poet

SONNET 2,333

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I would not have you fall in love with me
For what would you do then once you are loved?
You’d wrap yourself in everything you see—
For sentiment misleads when hearts be drugged.
You’d tell me how I spin your heart and head
And speak of all the things I have you feel;
You’d fall under my skin and into bed
Where lies the whole percentage of appeal.
But soon I’d be a tiresome little wretch
Who’d fade away, too easy to ignore;
Whose old and rhyming soul falls from the edge;
Too passionate a person to endure.

Unless you are in love with poetry
I pray you do not fall in love with me.

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LMN

Wilfred’s Men

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A poet’s shattered soul reacts to crumpled men with words intact

Recalling lies as glory folds, one verse – yet many stories told:

Our Wilfred said they’d cursed through sludge, towards their distant rest they’d trudged

And Wilfred’s men had lost their boots but limped on, blind, deaf to the hoots

There, Wilfred saw a hanging face – as death came to his writing-place

So we could read -at every jolt- of gargled blood to our revolt

If Wilfred knew – if he could see -dead men survived by poetry

What would he say – and would he be surprised his words revered by me?

Adored by age, revered by youth, for hitherto-unspoken truth.

If then were now – if he were here, would Wilfred to the world endear?

Or is it likelier he’d see: the sale of arms, cash weaponry?

And then the fight to stop it all, this great divide as countries fall?

Perhaps for now, hypocrisy – humanity’s mobocracy:

And as he rhymes of this or that, he’d write: Manus Manum Lavat.

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