Some of My Poems

REVERIE

Half wakened, my body lies alongside yours.
Misty images colour-flash
on my mind’s screen.
The bed-side radio plays softly,
as my long white fingers,
with their black-lacquered nails,
select an accompaniment
from the keyboard that floats just above my head.

Red-eyed and regular,
the bed-side clock beats time,
five forty-one,
forty-two, forty-three,
as your steady breathing
gutters the candles
that drip, drip, drip
red wax on the restless pages of music.

A large black bird,
attracted by the music,
flutters in through the open window,
its wings beating rhythmically.
I stab at it with my baton
and from its wounded breast
a drip, drip, drip  of blood
stains the white piano keys.

Black-veiled to foil the inquisitive,
you rise from your sleeping body
and sit quietly on the bed
red-lacquering your finger nails,
one foot tapping in time
to the music.
I brush away a black feather
and go back to sleep.

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NEVER WRITTEN

Passing,
he stopped me,
laid his hand upon my arm,
saying he’d buy me coffee,
and then started to tell me
of everything
he hadn’t written;
looking for sympathy
in my eyes
for the stillborn thoughts,
the abortive sonnets
and villanelles
that he’d never brought
to fruition.

He spoke of his Muse-forsaken
imagination,
of how he’d even scrabbled
under her tree
in case some of the fallen fruit
was still palatable,
only to find
the smiling promise
riddled with worms.

Finally
he told me
he’d bundled together all the poems
he’d never written
and filed them away
against the day
when, full of future
second and third thoughts,
he will try to breathe
new life into them.

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TRITE

Saying that you are quite trite
sounds as though I approve,
but really, my friend, you're second rate -
not even in the groove.

You're of little real importance
in a world that demands the best.
Your efforts at words of substance
emerge as double-talk or jest.

You're simply mediocre,
won't make the minor league.
You behave just like a joker
who's involved in court intrigue.

You're a loner, a no-hoper,
shrinking from your fellow men
who regard as an interloper
one so far below their ken.

But, put you among the children
and you're accepted by them all.
You're given their blue ribbon
for answering the call

to charm and entertain them
with jokes and antics mad,
to laugh and understand them
as though still but a lad.

They love your understanding
they love your smiling face.
You find them undemanding
so...accept their fond embrace.

______________________________________________________________________________---

THIS IS YOUR MUSE SPEAKING

Hey, you out there!
Yes, you with the puzzled look.
You've already processed this far
with your newfangled computer,
though why you can't use a simple pencil,
like most of my other friends, I don't know.

Maybe it's what's called progress,
maybe you think the permanency of it
will save you having to edit.
Oh! that's rich that is, not having to edit.
The first lesson you have to learn my friend
is to be wary of every first draft - very wary.

Now! After all that, what are you going to do?
You've tried your hand at haiku and tanka
and even a choka or two.
Some rhyming couplets have, from time to time,
fallen from your thoughts with impeccable rhyme.
Sonnets you've written to your lady's eyes.

Even the villanelle you've mastered,
much to your surprise.
But now what's next my friend?
Will you be waiting,
pencil poised, when next I call?
Or...is this the end
of our collaboration after all?

_________________________________________________________________________________


EMPTY

His empty clothes hang creased.
behind his door.
his empty shoes and socks lie scattered
on the floor.

He rises to fill his clothes,
his separate socks,  his shoes astray;
place his till-now empty hat upon his head,
and, glancing back at his now empty bed,
leaves to cope with what Is yet
an unfilled day.

The city fills with morning light,
the alleys empty save for fading gloom.
Through slowly filling streets
he jostles people rushing left and right,
to fill the waiting city,
room by empty room.
                 
His heart's been empty since she left,
the postie brings no word, day after day.
Her wardrobe stands empty,
her cabinet Is void.
His mind's too much a vacuum
for him to be annoyed
when someone asks about her
and he finds he has to say:
"We've parted."

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LIVlNG ALONE

I live alone
and come and go
when I decide.

I make my bed,
sometimes I don't
for days and days,

knowing full well
that no one else
will criticise.

I don't wash up.
The sink is full -
a messy sight, but

I've clean cutlery and plates
in the cupboard, to last
till tomorrow night.

Last weeks newspapers
carpet the floor;
last months are piled
behind the door.

Perhaps today's the day
to set things right,
to make my bed,
before tonight,

to wash the dishes;
launder my shirt;
to find a duster,
clean up the dirt;

take out the papers;
pull up some weeds;
do all those things
a 'home beautiful' needs.

But why should I alter
my 'live-alone' ways?
I've clean dishes and clothes
for a few more days.

Why should I worry,
get my mind in a stew,
when there are so many things
I'd much rather do?

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