"Peaches Off The Menu"

Lead balloon time
At 'Poetry Unplugged'
The punters all looked
As if they'd been mugged.
My first one of Bob Crow
Went down rather well
But as for the next one...
You can never tell.
Not sure if there was
A single round of applause
Reading one on still warm Peaches
Was probably a lost cause.
I don't write to shock
Just read to share
If it's not liked that much
I don't really care.
Poetry's just thoughtd
Escaping from my head
This one just happened to be about
A rich young socialite
Not long dead.
It was not better or worse
Than much I've previously read
So the fact it just bombed
Won't fill me with dread.
Maybe the Geldof girl topic
Was too close to their own
Not so much near as the knuckle
As cutting to the bone.
Their stony silence
Should hurt me inside
But in a weird sort of way
It filled me with pride.

Dulwich Poet 8th April 2014

(I was at the 'Poetry Unplugged' open mic this evening, and read my poem on the death of Peaches Geldof. It wasn't well received...but I thought I read it ok, so didn't get it wrong, in that sense. I'm not too bothered really, as I thought it was an ok one. If other people didn't like it then there's nothing I can do about that.)