Poetry: Selections from Martin Appleby

The Whole Damn Sorry Dance

The years fly by

quicker and quicker

with each one that passes

 

They start to feel like one long

bad day working

at a job you hate

 

You wake up

in the cold and go to work

in January

 

You get a brief respite

for lunch

in the summer sun

 

Then you get home

to eat and shower and shit

and before you know it

it is Christmas again

 

You go to bed

and have to wake up

and do the whole damn

sorry dance

for another day

another year

another decade

 

an endless succession

of meaningless moments

that

will

only

end

one

way.

Why Bother?

Sometimes you read a poetry collection

or chapbook

or sometimes a single poem

that is so good

so succinct

so on the money

so full of the courage of its convictions

that it makes you wonder

why you even bother

writing poems yourself

because everything has been said

all feelings have been been felt

all emotions have been expressed

a thousand times better than you ever could

and any extraneous words that you type

would be erroneous

needless cliffnotes in the labyrinthine history

of the written word

and yet

here I am

still typing

chin down, gloves up, still throwing that jab

and whilst I may be

up against the ropes

battered and bloody

in a fight I simply can not win

there is still a glimmer of hope

that I could land that one lucky punch

the knock out blow

and some day, somebody

will read one of my poems

and wonder why they bother to write.

Martin Appleby is a punk, poet, vegetarian, cider drinking scumbag from Hastings, England. He runs Scumbag Press and edits Paper and Ink Literary Zine.