ould heelers remembers

When I finished reciting Party Piece, the assembled poets, professors and guests at the Hopkins Poetry Festival burst into applause.
It was a sustained burst of applause.
They weren't faking.
I'd brought them to a place that almost wasn't human.
At my shoulder the ghost of Jim Morrison said softly: "Heelers you're good."
The recital hadn't been prepared. I was sitting in the audience and had only stood up to declaim the poem at the invitation of the festival's director Desmond Egan.
Des had given me exactly ten seconds notice that he intended to ask.
And Party Piece had gone down a treat.
The adulation flowed around me, close enough to touch.
A girly girl college student all short skirt, splendid legs and earnest gazungas leaned across and whispered: "Your poem rocks."
(Earnest eyes, surely? - Ed note)
She was innocent in the ways of the world and had no way of knowing that I would take such a comment as an invitation for a most clumsy pass later on.
The applause ceased eventually.
Amid the general kudos, I became aware of a baleful pair of eyes looking down on me from the stage.
It was one of the festival's special guests.
Robert Minhinnick from Cornwall no less, a poet himself and editor of Poetry Wales.
His glare omitted nothing of the essential elements of a glare.
It was everything a glare should be.
"Alright," he drawled with world weary cynicism, "I suppose some of you liked that. It seemed a bit mundane to me. Rhyming blithe with scythe. I mean how clever. I don't think."
I would have been more aggrieved if I hadn't been going around earlier referring to the august Mr Minhinnick as the Cornish Pasty, and er, also, as Henny Penny.
The Mammy was beside me in the audience.
"I don't agree with what that man said," she whispered to me.
"Don't tell me, tell him," I said loud enough to make the whole audience turn towards us.
The Mammy stood up.
"I don't agree," she cried.
"In what way?" shot back Henny.
"I don't agree at all," roared the Lildebeest.
"Yes but what don't you agree with?" quoth the Henny.
"I don't agree that the poem we've just heard is mundane," persisted Lil.
"And who are you?" shot back Henny.
"I," proclaimed the Mammy with Shakespearian grandeur, "am the poet's mother."
Ah it was priceless.
While this piece of knockabout was going on, I simply sat back in my chair and enjoyed.
We owe it to ourselves to live a little.
And truth be told I didn't mind Mr Minhinnick's disparagement at all.
You see folks, I normally never defend my own poems.
After I turn 'em lose, they stand or fall on their own merits.
The audience had gone nuts.
Minhinners had poured some cold water.
It was all grist to the mill of my supreme egotism.
Yes gentle voyagers of the blogosphere.
You all know I'm an egotist.
At least you do if you've logged on here twice.
The Mammy and Minners finished their acerbic investigations into the relative merits and demerits of my poem, each one apparently settling for an honourable draw.
A not entirely mollified Mammy sat down muttering: "I suppose he thinks Dylan Thomas is mundane."
Now some of the college kids got involved in the discussion.
A studious looking blue jeans girl with pointy teeth and pearly gazungas, stood up in the front row.
(Pointy gazungas, surely? - Ed note)
She pointed at me.
With her hands.
Of course her hands.
What the heck did you expect!
Her wavy red hair hinted at a sensual nature only barely kept in check.
Well we can dream.
She wore a demure knitted jumper. I sensed she was obsessed with Kierkegaard.
(Who did what in the where now? Nothing pointy or splendid for me to explain here. Move along everyone. - Ed note)
With a toss of her lambent hair, she challenged me: "Why would you write a poem like that? I don't see the point. It's completely negative."
My usual policy of not defending poems notwithstanding, this girl, I thought, deserved an answer.
"I wrote it," quoth me, "after reading articles in the Irish Times and Independent Newspapers sneering about the Catholic church having difficulty attracting great minds. I have honoured those petty conformist Tony O'Reilly worshipping pseuds with the most ferociously atheistic poem of a generation. And yet it's a poem that only a Christian could write. The gleeful defiance of darkness wouldn't be possible for the heroes in Independent House or the Bolshevick acolytes of the Irish Times. I was trying to help them really. Quite to the contrary of their own synchronised fervourless sneering, I was letting them know that the Catholic mind is the only mind that really dares to speculate. We're the only ones who dare to go into the darkness. We're the only ones who have the spiritual vocabulary to describe it when we get there."
The studious girl eyed me disdainfully.
"I think it's a disgusting poem," she declared. "I don't know why anyone would write it. It's like you want everyone to be unhappy like you. I mean why did you call it Party Piece?"
A distant look came into my eyes.
I am never offended by incoming fire from repressed sexors.
My handsome preraphaelite features took on an opaque serenity.
"Why did I call it Party Piece?" I murmured. "Because it's meant to be said at a party. When the revel is at its height. At the moment when the glitterati and the bright young things feel most inebriated by their excesses. That's when this poem is meant to happen to them."