Sonnet For Yellow and Disease

Trickling slow like pus down a sickly wound

Under sunlight which once ageing love blest –

Amongst green fields where youth did not dare brood

Upon the day when Time (aggrieved) would test

Passion with age and curse the hand which sought

And held and traced that skin so pure and firm.

A virgin place once plump with verve now rots –

Conquered by hands, then worms, which all but squirm

To reach at first, that lands sickly fiction

Of love eternal which cannot be lost?

Trickling slow like pus upon infection

This ailing love dying  (now free from lust)

Curses the sun and the colour yellow

Of hay, of pus, and atrophy mellow.

The Bi-polar Nature of Light Revealed at Sea

In a swarm of liquid waves, I see it reflecting I am naked.

Like something innocent, it flows and ripples and ebbs.

I have no clothes, have no thoughts, and no home

I can see.

Here, where there are no others

I am alone.

The windswept leaves, the water, and the dust;

They all pass through me.

It seems I am empty, like I am not here when

This babbling sea says to me –

‘What deep darkness is this

Lurking in the rays on the crest of my waves?’

Lurking in the rays on the crest of my waves,

What deep darkness is this?

This babbling light says to me –

‘It seems I am empty? Like I am not here when

They all pass through me –

The windswept leaves, the water and the dust.

I am alone.

Here, where there are no others,

I can see

I have no clothes, have no thoughts, and no home...

Like something innocent? It flows and ripples and ebbs ­

In a swarm of liquid waves. I see it reflecting I am naked.’

Red and Yellow

Orange burns like a flame through

Crisp autumn leaves

Desiccating for the cold winter prune.

Three By Eight Wall

There she lay

Down by the

Three by Eight

Wall or bed.

Urine drips

Unto the

Beer trails

On the floor.

Pain is Pain

Pain is pain and Trouble is trouble.
The tear of the forsaken
Together with the fear begotten
Play the same trick upon our passion
Numb the world and kill our reason
And run amok in the same fashion
To steal our meaning and lead us on
With a hand behind us
And another in front -
Without escape
We must bear the brunt
That our pain is ours
And in contempt of hours.

Pain said to Trouble, ‘What do you know?’
And trouble replied, ‘Enough not to owe
A second to pleasure or moment to joy’.
So Pain said to Trouble (in an arrogant ploy)
‘But you are trouble, not pain
And I know that lustreless gloss
Which glazes orphan eyes.’
Trouble replied, with the lonely look of a boy
‘And I am trouble, not pain’
So I know that wonderless moss
Which obscures orphan lives’.
But through those orphan eyes
In pain and in trouble
Pain is pain and Trouble is trouble.