Let me count the days

Poems in the time of Corona

Let me count the days
after Elizabeth Barrett Browning

How do I shelter? Let me count the days.
I shelter all the morn and noon and night
My nerves can stand, as headlines feed my fright
And tell me I should stay here in my place.
I shelter unless shopping just by ways
Of dire need, for wines both red and white.
I shelter wisely, like owls at a height;
I shelter calmly, like bats in their caves.
I shelter with a six-foot rule to use
When I'm outside, for dread of others' breath.
I shelter with a mask I dare not lose
For loss of sense. I shelter fearing death.
Skype, Zoom, are all my life; and by the news
I shall still shelter months: sixth, seventh, eighth....




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Magnetic Resonance Imaging: lyrics of love and loss
Those Footsteps Behind: around the world in 50 poems

Shall I compare thee? (Covid-19)

Poems in the time of Corona

Shall I compare thee? (Covid-19)
after William Shakespeare (Sonnet 18)
on the (probable) anniversary of his birth and death

Shall I compare thee to the Spanish flu?
Art thou more deadly and more disparate?
Tough minds do chart your likely spread in June,
And isolation's end hath long to wait;
Some said in heat Corona would be gone,
And your rank visage would in summer die,
A miracle, gold crowns burn'd in the sun,
With nature back to normal by and by;
But promise in the season had to fade,
Losing the halt of quarantine at hand;
Now we do shelter longer in the shade,
While contact under six feet's sadly bann'd:
   So long as breath can poison we must see,
   Such sacrifice of freedom sets us free.



Support a poet. Buy a book.
Magnetic Resonance Imaging: lyrics of love and loss
Those Footsteps Behind: around the world in 50 poems

Writing Society, 'brilliant'

scream of delirium

best read in lust love inks as nascent time
a form so vandalised perhaps or bent
so double with a stick of rock to chime
the quarter pie in apple sky so full
shot down in flames the dream that you crave me
today and went tomorrow with intent
and forethought malice is the town you see
before you go first do no harm and pull
my leg hurts at the knee that bent to you
it was a gesture seen before you meant
to ask for dandelion and burdock stew
is rarely found wound in such balls of wool
with which we wind around our brilliant heights
where we alone can put the world to rights

By popular demand

Agent provocateur

When in my dreams you bend to kiss my cheek
I am deceived to think that all is right.
On waking, though, I find another week
Has passed with you still distant, out of sight.
We meet and talk of many things, but don't
Yet dare confess the ones our instincts yell
The loudest, which, if common sense were wont
To turn a blind eye, we would quaff full well.
A second hand in hand, your touch inspires
Primaeval sonnets, songs of heart's distress,
All forms of poetry, all life's desires,
Which linger far beyond the brief caress.
But fool am I to ramble in this way.
The dreams of nights do not translate to day.

Another sonnet

Unquenchable
A passion sparks a distant memory's flame;
Your single glance cries out an untold will.
Too often cut to call this blade a game,
The edge that's in such looks is no cheap thrill.
Sweet poison teaching now from history
To want it all and yet go not toward
That luscious Tantalus of mystery:
Resist, resist, or fall upon my sword!
Still love-sick longing deep beneath the spleen
Must force me up to steal a breath of scent,
Which wafts seditious tendrils in between
My head and heart to tempt against intent.
In this embrace there is no way to win,
And thus we end before we first begin.

A sonnet of sorts

And all that jazz

With seraphim sat either side, I fall.
The cornucopia blinds my every thought,
Like Prufrock's mermaids' far Euterpean call,
Which teased with its ignoring the distraught
And spell-shocked sometime Fool, who heard the bliss
But could not, would not, see the path toward
The faintest whisper of a naiad's kiss.
'Tis thus to writhe in pain and be ignored.
Too much. Too much. Too late. Too late. The show
Bare half-way through, said seraph quits the room,
Replaced in line of sight by Mephisto,
Who laughs. I seal my pact. He tells my doom.
The last remaining vision starts to fade.
Come midnight bells my soul is past all aid.