Don’t dare shred me one Tuesday afternoon
In a corner of your dismal office,
Or spend two minutes of the life you’ve settled for
Pondering if I can be recycled in the blue
Rather than composted down in the brown.
Don’t even think about turning me
Into recollected-in-tranquillity,
Re-imagined and therefore rubbish poems.
If you give her a new name and write A Sequence
I swear, I swear I will scream like she did.
She loved you, she hated you,
For the love of God man up:
Burn me in a gaping Victorian grate,
Hurl me from the cliff in a hessian bag
And make it good enough for Alan
Bates or Rickman on Saturday night TV.
