Regressional Poems about poems are out of order Keep your navel fascination for your (unpublished) diary. Nobody really wants to hear about your 'process', Your childhood, your boarding school, your stays at The Priory Don't exaggerate: dear, with your metaphors of suffering, Fighting, hewing, bleeding for your art, You're in grave danger ... of being lost up your fundament Watch out there below for a most belaboured fart! Show us something magical, and spare us 'The Making of...' Bring it from behind your back, ta-da it, fully-formed. Give us one that stands alone, without a need for footnotes. To freshen the mind's mustiness and leave soul edges warmed. Take the clichéd swan, on manouvres on the lake, Wings trimmed to perfection, textbook tilt to model head; We know her clumsy flipping feet are giving it some welly There's no need to dwell on it: let's take it as read. Or we'll miss the marvel schooning on rip-dappled water Getting bogged down in this dredging Below the Plimsoll line. Poems about poems, then, are wet and out of order: Though poems About poems About poems, I suppose, Are fine. Gwen Seabourne If you've any comments about this poem, Gwen Seabourne would be pleased to hear them.