Do you take the money and run
or do you lay awake at night
crying at the thought of your
contractual colloquial column
lining countless incontinent kitten corners
before four o’clock
every friday night.
© Copyright D. Archer October 2011
Answer my email.
kite flying for manic depression 
Sorry but what is this about? Am pretty thick, I know, but I don’t get this one.
I did wonder if this would be lost to the masses. I am a small petty man with a small axe to grind against a local poet who hides behind the persona of “The Bard of Barnsley” Barnsley being where I live.
In essence he is a fantastic poet, he has a radio show on BBC 3 that has introduced me to fantastic new poets and re-kindled my appreciation of the clasics.
However, he assumes the title of “The Bard of Barnsley” as a way to pay his mortgage. I like his poems, the ones not meant for mass consumption. I am waging a subtle war against him to get him to drop the epithet (another one of mine) and let him be a “real” poet. So I start to seethe, Barnsley is a hard ex-coal mining town in the North of England, it is not even on Google Maps because it is not that interesting, it is a cultural tundra, the town that Hitler forgot to bomb on his way to Manchester and Sheffield in World War Two.
Anywhooo….so I start writing poems about him, telling him most people in Barnsley don’t know what a “Bard” is, they think it means he can’t get into pubs because he is a poet or even worse that he can’t either spell or pronounce the word “Beard”.
He endeth the lesson. I know you are no wiser but thanks for helping me to vent my spleen.
Dave
Not sure if you are a Monty Python fan but this sketch exactly illustrates my point. Check it out. Barnsley actually gets a mention!
Dave
Ha ha – Thanks so much, I love Monty Python (know that sketch well) Am from the North East (some flat caps still worn country). “Yer labourer!” Haven’t actually been to Barnsley though (I’ve been rumbled). Thanks for explaining, I totally get it now – and good luck with ‘the cause’. Pam