Bitter Wee Poems exact some small Revenge on the Poet on the Occasion of His Silver Jubilee

When the light goes off
the blank page you left
sparkles in streetlight
like snow. It's perfect
but you'll be back

to spoil it. At night
we think about what might
have been, if that line
had been just right,
that rhythm less flat,

if you were any good, in fact.
We were battered out and sent
half made into the world,
now we hang about the shelves
all day, your dead-end kids.

Here's a clear image
at last, to define a quarter
century's struggle:
tyro, middle aged,
distils boredom into dross
with a shovel.