Standing is the Apples to Sitting’s Oranges
Mark Burnhope

On the Diamond Jubilee debacle
pink-suited Elton John sings:
I’m still standing but the thing is
he isn’t. Note: the stool buckling under
his gravitas. Every band member stands
but the drummer, or everything before
the jam – cool, measured – is butchered.

Standing is staring, greenly, at the fence
Elton croons subliminally, bids me to climb
higher towards the heights he frequents,
employ unprecedented levels of sleeping
muscle. I rise from the sofa, open
the curtain, jot down our encounter’s gist
as furiously, and frankly, as I can:

There is a morality in being able
to trouble the highest shelf
for platitudes and choruses,
to straddle the tallest trees for their fruit.
For every ladder man ascends to change
a spotlight, somewhere
a philanthropist spearheads an idea.

Even hurtling south has virtue: feeling
grass-blades bend beneath the balls
of one’s feet, a green uprightness
in the chasms between one’s toes.
They queue outside the venue, pilgrims
punctuating the festival’s fertile banks;
and you’d settle for sitting ovations?

Mark Burnhope was born in 1982 and studied at London School of Theology before completing a Creative Writing MA at Brunel University. His work has appeared in various magazines and anthologies in print and online. This poem is taken from his first full length collection, Species, which is available from Nine Arches Press. 

Read an interview with Mark here.

Well Versed is edited by Jody Porter.
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