The Incomplete Tim Key. Tim Key

not to contemplate the manuscript. At other times I want to pick it up and smother it with kisses. It is Love/Hate. ‘Why did I waste my time with you?’ yields to ‘I will never let you go’ as I rifle through her pages, trace my fingers round the poems, squint at the footnotes. And then I sling it down again, go and fix myself a Ribena, put some beans on the hob, phone one of the contacts in my iPhone. Weep into my iPhone. My relationship with my anthology is a complex one.

      My darkest moments come when I imagine what else I could have achieved in the time I devoted to writing this. If I hadn’t wasted my time jizzing this out, what might I have accomplished? This question absolutely pickles me. Obviously the elephant in the room is that I could have become a dentist. Ten years is a very long time – I could have started and finished my dentistry odyssey in that period. I could have trained for five years, had three very happy years as a qualified dentist, spent a year wondering whether dentistry was definitely for me, jacked dentistry in, gone travelling for a bit, and then started on something else. Ten years! I could have built an eco-home! I could have started a small company renting out lights and other bits and pieces to theatres. I could have had two wonderful marriages. Anything.

      And yet for ten years I nurtured this. Like an emperor penguin, I sat on this and did nothing else. I was responsible for this egg. This book. This very tome, which you are now clutching, rested on my penguin feet, my body heat incubating it for a decade.

      So I don’t know really. I suppose now the ball is in your court. The only way for me to make sense of that decade would be for people like you to actually like the book. It’s perfectly possible. I can name ten people who I know for a fact have liked it. There’s my literary agent, Robert, of course. Then there’s my mother; she’s always tried to be supportive of it. I once had a fan contact me via social media saying that he thought it was fine. When I’ve asked people outright whether they think it’s any good they’ve nine times out of ten tried to be enthusiastic. I once asked a lover, having encouraged her to read it for several minutes, whether she rated it. She put the book down and very gently pressed her hand against my wrist. I took that as a ringing endorsement.

      So go ahead. Fill your fat face with my poems. Eat heartily. I’ve sacrificed some pretty meaty relationships and a potential career as a dentist getting this piece of shit up and running. Like it. Really, really do your best to like it.

      SOCIOPOETRY

      I have chosen to start my book with this, most relevant of themes. Sociopoetry. Sociopoetry has always fascinated me. In case you are ignorant I will briefly describe the concept of sociopoetry. It is – as you might expect – poetry, which concerns itself with socio. Things falling under the banner of socio would include guns and prisons, the state of hospitals, how much we should give to beggars, whether we should experiment on beggars/force them to become soldiers, her nibs the Queen, the plight of the ethnic and whether there should be a National Lottery – and, if there is, should it be easier to win. My father is a member of society so I have recently been bending his ear about what it is all about. I’ll drive to his boathouse and we’ll sit down, open a crate of Adnams and try and get to the bottom of things. He has some pretty extremist views, which only begin to make sense after about four Adnams. He believes that single people should be made to ring a heavy, town-crier-style bell when they walk into pubs and multi-millionaires should be forced to carry their first million with them in a large Karrimor rucksack at all times. In addition he doesn’t agree with hoodies and he is unsettled by sign language. He thinks that a lot of the ills in society can be traced back to the fact that everyone wears jeans these days. He refuses to even use the word – calling them ‘blue trousers’ – and can quote some amazing statistics about convicted murderers since the turn of the twentieth century and the colour of their trousers. In addition, he thinks that it would be good to have a president in charge of the whole world (he suggested Michel Platini), he thinks that rock should be easier to buy outside of seaside towns and he believes that he himself should be knighted. I enjoy having these discussions with my (bearded) old man. Once we’re good and stoked, and we’ve put the world to rights, he’ll sling his bottle against the wall, trudge over to the rowing machine, take off his blazer and slacks and get down to business. There’s no finer sight in sport than my old man, lashed off his skull, a blur of black swimming trunks and white vest, making that flywheel squeal. If I’ve got half of his appetite for giving a rowing machine a good seeing to when I hit his age I’ll be delighted. In truth, I’ll be delighted if I’m able to put away the amount of Adnams my old man does at that age, and discuss elements of socio the way he can. He is a very great man.

POEM#714

      ‘THE JOHNNY’

      Chris darned his condom in front of his electric fire.

      Then he slung it in the tin,

      Popped it closed

      And set off for Clara’s.

POEM#444

      ‘BATESY’S BANTER’

      ‘While you’re down there …’

      Mike Bates said to Candy.

      He’d vaguely thought people would laugh at this.

      Unfortunately, the reason Candy was crouching near his groin was precisely to pick up a glass which Mike had broken.

      And also she was his daughter-in-law.

      So it didn’t get a laugh at all.

POEM#445

      ‘AM DRAM’

      Maria sat sobbing in her cell at the all-women’s prison.

      Why had she stabbed the old man from her drama club in Leicester?

      And why wouldn’t the prison governess let her put on Shakers by John Godber?

POEM#1155

      ‘PR’

      The Queen took a normal job so the public would hate her less.

      She became a lollipop lady.

      Some hoodlums soon found out about this.

      They started goading her; calling her posh and firing ducklings at her through a homemade bazooka made out of catering-size cans of beans fastened together with gaffer tape.

      It started to get to Her Majesty.

      She would get home, throw her lollipop stick onto the couch and be a right cow to the D. of E.

      He’d say things like, ‘If you don’t tell me what’s wrong I can’t help.’

      She’d just fart and eat her crisps and carry on watching The Apprentice.

POEM#1004

      ‘ARNOLD’

      Arnold was constantly unhappy

      Because he was a maggot (the type of worm).

      He knew he couldn’t do anything about it.

      That he should just get on with it.

      But he couldn’t help himself.

      And so he dwelled on it.2

POEM#770

      ‘DERRECK WOODS’

      Derreck dangled by the dunk-pot.

      He caught me staring at his penis.

      I quickly averted my stare and pretended I was interested in his hip.

      And then I loped, awestruck, towards the Jacuzzi.3

POEM#1177

      ‘LOVELY STUFF’

      A website was developed.

      Homeless guys and people who