davidgoulding84@interpoems.com

PRESS 1

If you are writing a novel ..press 1
If you are writing non-fiction..press 2
If you are writing a biography ..press 3
If you are a celebrity ..press 4 for fast-track
If you are writing poetry.. HANG-UP

If you wish to make a TV documentary..press 1
If you wish to make an animated film.. press 2
If you wish to make an expensive action movie with no plot..press 3
If you have characters, dialogue and a recognisable plot..HANG-UP
        unless you are making another King’s Speech
             which was, of course, a happy accident.

If you are painting a picturesque fishing village in watercolour ..press 1
If you are creating a portrait in green blurs with mauve edges..press 2
If you are making a collage of string, wire and cat-sick..press 3
If you are influenced by the style of an in-favour artist.. press 4
If the artist is over 100 years old ..press 5 for our forgery department
If you do not know the genre ..press 6 to sign up for expensive tuition
If you are just painting what you felt like regardless..HANG-UP
But you can ring our helpline on a pay by minute basis for longwinded advice.

Fill in the boxes, create by numbers,
Identify your audience, readership and critics,
Know your place, accept your position.
          Or you could just blow your brains out,
          but only if you pigeon-hole your suicide.

FOURTEENTH (february)

Year upon accelerating year

          this day has come, gone and left

                    me cold from cool to freezing:

indifferent icicles hung by a touch.

Yet day upon annual ritual day,

         sometimes with all the passion 

                      and amorous fire of a risen zombie

I spent commercial pennies for dead art

                       and actually sent a card. 

The morning after the morning after

         another year, there have (or haven't as the case may be),

               plonked onto varied floors, dead as doormats in cold halls,

envelopes like flattened coffins; all nicely stamped:

               to feebly hide the sender.

Given or received, these paper relics,

                nameless by decree, in so familiar writing,

                       have stirred no muscle and erected no idea:

                 bills are more exciting.

author's note: obviously date sensitive, but I'll leave it in a short while.