The Culling
They let the poets loose
close by Walla Brook
a joyless spot
on the windswept joyless moor
They’re given a head start
and they scatter out in every direction
searching hopelessly
for some kind of cover
as we fly up from Plymouth
And then we shoot them with hunting guns
from our little swarm of choppers
Every dead poet’s worth the same amount
in cash reward
though bagging a lauded one
earns more prestige
and might even garner a grin
and high-five from your pilot
(They make slow and easy targets
the important ones
being plump on cheap illustriousness)
We go for a clean kill each time
not wanting to have our quarry splutter
flowery last words into the boggy ground
or blubbing
cry-baby heartfelt last words
or worse still
something abstruse and urgent
No a nice spicy head-shot is certainly preferred
as they swerve and duck
across the gaping wide terrain
A little pink bloom in the air
bursts like a sunset cloud
where the side of a head had been
O happy blossoming
Yes I was a poet too before I was a hunter
The Goldilocks Zone
I don’t even like my own taste in anything
my petty predilections
I hate what I like
the fever that comes off it
the inveigling smooch
birds
chocolate
trees
children
art
I hate these things that I like
They promenade with us and the sunshine and the others
who orbit
like planets with their various atmospheres and their surfaces
and their hot and icy regions
and their tell-tale revolutions
These things I like: this this and also this
and this and this and this
They smell so smug and so dewy because I like them I like them all over
all the way round to the other side
I put them in my mouth
and suck them
I have one here now on my tongue
You can touch it
Oh pardon me
It’s you
___________________
Mark Waldron’s fourth collection, 'Sweet, like Rinky-Dink' was published by Bloodaxe Books in 2019. He was selected as a Next Generation Poet by the Poetry Book Society in 2014.
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