The skip I\'d hired arrived
early on the Saturday morning
dirty yellow and rusty,
dressed in scruffy jeans
and a faded t-shirt
I set about filling the skip.
In went the old TV set,
bashed up suit-cases,
decades\' worth of junk
from the loft,
instruments that I couldn\'t recall
buying let alone playing.
I gathered all the rubbish
from the garden, broken spades,
brushes and deck-chairs,
swept up all the fallen leaves
I\'d been kicking through for months.
There was something so therapeutic
about the process, this spring clean,
a clean slate. This clear-out
would do me so much good.
They took the fully-loaded skip away,
I gave the driver a ten pound tip,
the least I could do,
and waved the skip off
down the street,
as though it was a ship
going off to sea.
I went back inside smiling,
satisfied at a job well-done,
looking around my
newly clutter-free home.
It felt like a new house.
It was perfect.
My hard-work complete it was
time for a nice cup of tea
and to work on my latest poem.
The smile faded from my face
as I noticed the nice, clean
tidy empty space
where my poetry book
had been.
I swore and cursed and fumed,
raged around my lovely empty room.
Spic and span suddenly feeling
like a chain, a noose around
my neck.
All my notes and jotting and ideas
were on their way to the junk-yard.
Months and years of scribblings
and half-thoughts, that would
one day be turned into poems
and stories,
sent away with the trash.
What on earth would I write about now?
Would I even be able to write?
My muse had been packed up
and thrown away.
It felt like I\'d gathered up
my lover\'s belongings
in bin bags and dumped them
out on the street.
I grabbed a pen and paper,
needing to write something
anything, craving the process,
the feel of the words forming
sentences and lines on the page.
And so I began.
The skip I\'d hired arrived
early on the Saturday morning
dirty yellow and rusty,