My poem, “Lament on Mayuary” (modeled after John Keats’s “Ode on Melancholy”), is featured in the Kosmos journal July newsletter’s Summer Gallery of Poets (scroll to the bottom). Thank you to Kosmos Poetry Editor Carolyn Martin for selecting this piece!
They creep along the crease where plaster’s link
with geometric terra cotta inlays
slips beyond the statutory pane’s oblique
illumination Squalor’s dreg-lined byways
evince these shadows’ huddled histories
of furtive ventures through the crevices
where nights yield to darkening that sullies
the dark & dank spore-stippled surfaces
despair the light of noon to bare their scourge
No teakwood bed nor wicker chair will mask
depravity as Geishas deftly forge
refinements to obscure the blights of dusk
What’s bent by vice yet breaks for dearth of rest
& makes its bed with vermin as needs must
Aaaand… one more, while we’re on the Shakespearean Love Sonnet theme… I wrote this for my beloved husband just a couple of years back! Don’t mind the roadside warning graphics — they’re only ornamental!!
from Google Images
Your love once sent me flying to the moon,
But now I’ve landed solidly on ground.
Your jets at idle, I no longer swoon
From ventures superceding speed of sound!
You dress to go on your bi-monthly run;
I dress, if there’s somewhere I have to be.
Your eyes (do they still sparkle like the sun?),
Without my specs, my love, I cannot see.
No longer do I dream of bees or birds–
The hives are barren; nests have blown away:
Our teenagers now speak the “choicest” words,
For we are out of fertile things to say.
My love, though we have traveled beyond lust,
Jets may have cooled, but haven’t lost their thrust…
Just in time for the Holidays… Hot off the presses — whoops, my bad — I mean, let go by a press that’s gone under (Booo!), but now available FREE for your consumption, er, enjoyment!
Google Images
While wrapped up tightly to our necks in wool,
Sequestered in our homes in winter’s chill,
Whene’er we yearn to get our insides full,
A cardboard box in car delivers thrill…
Swelling with exhilarating spices,
Its savory scent comes wafting through the door––
Pepperoni, amongst other vices:
Meatballs and cheese and fat and carbs galore!
We sluggish’ eat while satisfaction grows––
All down the hatch, slice after slice, it goes––
Until its warmth has reached our very toes,
And caused onset of shameful gastric woes!
Oh, pizza, how you vanquish dark, cold days
In deviously insulating ways!
SLHARPERPOETRY 