Some Things I like by Lemn Sissay

I always get a bit emotional at his fancy word play :,)

I like wrecks, I like ex-junkies,
I like flunks and ex-flunkies,
I like the way the career-less career,
I like flat beer,
I like people who tell half stories and forget the rest,
I like people who make doodles in important written tests,
I like being late. I like fate. I like the way teeth grate,
I like laceless shoes cordless blues,
I like the one-bar blues,
I like buttonless coats and leaky boats,
I like rubbish tips and bitten lips,
I like yesterday’s toast,
I like cold tea, I like reality,
I like ashtrays, I write and like crap plays.

I like curtains that don’t quite shut,
I like bread knives that don’t quite cut,
I like rips in blue jeans,
I like people who can’t say what they mean,
I like spiders with no legs, pencils with no lead,
Ants with no heads, worms that are half dead.
I like holes, I like coffee cold. I like creases in neat folds.
I like signs that just don’t know where they’re going,
I like angry poems,
I like the way you can’t pin down the sea.
See.

- Lemn Sissay

It was Lemn Sissay who first told me that sometimes when you’re thinking about naming a poem, you can just pick two or more words that appear and put them together. This was revolutionary wisdom from the British poet, ancient wisdom, a blessing, a gift because, as you would have it, such titles always, always, always describe the poem perfectly. Examples of such impending.

Sissay was probably the first “professional”/grown/official (published) poet I ever met, at a writing festival in Nairobi with my poetry class and several other expectant young. I was 12. He read a poem I am unable to find that truly blew my mind, and I hope that I will find it, and I will bring it to you all. So did Imtiaz Dharker, whose work is to follow very shortly.

Hear this poem by Lemn read by fellow poet Pádraig Ó Tuama here.