UNREQUITED

Let’s put two potential partners

on a tennis court.

When it’s all on the line,

one must return the service

otherwise the match seems lost

six-love

AUTO PILOT

Quite striking

definite admiration required:

diffuse tungsten glow on

fluff and flying eyes.

Others, grey to brown, flutter about

almost indignant

Powder adorns the light night air

So, to be an outdoor lamp

semi-brainless disciples clambering about you,

to you

but there is always one or more

elegant, still and beautiful

now we can make the metafigurative

jump into the bedroom

I think I’m probably a bulb,

but somehow it’s all been switched –

one of many dim photon-donors

awkwardly tinking and clinking

around the radiant, attracting moth

not quite sure what to do.

TRISTAN TRASH

Tiny green plain below misty Atlantic peak

houses – remote related islanders

with boats in dirty rainbow of disrepair

Strange how the rubbish permeates

backyards, streets and beaches

even the patchy patches

Rusted wrecks, gasless bottles, been cans

casually strewn where purpose waned –

a disgusting example of human patheticness

far, far from ‘civilization’ –

where I least expected it

the litter is prisoner too

but there is no litter prison

THE MOVING PAST

A special, sensual trust

can’t be replaced in an instant

unless it is geological…

Dwelling and stagnating on such memories

Lock in jaws Jurassic where

shale and sandstone shackle

sex and swimming somewhat

Best seek fresh desires soon to

avoid later chisels and dentist toys.

At the very least

play the coelacanth for now

ROYALLY FLUSHED

This beautiful queen diamond-less

gently bent and bended

my poked-faced dreaming heart

too late. Sadly.

I was never very good at dealing

with these kind of cards

especially when “all-in” is nigh

Hence my best hand so far

lost the one that mattered the most

to complicated choices, procrastinated truths

and sharks with roses

the game has changed

as have I. 

FERROUS FLAVOUR

Re-aquiring abandoned skill

is inelegant, semi cardiac starts

forced to some obligate extent.

Misdirected, perhaps, as a track runner

struggling valiantly through dune sand.

Unless intentions betray,

the seeming zealous grit

a deliberate fumble?

The tongue tingles

Suffice to say, abstinence-dulled ability   

flaunts minimal satisfaction

stuffed with frustration and mediocrity

How else to un-corrode

temporal-induced rust?

Jump. Fall. Bleed, iron

The taste: an unpleasant necessity

for its own reduction.

It smarts and reviles

but most pivotal,

when will you tempt it again?

BARNACLES

Steadfast barnacles cut
the fisherman's feet as
he, like a barnacle,
clings to the wet rocks.
Trying to catch food from
the sea, as barnacles
do when tide
is high. 

BLACK SWAN

If each component of attraction has a hue

within the spectrum of the desire,

then on one’s screen for colourful completion

they come together purely as white

in theory, with light.

The finding seemed improbable, nigh impossible – indeed

I had experienced only platonic shades of grey

until the medium changed, with her.

So after all this time, there she was

the swan painted elegant ebony:

prism surpassed by palette.