Let's Play Darts! Poem by Mark Hamilton

Men of steel, men of tungsten,
wing their arrers at the quivering board!

Arena rumbles like disco,
crowd pumps and sways in the aisles:
performance, panto, stand-up this,
fronted by men tattooed like sailors,
bellied like whales on a piratical sea,
larger than land-lubbered life.

But there's a deadly seriousness
at the heart of it.
Nerves must be of steel
as the tension rises
and they land huge scores
against each other
like boxers trading massive blows.

The fight swings this way, that,
the air thickens, sweat runs
like beer…

These men are like titans at the business end
shouldering a pressure
would crush a mere mortal,
burst his brains to smithereens!

But these our players
butch it out with never a flicker
until one man triumphs,
nails the wheeling world
with a nerveless sequence
of minute, unstoppable courage:

triple twenty…bull…double eight! ! !

So comedy explodes itself into meaning
and pantomime players become great.