admire him.
Granted, you both work in a court,
but he defends the righteous;
you are rightly condemned
to handle the correspondence.
And if he wrote poetry, you would
wish your hands were cut off.
Sam Langworth studies Creative Writing at Birkbeck University, where he has received invaluable teaching and guidance from Liane Strauss and Anthony Joseph. He writes most of his poems in his downstairs bathroom (he calls it his ‘office’).