Poem For Ben, Who Said: There Is No Money In It. Poem by Jacqui Thewless

A book of poems
isn’t worth the price of petrol
for someone’s gas-guzzling battle
into work one day by car.
A motivated poet will hardly
go outdoors– but to breathe the air.
So far it’s fortunate
that s/he is always busy with
the internal combustion
of a single flame of light’s
assumption:
or a kind of cud-
chewing bovine business
and all s/he tends to need are the fertile
fields of the night.

And there again,
poems are much too penny-pinching
for the lavish modern world.
Most people can afford to live
very comfortably without them.
Think of it (almost soul’s heresy to link the two) :
the ‘highest art-form’ yields
the poorest purse.

I reckon only fellow-poets
would trade almost anything
for the no-thing
of a poem:
the route of our fight -
with too many words –
is by the most lean line,
leading the hungriest verse.