This 'Creative Writing and Recovery' group I go to has been... well, let's just say mixed. It alternates between poetry and prose, but I missed the second prose due to the flu so today we were back to poetry. I am not a poet, partly because I have quite a fixed idea of what constitutes poetry (as opposed to verse). In my mind a poem's like a magic box where an idea is expressed in its most concise, pleasing form, which also manages to hold infinitely more, so that each reading reveals something new. And no, I don't think we can all write poetry, though this may be because most of us can't be arsed to take the necessary time to craft something worthy of the name. So I get quite narked when given some kind of prompt and ten minutes later am asked if I've finished.

Today's class focused on metaphor and simile - I managed to get myself so worked up that I couldn't think of even one single solitary figurative anything and it was all pretty hideous and not much to do with recovery. In the end, she abandoned the metaphor stuff and asked us to write what she called a pyramid poem, based on an increasing number of syllables in each line. I'd somehow got fixated on the memory of Son fetching up in the kids' field at Glasto dressed as MJ the day after he died. It's not poetry, just verse, and I gave up on syllables to finish the last line as I just didn't care enough.

Dead?
Jacko?
He can't be!
I must away
And hire a costume
Black wig, red suit, white glove

I emerge from the train loo
Resplendent. The man lives in me!
The walk from Castle Cary was tough
Come on Glasto - you're used to piss-taking bastards by now, surely?

Sleep tight