I write a poem that is the best. Massive.
I don't just mean long, but
huge intellectually
and although it ends up as quite a few pages
it's so easy to read it's like freefalling- each line
teeming with genius thoughts,
whole other worlds you hadn't thought of.
The poem makes me famous.
It's on the lips of intellectuals
and cleaners; teachers
and drinkers because the breweries
print stanzas of the poem
on the bottom of beer bottles.
On hot, oxygen-depleted nights
I walk down city streets and hear
lines of my poem being whispered
by sticky people. On the tube,
I peek over the top of a book about me
at a man in a suit nodding off
and recognise the words he's mouthing
in his swoon.
All front pages, every day
have the entire poem in small font, so it fits-
bombings or knifings get tucked inside.
The new novelist pays well to get
my poem printed as an introduction:
she knows her work makes no sense without it.
Systematically, everyone I have ever known
rings me to ask how I did it.
I say I don't know, and that's the truth.
After a year the fuss doesn't die down.
One morning I sit at my computer
and hear downstairs turn the TV on.
I put my ear to a gap in the floorboards.
It's an actor and he's reading my poem.
It's a good version; I've heard it before.
He has a Shakespearean voice
doing justice to what the introducer calls
The Best Poem Ever Written.
I listen to it all, I travel where the poem takes me
then get back in my chair
and write a better one.