POET
Thanks for Three Chocolates To Die For
Those homemade candies beat the tops in taste,
they’re more delicious than all other chocolate
we beg or buy, get gifted, sneak or steal,
and I’m informed you take in stocks, the best’
I scent their worth; put on my tongue it’s heaven.
Those generous peels of orange dunked in gobs
of chocolate taste like tropics – plantations
of orange, sugar, cacao, all finger-sized.
The dense and chunky cubes of dark soft truffle
answer all desire, sweetness prior to dissolution.
Thin wafers layered butter scotch and chocolate,
the caramel sprinkled with chips of nuts.
Put one inside your mouth, chocolate swoons,
coating your tongue with pebbled path of nuts.
The caramel rolls up – a sticky boulder –
melts slowly, clamps to fillings drilled in teeth,
or yanks at mettle work like an extraction.
Dying before death melts self – sweet is Nirvana!
Ruby, Turquoise, Pearl
These dresses three are tempting:
ruby, turquoise and pearl –
they’re the trousseau for my love,
that weekend spree we shared.
Nevermind expense, I say,
as consequence gives way to joy.
We’ll satisfy this selfish wish
with ruby, turquoise, pearl.
These dresses lure another now,
enchantment’s spark has failed.
Spendthrift blame remains to me.
A spree still allures - ruby, turquoise and pearl.
Becoming
There was a man of double deed
sowed his garden full of seed.
When the seed began to grow
‘twas like a garden full of snow.
When the snow began to melt
‘twas like a ship without a belt.
When the ship began to sail
‘twas like a bird without a tail.
When the bird began to fly
‘twas like an eagle in the sky.
When the sky began to roar
‘twas like a lion at the door.
When the door began to crack
‘twas like a stick across my back.
When my back began to smart
‘twas like a penknife in my heart.
When my heart began to bleed
‘twas death and death and death indeed.
Come Hear My Poetry
I was below at Jazz and Poetry
Reading my poem “The Lonely Heron”
To impassive yet assenting listeners.
And when the evening swaps to Jazz
l go upstairs where in the bar
This youthful man from down under
Comes to say he loved my poem.
Slightly pale, sporting glasses,
He’d had good grades, a college entry--
But opts to learn while wandering the globe:
Geography and people, every culture,
Psychology, but poetry best of all.
He asks me what I’d found important
In the life I’d led - but then swans off,
Before I answer, to another reader,
To talk of life and poems, I suppose.
Attachment
She wears a shift as amber as her hair,
o’er shoulders she has draped a long beige shawl.
Slowly descending stairs in slippered steps,
she gives that charmed impression: lilting lightness.
Many will say she bears the air of beauty,
and each will wake and find they feel attraction.
All feel the warmth now glow within her heart.
But one, alone, will win her blessing smile.
Hosannas for Hyperboles
A rose-cinnamon peach, wafts such fragrance;
its hue – each pace I take, I stagger.
Memories are evoked beyond this world:
of narrow hulls awash in landscape colours,
of fare that goats give rung from udders,
of kind converse exploring diverse details,
of music wrung from aging vocal chords,
of house with many rooms and lots of art,
of garden eats – apples not ripe, green hazel,
of friendship formed before, deepened once more.
The Striving Self
It’s often when I feel as though I were
a nest of heads Medusa-like
spinning through fire to the very centre of Hell.
Into my hypnotised vortex swirls,
a heaven-echoing gulp of all that’s beauty.
All that prefer to live – my wife, my child,
all those who have abiding faith in me –
who see in me so much – more than I am
or ever could become in this short lifetime.
The hound dogs, hot with rabies snap at my locks,
but then I tell myself how self-complacent
I and my ego thinking so grandiose.
For no one cares if they chance to see me,
and if they do they’ll merely say to others
that I am weak and failing, not fit for good.
Thus now for me is set the task to hold
myself secure within my own two hands,
to take each step, being as sure as possible,
to stand up tall for truth and good and right,
to match back up to all that’s blessed with beauty.
I will transform the place wherein I live.
I’ll be present for those who on me depend.
I will become a shining example for all
in Earth’s garden of everlasting lights and colour.
Anglers
The small tug they called a fishing boat
ferried forty passengers to angle,
each one paid that sum as fare in francs.
Having just come back, some fifteen crew –
unload plastic crates of fish, tote-bags
of odd stuff, wet gear and mustard slickers
to ward off the spray, rod lengths dissembled,
filled up chests of treasure lures, best hooks,
strapped up sacks, home cures, fresh water, remedies.
white band-ßaides, potions to stop sea sickness.
One more item stowed, the tug would sink.
First thing off the boat, when once secured,
were full crates of wine, green flasks, but empty,
followed by bow legged jolly anglers.
They sort out belongings, pack and parcel
into plastic bags their fish for dinner.
One, to tease, wobbles a mackerel
in the air to make it kiss his mate.
Smallest fish get tossed for gulls to hassle.
Women dared to hustle to the port.
Anglers hawk excess, ten francs a kilo:
"Buy, Buy, Buy," with hyperbolic gestures.
A Loner
Like a carthorse from birth to death,
he pulls his body across the earth’s face
cold as a glacier – no track does he make.
His vocabulary makes the dictionary shudder.
Mostly he’s found whistling Hosannas
to his shadow quietly in the sunshine