Some Things I Like
by Lemn Sissay
“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.”
Lemm Sissay, from the book Listener, published by Canongate, read on Poetry Unbound by Padraig O’Tuama
Most Poetry will post a poem on the theme of joy and celebration, selected by our members, each day through the month of September.