the thing is – we need to accept it.
the rich have the time
to develop their art. I speak
as a worker, on behalf
of some workers, and my fellows are not
as the world would decide to imagine them:
all stifled poets and painters and makers
of films. my fellows are fathers
instead, and in general, and mostly
of miserable children. and in that
I guess art does not matter –
that these men who work hard
as the wood on the mastheads
of boats – of course they do not
spend their evenings in typing.
and of course they do not
have the money for children
to do anything else but
what they do. all artists
descendants and not simply
children. and me, writing poems
and working a job – I am throwing
away my inheritance.
the creation of anything
but extensions of misery
is a luxury that carpenters,
plumbers and joiners don’t have.
DS Maolalai has been described by one editor as “a cosmopolitan poet” and another as “prolific, bordering on incontinent”. His work has nominated eleven times for Best of the Net, eight for the Pushcart Prize and once for the Forward Prize, and has been released in three collections; “Love is Breaking Plates in the Garden” (Encircle Press, 2016), “Sad Havoc Among the Birds” (Turas Press, 2019) and “Noble Rot” (Turas Press, 2022).