The Best Poem Ever Written

I write a poem that is the best. Massive.
Not just long, but huge intellectually
and although it is book length
reading is like freefalling,
each line greased with two genius thoughts.

The poem makes me famous.
I wander oxygen-depleted nights
down city streets and hear
lines of my poem bartered
between sticky lovers.

On the train, I peek over the top
of a hardback 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,
showcase stanzas of my poem –
bombings and murders 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.

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 hasn’t died away.

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 called
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.