Big Gay Poet

Hi
My name is Mark and I write poetry
And woe is me
Because male writers seem to be in the minority
At my age
And whilst I enjoy writing on little scraps of pages
In my notebook
Till the sun has overtook the horizon
And the night has moved on
Other guys sprawl across their futons
Shouting at the TV screen
In between football team matches
And for them that’s ok
But why does it feel like I’m a member of
The AA
When I stand up and say
My name is Mark and I write poetry

Sometimes scribbly, sometimes stoically
I’ll admit it’s my hit
My fix,
My 3 weetabix for breakfast,
And my teenage kicks
But at twenty six
Years
Old
Being male and writing poetry

Well, let’s say that it can become entertaining socially
It means you get to spend whole evenings defending your sexuality
Oh the manly eyebrows raise, the lips they do pout
Whenever my pastime is bandied about
And I get clouted with a flurry of loaded questions like
‘So what’s writing love poems like?’
‘That’s usually for girls, isn’t it?’
And for a moment I’m a PE student who’s forgotten his kit
As if I couldn’t possible admit to anything worse
Because if Mans best friend is dog
Then our greatest foe is verse
And its got to the point where I can rehearse
for the questions I get asked on the radio
‘Hi Mark. What our listeners would really love to know
Is how bizarre it is being a man who writes poetry?’
Alright Mr DJ I get your hyperbole
Even when sat down for tea
With my Mum she’d be asking
'How’s the writing going dear?
I went out with some friends the other day,
They’re gay
And they seemed absolutely lovely. Didn’t they David?'
And while my Dad chokes hiding his rabid hopes
that I’m hetero in a middle class muddle act
The puddle of meat that’s on his plate
Is left fully intact
I’d only come round to help them empty the loft
And they’re driving me round the bend
So quit the intervention Mum, I have a girlfriend
And I’ve got gay friends too, they’re decent guys
But is it such a surprise
For a man to be writing words without looking at another mans thighs?
Why did all the male writers of old have to go on and die?
Cos those dead poets I’m sure had no such problem

They belonged to a time
When it was butch to write ballads
Composing a few thoughtful lines didn’t mean that you just ate salads
At lunch
Oh that cheeky bunch of bad boys,
Yeah excitement was their fuel
Out all day being outrageous
Home in time for several duels
Some of their escapades were really pretty cool
But it never seems to translate well into school

Cos, as well as writing poetry
I’ll admit
I’m an English teacher,
Obsessed with
Find new ways to reach
The kids with poetry
But they always start poetry units by moaning at me
'Come on Sir,
You can’t really like this stuff
It’s just a bunch of dead guys
Dead hard
Dead boring.'
Fair enough
I can see where they’re coming from
And I figured as a country
We’d regard
Our literary heritage as kind of interesting,
Its no surprise young people don’t initially want to know when
We aren’t investing in finding more interesting ways to present these men and women
In most cases we give kids a book, some facts and they’re invariably doomed
To thinking what the rest of us have secretly assumed
That poetry is just written by velvet shirted guys in their bedrooms
I can understand why kids want to study media, its fast exciting, nail biting stuff
But that’s just because the dead poets have been left to gather dust
And it’s not just a bunch of dead guys who speak in a language that is dead
In my head, the lessons from their lives aren’t dead
But rather deadly
Deadly funny
Deadly witty
Or deadly deep and steeped in tragedy
And there are so many lessons to be learnt from their pages
They knew what made us tick even though in the middle ages they thought the world was flat
And wouldn’t it be great if there was a way for schools to prove just that?