Poet

There’s this boy Rufus

in your class and he is so cool,

everyone wants to play with him.

But half the time,

he is writing poetry,

not just on scraps of paper

but in handmade books

all bound together

with bits of leather

and ribbon. Ribbon!

Everyone wants to play with him,

but he is writing poetry.

And the poems are so bad,

a new entrant could do better.

But he is never happy,

unless he is writing poetry.

And you should see him then,

the sun shines on him,

his eyes go all cloudy,

his ears are all deaf,

he chews pencils into shreds,

stares through walls,

through the teacher,

and when he writes,

his hand whirls across the page

like a swarm of locusts,

he breathes in great gusts

of air, his hair

flops over the page,

he’s like some sort of god!

Who cares about the poetry,

you all want to be poets.