Saturday 13 December 2014

Poem: Fifteen Hundred Pieces


Fifteen Hundred Pieces



It’s only to be expected.

Husband buys wife jigsaw,

Husband is neglected.

Poem: World Champion


World Champion

I don’t have many talents.
Can’t draw – no musical ability.
I can time a joke okay
But don’t do funny voices or accents.

I can knead bread pretty well
And slice a fistfulful of leeks in seconds.
Give me an orange and I’ll hand you
Its peel – empty, in a tight right-handed spiral.

And, of course
Procrastination, wasting time
I’m good at that..
See, I didn’t even mention it
Til the poem was nearly over.

Poem: The Application


The Application

Dear Sir slash Madam
I write to apply for the
Unadvertised post of
Travel poet.

Unfettered by desk but
With pencil, paper and a suitable hat*
My vocation – a dark and dangerous one
Is to capture the world
One stanza at a time.
And you, my demanding but
Generous employer and patron

Ask only that I go where instructed
And write what is needed:
Epics on the Greensward of Frinton
A sonnet sequence on the Bangkok bath-house experience
A brief affair in Paris – a Limerick perhaps
Or Clerihew.
And, my masterpiece,
Alaska to Tierra Del Fuego
In a haiku. Five syllables
Per continent
And seven for Central America.

*Plus expenses