Missing Song Number One Poem by Margaret Alice Second

Tonight I have nothing to read except
Sherlock Holmes so terribly abridged
as to constitute a sin by the criminal
editors of Readers' Digest, they have
carefully removed all excitement to
make the final Conan Doyle dish so
bland it is like eating dry rice, raw fish
without sushi embellishments, drinking
luke-warm tea - in a word, as boring
as can be - they have an uncanny
ability to reduce every great tale to
nothingness

This is Friday night - which has always
been one of the most difficult times for
me - at school it was easy, I used to
learn music or geography - then spent
a wonderful hour in the magical cave
known as my brother's bedroom listening
to the week's Top Twenty Hits, delighted
to be amongst old radio and bicycle parts,
batteries, books and various tools, falling
asleep then stumbling back to my room
after missing Song Number One…