The Aspirational Target icon

My National Poetry Day poem is a teeches only, I'm afraid, or at least they'll understand it best if they've ever filled in a report using a system called Seemis, where you're asked to choose from an range of icons, unlock the padlock, and launch your information. My favourite icon's the Aspirational Target Icon.





The Aspirational Target Icon



The Aspirational Target Icon
is nineteenth from the left.
It’s a long way off, like Madagascar.
Unlike the Initial Target Football Icon
which sits smugly waiting to be struck
into the corner of some other metaphor,
it seems like will o wisp, as intangible
as a shaft of pure green light from clouds.
Through the shrouds of blind
the last of summer sets fire to stone
and roads open up to roads, worlds to worlds,
but here in cells we tap and scratch
arcane vocabularies, each one more removed
from real life than the last. I do not want
to be the last monk standing when language
breaks on the rocks like the sea.
If I could find my Aspirational Target Icon
I would Open the Padlock,
Click Lunch,
Open the Door
Click Launch.