Random Esteem

what would you pay for a scam
to lift you off the back page of
anonymity – boldly launch you
into life as a poetic celebrity?

the fee’s lame-duck-ass integrity
in tatters – meaningless as the
random IP addresses appraising
a wholly imagined faux esteem

amazingly numbers seem more
meaningful to your peers than
words written; be that as it may –
who actually reads them anyway?
© 4 October 2008, I. D. Carswell

Defies Eclectic Fame

Maybe unsavoury attitudes pertain –
I know maths well enough but can’t
explain the reason why my writing fails
to climb to dizzy heights. Eclectic fame
in poetry defies a structured sense of 
ordered thought – and can’t be bought
I like to think; but if a poem’s readership
is vast, far more a day than those which

languish at the bottom of the pack now
what of that? I won’t beat about the
bush – equivocate in fact, the dearth of
valid proof explaining truth is way too
cute, beyond my fickle sense of worth.
But I will wait with little joy, pointlessly
abjure what used to be a poet’s pride of
place (when not quite dead) – a poem

listed breathlessly within the dread 500.
© 25 January 2008, I. D. Carswell

Interchangeable Commodities

Why yes, he explained, I desire to be
acclaimed amongst the idiots of our
contemporary times. Why, I asked,
intrigued, to me he was enlightened.

Notoriety/fame are interchangeable
commodities these days, take that
girl who pees in taxis, Paris what’s-
her-name, the rich celebrity, she’s

got it right. Be the bitch – hang it
out, shout disdain for social rules;
you gain nothing being demure or
quaintly pure at heart. The Press

won’t rate behaviour that conforms
to ancient norms – won’t have a bar
of it! Controversy sells ad space & we
live on the grace of surplus trade.

I believe the God of humankind is
best expressed in economies that
grow on goods exchanged at rates
left to free market influence & fate.

What of democracy and individual
freedoms I protest? What of dignity?
Can’t afford it, he explained, at best
it’s unsustainable...
© 8 January 2008, I. D. Carswell

Fame Is A Blink

How ironic you say, living you made
no impact on anything but dead its
a whole new game. Explain that in a
way which placates a cringing ego.
It’s corporeality’s last relic you think –
having an ego as a hangover deemed
meaningful; be advised, no dead man
plays the game nor has a self or cares
what you think. Fame is a blink with 10
cent notoriety run to the head. Yep,
given my druthers, I’d rather be dead.
© 17 December 2007, I. D. Carswell