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