IF BOOKS WERE CHOCOLATES

As publishers, desperate to recreate the massive sales of Jordan’s volume of autobiography, continue to flood the market with poor-selling celebrity hagiographies, the Borkowski poet in residence tries to get inside the mind of the audience they seem to be targeting.

All I want for Christmas is a book
a book about the life of a celebrity cook
or maybe David Beckham, or Jordan or Tom Cruise
a book about anyone who’s in the news.

Please make the cover lovely,
make the revelations petty
and do make sure the writing
has been done by a committee.
I don’t want a David Blunkett
clogging up my stocking,
I want a celeb biography
that’s scurrilous and shocking
and yet as easy on the pallette
as a box of Milk Tray.
I don’t want the chewy centres
of people with “things to say”.
I want Kate Moss, I want Kylie
people who are fallible but cool.
I want cancer scares and child abuse
when they went to school.
I’ll be glad if it’s idealised
and should be on the fiction list
as long as there’s a spark of truth
when they admit that they got pissed.
I can’t be arsed with novels
I want to read about what I see
Celebrities are more exciting
than bloody poetry.
I want heartache, I want triumph
I want names dropped like lead
I want to dream it could happen to me
when I go to bed.

All I want for Christmas is a chance not to think,
and a book I can read as I scrub dishes in the sink
will fit the bill quite nicely.
Just make it scurrilous and spicy
and hard to miss a detail if I blink.