Poetry: Selections from Martin Appleby

The Whole Damn Sorry Dance

The years fly by
quicker and quicker
with each one that passes
 
They start to feel like one long
bad day working
at a job you hate
 
You wake up
in the cold and go to work
in January
 
You get a brief respite
for lunch
in the summer sun
 
Then you get home
to eat and shower and shit
and before you know it
it is Christmas again
 
You go to bed
and have to wake up
and do the whole damn
sorry dance
for another day
another year
another decade
 
an endless succession
of meaningless moments
that
will
only
end
one
way.



Why Bother?

Sometimes you read a poetry collection
or chapbook
or sometimes a single poem
that is so good
so succinct
so on the money
so full of the courage of its convictions
that it makes you wonder
why you even bother
writing poems yourself
because everything has been said
all feelings have been been felt
all emotions have been expressed
a thousand times better than you ever could
and any extraneous words that you type
would be erroneous
needless cliffnotes in the labyrinthine history
of the written word
and yet
here I am
still typing
chin down, gloves up, still throwing that jab
and whilst I may be
up against the ropes
battered and bloody
in a fight I simply can not win
there is still a glimmer of hope
that I could land that one lucky punch
the knock out blow
and some day, somebody
will read one of my poems
and wonder why they bother to write.





Martin Appleby is a punk, poet, vegetarian, cider drinking scumbag from Hastings, England. He runs Scumbag Press and edits Paper and Ink Literary Zine.

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