Tuesday Poem: "Striving and Scrambling, Clawing and Clattering"

When I was a young man,

I was hell-bent on making a name for myself,

don’t know where it came from

this cloying ambition,

this shard of self-promotion

stuck deep in my heart

Oh, to meet me you wouldn’t know it,

wouldn’t sense this striving

seething beneath my politeness and good breeding.

No, you would probably say,

if you thought to comment at all

to your companion at the time,

upon walking away and not being otherwise distracted by,

say, the play of the light on the sun-tawny hills

or the way a passing young woman’s dark curl strayed

across her forehead

that “there goes a sensible young man with dreams,

sure enough, but dreams rooted in pragmatism”.

But all the while, I would be clamped down

on the ashes of envy, bitter against

the roof of my mouth and I would covet

what you had, my Jekyll and Hyde shadow

reaching out

to knock you from your perch.