POETRY

POETRY

I have always written poems. They are something that has to be squeezed out like a boil to give me relief. Many have been published in the small press and in anthologies. They might be divided into the serious and the comic.  Themes are love, life and nature, both human and non-human. There are potential collections amongst them. Here is a sample from my art portfolio:

Self-Made Artist

A man set up an easel in the desert.
The view to North and South and East and West
The same except the angle of the sun,
The pressure of the wind, his track across the sand.

For one slow hour he quietly painted out
The square of shining canvass
Until it melded with the silence of the rocks,
Yellow, ochre, stone and dun.

When he had made his hot and sterile copy
Of the scene he took a step away.
Quickly now he splashed on blobs
Of green, bright ivory and gold.

He planted trees across the waste
On some squeezed blossom, others song
Of birds and scent of ripening fruit,
Sunk sweet pools of water at their roots.

Still unsatisfied, he stepped back once
Again to ponder, placed a human
Figure in the foreground,  portrait of
Himself, unshaven, bald and true.

Then across the grimy face he painted on
A scarlet smile and with a final flourish
Added not a signature but crowned in
Deepest cobalt blue his likeness with a beret.