Lord Byron put on quite a show; 
He was mad, bad and dangerous to know. 
He married an heiress; he couldn’t resist her, 
then committed incest with his older half-sister. 

William Wordsworth left his mistress 
pregnant and in distress, 
as did Paul Verlaine; he chose to go 
to a new lover, Arthur Rimbaud.  
They cut quite a dash 
until absinthe and hash 
made one shoot the other.
Verlaine did time.  
Rimbaud gave up rhyme;  
trading guns was his new line. 

The Romantic Robert Burns  
made his servants pregnant by turns,  
and left them in the lurch. 
He performed public penance in church. 

Shelley eloped to wed his teenage lover, 
then left her for another; 
the first wife
took her own life;
three weeks later he married the other. 

Coleridge abandoned his wife 
And smoked opium for the rest of his life. 

Alexander Pushkin, jealous old fool 
Insulted a love rival and died
in the consequent duel.

Charles Baudelaire  
loathed the rabble down there;
democracy was absurd, he purred, 
from his seat in the upper classes.
Louis Macneice, too, distrusted the masses;
all they want, he said, is bits of skirt
in the back of taxis. 

William Blake was decidedly odd; 
he claimed to have visions of God.
Ezra Pound thought Mussolini sound.
Philip Larkin never wed, 
for fear of making kids, he said;  
whom he thought not cute, 
but ‘selfish, noisy, cruel, vulgar little brutes.’ 

Lewis Carroll – paedophilic
Dylan Thomas – alcoholic
Rainer Rilke – adulterer
Ted Hughes – there’s another
Swinburne – masochist
Bukowski – always pissed
These are the starters
Of a long, long list

I could go on all day 
but suffice to say: 
poetry is to be enjoyed, 
but as for many
poetic men:  
best to avoid.

* 

Performed at the Jenny Lind, Hastings, 2nd December 2023.