Charles Dickens - Little Dorrit

My Resolution Will Not Be Televised

You will not be able to discover it from your sofa, brother.

You will not be able to sit there under the cat, sister,

remote control in one hand, phone in the other,

and put the kettle on during the ad breaks,

because my resolution will not be televised.

My resolution will not be tweeted.

My resolution will not be announced on Twitter.com

in 280 characters of self-promoting concision

to be retweeted by Ricky Gervais in between posts

deploring acts of animal cruelty and the release date of his latest film.

My resolution will not be tweeted.

My resolution will not be televised.

My resolution will not be Facebooked.

My resolution will not feature next to an inspirational quote

set against the backdrop of a soaring mountain or a looking-glass lake.

My resolution will not be posted beside a shining infographic

illustrating how many kilos I have lost, how many pennies

I have saved, how many drinks I have not drunk.

My resolution will not be Facebooked.

My resolution will not be tweeted.

My resolution will not be televised.

There will be no pictures on Instagram

of kale soup and black beanquinoa salad.

There will be no pictures on Instagram

of NutriBullet breakfast smoothies.

My resolution will not be vlogged.

My progress will not be revealed to you in a twenty-minute daily video diary.

My resolution will not be right back after a message

about my new range of eyebrow pencils.

My resolution will not be vlogged.

There will be no pictures on Instagram.

My resolution will not be Facebooked.

My resolution will not be tweeted.

My resolution will not be televised.

My resolution will not survive more than two days.

My resolution will not be televised.

My resolution will be diarised. I shall write a poem a day. It will be a daily testament to the power of poetry and how it can help us make sense of the world. A kind of inky monument to Truth and Beauty.

I shall set my poems down here: in this surprisingly affordable medium-ruled notebook with acid-free pages, rounded corners and expandable inner pocket, with its cover illustration of an anthropomorphised white Japanese bobtail cat sporting a red bow.

I do not underestimate the task ahead. Writing a poem every day will not be easy. It will require discipline. Mental resilience. Self-sacrifice. Vast reservoirs of imagination. And a ready supply of custard creams.

I lay in bed until mid-day, bathing in the cotton sea of tranquillity that is my duvet. Inspired by my surroundings, I attempted a poem. I got as far as:

Duvet,

you are so groovet,

Id like to stay under you

all of Tuesdet.

I didnt care for it much. The rhymes seemed a little forced. I worked on it for a while longer but produced nothing more of note, except for a doodle of a cat on a skateboard. I was quite pleased with that. The cat was wearing headphones and Id drawn a speech bubble coming out of its mouth with the words I AM A CAT ON A SKATEBOARD! written inside it.

I am forty-five years old.

I wondered whether it was my working conditions that were the problem. It is unnaturally quiet. This is partially explained by the temporary absence of students next door, whose general rowdiness frequently serves to keep me awake most of the night and disturb me for much of the day. By contrast, Mrs McNulty, on the other side, is typically as quiet as a pea, except for the occasional sounds of sawing and her Wednesday night sances.

In the hope that a change of scenery might help, I got up to press on with the rearrangement of my bookshelves. This year, Ive decided to re-order by International Standard Book Number. I went at it tenaciously and must have lost track of the hours. It was time for bed and Id still only got as far as Little Dorrit (or 0192545124 as I have now come to think of it).

It was only then that I remembered my New Years resolution. I took another look at my duvet poem. Would that do? Probably not, I decided. My cat doodle also seemed less impressive now. It looked more like a dog. A dog on a trolley.

Two days! Thats all it has taken for my resolution to be smashed on the craggy, unforgiving rocks of my literary negligence. All in all, this constitutes one of my better efforts of recent years.

I would like to apologise for the delay

I would like to apologise for the delay

in coming to work today.

This is due to a signalling failure

between my primary motor cortex and pyramidal motor pathway.

I shall remain here instead,

sidelined in this bed,

until further notice.

I would like to apologise for the delay

in going for a run today.

This is due to leaves on the tracksuit

I wore last week,

during my unsuccessful attempt to bury myself

in a coppiced wood.

I would be there still, if I could.

I would like to apologise for the delay

in joining your skiing holiday.

This is due to the wrong kind of snow,

which, as far as Im concerned, is any kind of snow

that enables people

to hurtle down slopes, at speed,

on skis.

I would like to apologise for the delay

in taking part in life today.

This is due to delays.

I would like to apologise for the delay in getting to work today. This is due to writing a poem. Thankfully, Janice is not back until next week so she wasnt there to see me slip into my officle ninety minutes late.

Even at the best of times, my officle presents a distressingly joyless sight; not quite office, not quite cubicle, it exists in a permanent state of beige and bewildered irresolution. But there are few sights as depressing as my officle on the first day back after the Christmas break: tinsel droops around my PC monitor; an uninspired Secret Santa gift (yet another pine-scented candle!) sits on top of my in-tray, jilted at the altar of my ingratitude; abandoned corporate Christmas cards silently reproach me from the flimsy wall panels.

With the aid of a mid-morning Twix, I attempted to coax my brain into thinking about the report Im supposed to be putting together for Janice. It has the working title of Re-solutioning the Brand: from Customer Dissension to Retention. I have yet to start it, mainly for the reason that I dont really know what it means. Staring out through my officle window into the midwinter bleakness, I pictured Janice skiing down the slopes at Kitzbhel, the snow gleaming like powdered champagne.

I wasnt in the mood for poetry today. I think its all this work business. Larkin may have had his library stamp and Bukowski his mailbags but it strikes me that proper work is unconducive to the creation of poetry. Its not easy to elevate yourself to a higher plane when your mind is being laid siege to by flipcharts and pivot tables.