Why women poets should never bring a pen and paper to bed

I performed the following poem at a poetry slam which I turned up to without knowing the rules of poetry slams: you have to have more than one poem in case you get through more than one round. (Dur! Loser!) They laughed at the poem when I performed it, but bearing in mind that it was all I had to offer, I had to be thrown out after Round 1 anyway. Sigh. That was a hundred quid I could have won.

Anyway, hope you enjoy my tale of Doreen and Jack and the way Doreen's passion for art intrudes somewhat into other passions ... I suppose it's a tale about poetus interruptus.


Doreen was a poet, a wannabe writer
Whose husband had just upped and left her, the blighter.
He’d said, at the door, where he stood with the cases,
‘You kept making rhymes in the most awkward places.
You kept making rhymes
At inappropriate times
Like that moment in bed
When – mid-you-know – you said,
That’s it, Jack, oh yes!
And I thought it was passion
But you were thinking of rhymes
And it mucked up my scansion.

Doreen wasn’t sure if she would really miss him.
She’d much rather run up a lyric than kiss him.
She loved to write sonnets, but not about Hubby.
He was not a good Muse; he was too bald and tubby.
He’d said, ‘I’d still like you
If it weren’t for the haiku
You write while we’re just
At the height of our lust.’
(She did not say, A haiku?!
I was hoping for more,
But a haiku was all that
You gave me time for.)

Doreen watched him go, then she fixed herself salad
Which she ate with a fork while she toyed with a ballad,
But somehow she just couldn’t get that inspired
So she stopped at line three and presumed she was tired.
She sat in reflection:
I’ve had lots of rejection.
Fifty-three to this day,
So … does Jack feel this way?
Be it narrative or epic
Or just free verse – it’s tough
When again and again
They reject all my stuff.

Doreen felt a pang – So, his skills as a mate
Weren’t like Clooney’s, but – her villanelles weren’t that great!
Was she right to have murmured, ‘Oh, Jack, I love rhyming.’
No wonder he’d had a few problems with timing ...
Then a voice came … ‘Doreen,
How desolate I have been.
I have wander’d o’er streets.
Now I'm here. At your feet. Feets.'
He had gone all poetic
In his grief and despair!
It was crass. And pathetic.
But did Doreen care?

Just for once, just for once, he had timed things just right.
‘How I love thee!’ he cried. It was false. It was shite.
But she fell in his arms – said, ‘Jack, make me your Muse!
Shall we make love, my sweet? Or write poems? You choose!’
This was not very wise.
Doreen got a surprise
When he left her arms then
To fetch paper and pen …

It was only months later
And out came ‘Volume Three’.
Doreen muttered, ‘He always was
Quicker than me.'