Well, someone actually matched with my nonsensical Tinder profile, possibly out of morbid curiosity or possibly because she was still drunk from the night before (it was the day after St Paddy’s and our epic Grand Slam victory in the Six Nations).
 
Having met my goal the profile bio has now been taken down as nobody really wants to learn about the VAT rate of breads and pastries, and the Fraggle Rock theme has been replaced with a Bruce Springsteen song I really like that also happens to have a suggestive title. For all it really matters anyway, I imagine that it will be a fortnight at most before I take my profile offline again.
 
In the meantime I promised a poem if someone matched with me, and I’m not going to disappoint. Unfortunately due to a combination of other projects and procrastination (laziness) I’ve missed World Poetry Day (21 March), but we’ll say I’m doing this in honour of the event anyway, which means I’m either being avant-garde or a hipster.
 
There was an age when the world was dark
And time it was but a faraway dream,
It came after one lingering spark
Of light and sound in a flowing stream,
In aeons forgotten in the haze of morning
When the reverie fades,
And the head starts pounding.
 
A universe exists beyond the heavy shades
And stellar power dries the dew of night,
A hopeful promise eternally remade
In the dawning of a new day’s light,
The morning check of the social world
To see what has been said,
And what apologies might be owed
 
The rumour of a new connection
The teasing heart of a rightward swipe,
Surely no one could want the affection
From someone clearly a total gype,
And yet here it was really true
There was she,
And very pretty I can tell you.
 
So a chat there was, the sharing of a joke
And mutual agreement that someone was a dose,
An accountant she thought from my HMRC boke
I had to tell her she wasn’t even close,
It transpired she hails from a farm near town,
And soon conversation dried,
For it’s a lonely life with the charm of a clown.
 
Don’t anybody dare say “Aw, that’s sad,” it was one more swipe than I expected to get with that profile, which makes it more successful than the time I went on to Plenty of Fish with Hannibal Lecter as my profile picture and the headline “It puts the lotion on its skin or hosey time”.
 
Happy World Poetry Day everybody.

A bit of exposition first about this post: I have a colleague in the creative industry (I am in it, shut up) who had a slightly creepy experience this weekend. She's a single mother, hard working, putting herself through Uni whilst maintaining her family and career, and is exactly what you'd picture if I was to say 'Irish beauty'... no, not the tracksuit, cigarettes and large bottle of cider along the Lagan towpath kind, that's only around a very specific part of Belfast.

So anyway, on Sunday morning a neighbour to whom she has never spoken landed drunk at her door at 4:30am hoping to make a call, because that's what ladies love, awakened from bed by a drunk guy who doesn't even know your name. Eventually after pissing off he came back at 5am to ask if she would like him if he was sober. God does love a trier.

After being my usual helpful self on Facebook (read that as 'not at all') I was inspired to write a poem in his honour:

I am in a boat lost far out at sea,
Surrounded by water yet there is none for me.
The sun rising on another dawn,
The fever of the night has not yet gone.
I need something to taste,
From this thirst to be set free,
And awake my soul from this melancholy dream.

Over there on yonder shore,
Is it a trick, mirage or something more?
Some fool of the light or maybe the brain,
A promise that I might be fulfilled again.
Streams of fire, sands so pale,
and cool waters pure for my thirst to sate,
To find this land could be nothing but fate.

Crashing on rocks and thrown asunder,
A hidden reef and waves booming thunder,
This haven of passion is not as expected,
my ardor, my thirst to be somehow rejected.
Yet maybe still the fates have conspired,
For hope there is in the waters below,
The fingers of the mermaid beckon me so.

Reaching out for that warm embrace,
I find myself now in another place,
A desert, alone, a shore with no name,
having lost my way to a growing shame.
Not merely for my journey
for I realise this land it belongs to me,
I have passed out at home, in a puddle of wee.

I did promise some dick jokes in my last post and this guy was being a pure dick, I like to be a man of my word.