Three Petulant Poets

The Poet: WHB – 2020

Three Petulant Poets

There once was a poet from Ross
Who said “Do not mess with me, cos,
I will write you a verse
Which will contain a curse,
And you’ll never get over the loss.”

An Indian poet from Mysore
Said, “Do not mess with me, or,
I will write you a verse,
And you’ll soon need a hearse,
To take you to knock on Hell’s door.”

A poet from Irish Killarney
Had kissed that famed stone at Blarney.
He wrote endless verses
All riddled with curses,
Enough to frighten an army.

‘Who’s Who’ – Benjamin Zephaniah

[  # 84 of My Favourite Short Poems  ]

Benjamin Zephaniah

 

 

‘Who’s Who’

I used to think nurses

Were women

I used to think police were men

I used to think poets

Were boring

Until I became one of them.

 

Benjamin Zephaniah

 

 

Benjamin Obadiah Iqbal Zephaniah (born 15 April 1958) is a British writer, poet and Rastafarian.  He was included in The Times list of Britain’s top 50 post-war writers in 2008.  Zephaniah was born and raised in the Handsworth district of Birmingham which he has called the “Jamaican capital of Europe”. He is the son of a Barbadian postman and a Jamaican nurse.  A dyslexic, he attended an approved school but left aged 13 unable to read or write.

He now writes that his poetry is strongly influenced by the music and poetry of Jamaica and what he calls “street politics”. His first performance was in church when he was eleven, and by the age of fifteen, his poetry was already known among Handsworth’s Afro-Caribbean and Asian communities.