I was the resident poet at Saturday Live this morning. Had a lovely time chatting to Joanna Trollope, who’s very nice. Here’s the poem I did, the topic was pen pals:
My mate yanny dropped his phone in the bath
He knifed his broadband line kicked in his set
Grew vegetables along his garden path
Wrote letters to everyone he’d ever met:
His Old school friends, forgotten dinner guests
first boss, girlfriend, the man who brought the coal
he wrote in biro from an old fusty desk
didn’t use smilies, wrote his words out in full
and soon the replies began coming back
printed envelopes outnumbered by scrawled
on ones with pink stickers as his friends packed
them out with stuff they never said when they called
there was something about making something
that appealed to blokes who had previously
just penned one line texts about birds and bling
and each one back felt like something for free
better nonsense composed at window sills
than a clockwork life and a mat full of bills