I woke with a start on World Poetry Day  
Through the windows streamed sunshine sublime 
And every sentence I started to say 
Came out in a perfect rhyme 

Today the poets were out on parole 
Everyone’s speeches were chiming 
Delivered with effortless voice control 
And performed with impeccable timing

In the local paper I perused the news  
It was written in sets of haikus  
The leader column was a Villanelle
Reporting the world was all well  

It said famine and crime 
Had been solved by rhyme 
Nations were finding liberation 
in the joys of alliteration 

In the killing fields 
Soldiers lowered their shields 
And wrote elegies for fallen friends 
This was how war ends 
Vladimir Putin 
Stopped puttin’ the boot in 
The local constabulary 
Were conciliatory  
Traffic wardens 
Gave out pardons 

The UN decreed that there’s nothing worse 
Than a global shortage of verse 
And little that’s sweeter 
Than iambic pentameter 

At Hastings station 
I had an apparition 
Of the ghosts of poetry past 
I knew they were all in my head
Because most of them were dead 

But on the Londonbound train 
I sat next to Verlaine 
Shakespeare was on it  
Composing a sonnet 
John Keats
had his feet on the seats 
WB Yeats 
Was waiting by the gates 
Robert Frost  
Was looking lost 
Maya Angelou 
Changed at Waterloo 
Ezra Pound
Took the Underground
Jack Kerouac 
Walked on the track 
I saw John Cooper Clark 
Disembark 
And share a spliff 
With Patti Smith.

The end of the day was blurred, 
But the poets had it licked;
That day every word you heard 
Had been lovingly
Poetically
Handpicked. 

********

Short version (sent to Hastings Independent 25^th March 2024) 

My alarm went off on World Poetry Day. 
Through the windows streamed sunshine sublime, 
And every sentence I started to say  
Came out in a perfect rhyme. 

In the local paper I perused the news; 
It was written in sets of haikus. 
The leader column was a Villanelle, 
Reporting the world was all well; 
It said famine and crime  
Were abolished by rhyme – 
Nations were finding liberation  
in the joys of alliteration. 

At Hastings station 
I had an apparition  
Of the ghosts of poetry past. 
On the Londonbound train  
I sat next to Verlaine; 
Shakespeare was on it, 
Composing a sonnet. 
John Keats  
had his feet on the seats  
WB Yeats  
was waiting by the gates
Robert Frost  
was looking lost; 
Maya Angelou  
was on platform two. 

That day, the poets had it licked; 
every word   
I heard  
had been lovingly 
poetically 
handpicked.  

* 

At Mo’s Lounge, St Andrew’s Mews, Hastings, March 2024.