Me like poems.
I like poetry as a kind of music with language rather than notes; it appeals on emotional and thoughtful levels simultaneously, often regardless of quality. Prose can be bogged down in its own self-importance more easily, I think. You may have noticed that this is rambling, half-formed stream-of-consciousness stuff.

I don't really have any absolute favourites, though I like some popular works like Leisure by W. H. Davies and some of John Masefield's poetry.

I can't really sit and read poetry silently, however. I regard it as an aural medium and generally prefer to listen or read aloud, which is why I'm scouring around for performance poetry a bit more. I shall end this nonsense with this here poem from Luke Wright (www.lukewright.co.uk):

A Short Poem About My Own Death

I hope I die
in the changing room at Primark
squeezing into a pair of denim shorts
two sizes too small
slumped back on the stool
the denim tight around my slackened knees
a style far too young for me
so the shop girl later comments: Poor dead try-hard…

I hope I die
in a mall in Maidenhead
my colon rammed with lamb jalfrezi
let it dribble from my arsehole
down to my metatarsals
and make some cleaner loathe me
when he gets it on his clothing
I hope he slops his mop and curses me for being dead.

I hope I die
on a kid’s plastic train at McDonalds
sweating, dressed as The Hamburgler
I hope my wheezing and gasping
gets next door’s children laughing
let them clap and let them squeal
when I bring the happy meals
crashing to the bleached dirt-cracked floor as I fall

And at my funeral dispense of the eulogies.
Don’t give me another man’s version of dignity.
I don’t want poets there flexing pretensions
comparing me to a felled redwood or the River Wensum.

Just stick me in a deck chair atop my red Escort
dressed in a fishing hat, Bermuda shorts,
and a T-shirt with Well Dead and Loving it written on it.
Have Page Three girls drape themselves on the bonnet.

Forget the meaningful folk songs – play Agadoo, instead!
Get the mortician to draw a penis on my forehead.
And in place of a hymn just shout at my corpse:
We’re going to Alton Towers, and you can’t come because you’re dead!

Shoot down pomp! Shoot down significance!
Don’t let that get in way of who I really was
because stencilled wit on a grave stone,
written in pure testosterone,
means nothing if you lived your life like a bastard,
means nothing if you came home every night plastered,
means nothing if you never gave your loved ones what they asked for.

So lay me out on a Black and Decker Workmate
intestate,
in Margate,
with a hard drive full of porn
a grin on my lips, my dignity torn
and ask:
Was I any good to you?
Did I really do my best?
Did I make your dreams come true?
I hope the answer’s Yes.
(ThomsonsPier consumes, Wed 7 Jan 2009, 12:35, Reply)