"The Unexpected"

I saw you sitting on a shelf
Worn and thin
Ready for the bin
You stared at me:
Never judge a book by its cover.
I was wanting a trip
Down memory lane
Simple enough not taxing the brain
Transported back to the picket line
But I judged you wrong
This was no major reminisce
Not even a 'miner' one.
Who were you Mark Welton?
Did you know heaps of slags?
What made you write a poetry book
In nineteen eighty one
Before the Great Strike had even begun?
Ego? Talent? Or just...
Because you could
Regardless of whether you were...
Any good.
Not for me to judge
Who's to say I'm any good either?
Not me. Which is why
I picked you up...
At random from a shelf
In the Saison Poetry Library
Where you haven't moved from
Since nineteen ninety three!
I opened you up
Lying in bed
And you told me
'Poems Don't Make Good Girlfriends'
I'll have to take
Your word for that
I'm no expert when it
Comes to twat
Northern or Cockney!
One you called
'Cock and Cunt'
On half of the two
I've had a punt...
Another you had a crystal ball
What can I say, Mark
Bloody good call:
'Bankers Are Wankers And Don't Poets Know It'
Fast forward to now it's plain to see
The rest of the country all agree.
Enough of you now, I've taken you back
Forgotten again on the library stack.

Dulwich Poet 20th March 2013

('Slag Heap', by Mark Welton. A poetry booklet I borrowed from the Poetry Library, based in the Royal Festival Hall, on the South Bank. It hadn't been stamped out to anyone else for twenty years.)