I walked in groves of Goethe’s roses
posed as art among wild greens
and to the world his verse he poses
in each petal formed a dream
there among this latin tableau
under the sky’s romantic hues
proudly stands his cold cameo
bold against warm heavens blue.
poets
The Word
in Browning’s April England green
or Whitman’s garden state
the far off shores of Stevenson
or those of Wordsworth’s lakes
the travelled roads of Holderlin
o’er hills where Burns is heard
those mills that broke the soul of Blake
the landscape is the word.
Not Averse
read me Larkin in the rain
or Auden on an old steam train
sing out Betjeman on the bus
make head nor tails of Jimmy Joyce
Hardy in dark nights peruse
and curse with me about Ted Hughes
put me to bed with Baudelaire
and let me dream of his sins there
Frustration
Fuck You! T. S. Eliot
and Auden, go to hell!
Thom Gunn, Larkin and Ted Hughes
I curse you all as well
for each and every bright idea
the muse sets at my door
your pens have spilled a million words
to paint them years before.
Revelation
writing of the world
we poets reveal nothing
save about ourselves
POET BIOGRAPHIES AS HAIKU (3)
Robert Devereaux
played loose with the virgin queen
she cut off his head
POET BIOGRAPHIES AS HAIKU (2)
Christopher Marlowe
gave us prurient delights
killed in a tavern
The purest poet
what fear
had she
for centuries
the stalking
dark of passing time
her words
in silence
candle writ
know no aged
lessening
nor lose the measured rhyme
that life though brief
is marked in full
not in the noises heard
for unabroad
disquiet absorbed
as true testimony
is for ages set
in her unsung words.
Darts
what silent ambush
is desire
hidden, waiting
for moments to fire
arrows of Eros
keen passion’s darts
plunged deep
into the lovers’ heart
Validity
the poet longed for suffering
as without life’s travails
he felt his verse,
though pleasant enough
and sometimes even revealing,
lacked that certain credence
in the validity of pain.
the blighters rock 