Two Killer Zens on the Subject of Notability

I

back in the day
the most shame
less form of self
promotion was
to make your own
wikipedia page
I was tempted
but I never felt
I’d crack the fresh
hold of notability
I’d hold my achieve
ments in my im
agined hand and
weigh them against
the achievements
of the great and good
who often turned 
out to be neither
we have all done 
a great many things 
but how many of 
those are notable not 
many for if they were
then wikipedia 
would go on for
ever it would con
tain every little dai
ly act from every
pleb on the planet
what we ate for
lunch when we
last got laid what
we dreamed of 
while dozing on
the train home it
would be chaos
and I guess each of
us would write our 
own page and
be trusted not to lie
so it would be the 
world’s biggest rep
ository of falsehoods
which would tech
nically make it a work
of literature rather than
an encyclopaedia
and if that was the case
you might as well make
each person’s social
media pages their wiki
pedia page and be done
with it but other people
could correct them with
factual accuracies in
stead of libellous false
hoods and then truth 
would cumulatively ex
plode across the inter
net like poppies
unfurling one by
one from a moun
tain of manure and
there wouldn’t be
enough shame to
go round and we would
all have to sit there
in the turgid slough
of our truth before 
a lone voice would 
cry notability and 
then others would
join in chanting
notability until the
whole world was
screaming for not
ability until the day
that notability comes
around so we can
gladly lay down
our blue ticks

II

there was a time
before i even knew
what a wiki was
when i was on a
district line train
at around six thir
ty in the morning
on the way to work
and the train stop
ped in the middle
of a tunnel but
it wasn’t really a
tunnel it was like
a little room in the
middle of the tun
nel and there were
a few metal box
es that were lock
ed shut and a met
re high wall and
the first thing I 
thought of when
seeing that little
wall was that the
person who laid
those bricks was 
probably not al
ive any more and
that wall sudden
ly became the mo
st authentic thing
that I had seen in
a while it could
even be said that
the wall met my
own personal ru
bric of notability
the fact that some
one made a wall
who later died but
the wall was still
standing and I rea
lise on writing this
that the most no
table thing I have
ever made is not 
a poem or a per
formance but a
half mile beech 
hedge that I plant
ed on a wet win
ters day along a 
road that leads to 
a theme park as thick 
lumps of clay stuck
tight to my spade I 
kept digging while
mumbling the lines
for the next poem
that I was planning
to perform at an
open mic that stopped
running decades ago