While I make rhymes my brother John
Makes shiny shoes which dames try on,
And finding to their fit and stance
They buy and wear with elegance;
But mine is quite another tale,--
For song there is no sale.
My brother Tom a tailor shop
Is owner of, and ladies stop
To try the models he has planned,
......
There is no frigate like a book
To take us lands away,
Nor any coursers like a page
Of prancing poetry.
This traverse may the poorest take
Without oppress of toll;
How frugal is the chariot
That bears a human soul!
Two doors open—
one flat on a sandy hill,
mine beneath a flickering light,
like a dying eye.
We step through,
and the tearing begins—
the skin of the world,
the brittle edge that held us in,
and kept us apart.
......
Poem Is a Verb
Strike flint to flame, let the lines take flight,
They bite at the dark, they shoulder the light;
No throne for the poem, no chair for its nerve—
It walks till it bleeds, for a poem’s a verb.
......
i know that i shall meet my shadow,
one day, is our fate. I know that, someday,
the light ends for us and the deadly gravity
will absorb us. And again, a magician spark
will shine and a ocean of souls
will flood the universe and will
give birth to stars and grief.
And maybe, just maybe, in another heaven,
my dreams will be your dreams.
You see, everything repeats itself
......
Poem Is a Verb
Strike flint to flame, let the lines take flight,
They bite at the dark, they shoulder the light;
No throne for the poem, no chair for its nerve—
It walks till it bleeds, for a poem’s a verb.
......
DUSTY POET
Dust before donkey doomed
a wicked whirlwind
grains of wisdom wrinkle
sand webs
dust devitalise land
here there everywhere nowhere
in eyes, on kitchen table
parched lips unfed
......
SIMPLY YEATS
My verse under Yeats’ carved door
he merrily chuckled at white
envelope, sketched butterfly
said he preferred to receive
verses this way rather
than reading them across
post-modern websites
......
Oh, to remember such
unspoiled kinship with the divine,
where even the wind was a companion
and silence spoke in full sentences.
Perhaps this poem isn’t just
a backward glance but a gentle invitation—
to return, not in time, but in spirit,
to that meadow of soulfulness
where love was once our native tongue.
......
Apologia in Free Verse (After Too Much Metre)
I meant to speak plainly. To let the thought go unbuttoned,
leaned against a kitchen chair, talking about traffic
or the way light hits the linoleum.
But then—I rhymed.
By accident or reflex or loneliness.
It was you that made me do it—
......