One of those poems you write in a pub
on a wet Friday. On your own and nothing to read.
Surrounded by people hugging each other with language.
But you are not without a friend in the world.
You are not here simply for the Alc. 5.5% Vol.
To prove it, you appear to have had a sudden thought.
Writing, like skinning beermats, is displacement activity.
You word-doodle with crazed concentration,
feigning oblivion to the conversations that mill around.
The seductive, the leery, arm in arm with the slurred
and the weary. For some reason, possibly alcoholic,
the doodles coalesce into a train of thought.
Actively displaced, you race along the platform
as it gathers speed. But before you can jump aboard
Time is called, and it comes off the rails.
But this is your secret. Unacknowledged legislator,
you drink up and leave, with a poem so full of holes
you could drive a coach and horses through it.