love

Sing to me your songs of sweet, sweet love

Assorted Poems, Selected poems

Sing to me your songs of sweet, sweet love,
and set your music afloat on the breeze.
Or write me a sonnet straight from the heart
and carve your words upon on an oak tree.

Or proclaim to me a constitution of love
and make your rules and principles clear.
Or if you don’t have time to write such a thing,
then whisper soft, hushed words in my ear.

Or scrawl something down on a post-it note
so you don’t need to think too hard.
Or if you’ve got a spare postage stamp,
you could always send a postcard.

Or maybe leave a message with my mum
(07823 666 403)
as you’ve not been in touch for nearly six years
and I’m worried you might be avoiding me.

In the Departure Lounge

Assorted Poems, Selected poems

In the departure lounge,
she drew him near,
then softly whispered in his ear,

not words of parting’s
sweet, sweet sorrow,
but DON’T FORGET THE BINS tomorrow.

LOVE POEM, WRITTEN IN HASTE

Assorted Poems, Selected poems

(with Autocorrect turned on)

O what Brave New Worm is this
That holes you, my sweet darting love?
I see you in the stairs that twinkle
In the heavy above.

Your light shins down upon me
and sets my heart on fir.
You stir up my emoticons
And fill me with dessert.

I gazebo upon your lovely Facebook.
Your rainy nose, sweet, unmissable,
The blue-greed eyes like limpet pools,
And your petty mouse, juicy and kissable.

Come with me, Angle of my Dreams,
Hold my ham and journalist into the night
And together lettuce explore the worm,
Over the horizontal and out of sigh.

Read My Lips

Assorted Poems, Selected poems

I don’t need a lover
who’s a looker,
just someone who knows
the shortlist
for this year’s Booker,

with an insightful view on
Doris Lessing or Ian McEwan,
being satanically well-versed
in Salman Rushdie,
and would find it cushty
to share pillow talk
about the work of A.S. Byatt.

Yes, that would be a riot.

I could never judge a lover
by her cover,
be swayed by make-up
or a fancy hair do;
I’d much rather her be intimate
with À la recherche du temps perdu.

To be clear, I’m not talking
Fifty Shades of Grey here,
but finding someone
who knows their way around
the complete works of Shakespeare.

I would rip out my heart
and write her name upon it
if she can recite to me
his eighteenth sonnet.

So don’t give me eyes
to get lost in;
I’d rather have a heated debate
about Jane Austen.

I don’t care if she talks
in a Donald Duck voice,
if, together, we can thumb
through the stories of Joyce,

nor will we ever feel
an unbridgeable gulf
if neither of us are afraid
of Virginia Woolf.

You see, one thing I’ve learnt
as I’ve got older
is that literature
lights up love
and makes it smoulder

and that beauty
is in the eye
of the book holder.

Kiss

Assorted Poems, Selected poems

Gimme a kiss, a smooch,
a snog, a smacker.

Light up my lips
with a lusty firecracker.

Please don’t ignore this;
let us conjoin our labia oris.

Because I’m a sucker
for the way
that you pucker.

I hope
that our lips
get stucker and stucker.

So let’s osculate now,
I can’t help myself.

Oh, sorry, I thought
you were somebody else.

sporkle

Assorted Poems, Selected poems

it’s not the way you walk
it’s not the way you talk
it’s the way
that you wield
a spork

queenly exponent
of hybrid cutlery
you make my stomach
utterly
fluttery

one minute,
your pronging
fills me with longing

the next,
you scoop to conquer

it’s driving me bonquers

elegant elision,
practised precision,
your spork
lights the spark
in my heart

Anagram man

Assorted Poems, Selected poems

Brian felt confused,
his brain out of order,
his reward was a prison,
without need of a warder.

For Pam was an anagram,
a crumpled map with no key
and while desserts often stressed him,
he’d gladly eat her for tea.

Maybe she was married
or had some other admirer?
But still hope’s thin flame resided
in his heart; he desired her.

He was held rapt in a trap
and would think of her hourly.
She was wordy, she was rowdy;
she might come with a dowry.

He felt angered. Enraged.
World-weary. Wired. Weird.
He couldn’t declare his feelings
until his head cleared.

He explored all the angles,
prayed to the angels above;
for he wasn’t filling a novel
but rather falling in love.

Come away, come away, come away, my lover

Assorted Poems, Selected poems

Come away, come away, come away, my lover,
Come away to the cherry tree,
Where lovers sit and sing to each other
The songs of Gwen Stefani.

No.

Come away, come away, come away, my lover,
Come away to the apple tree,
Where lovers sit and discuss with each other
The best bits from Casualty.

Please go away.

Come away, come away, come away, my lover,
Come away to the old beech tree,
Where lovers sit and read to each other
The novels of Maeve Binchy.

You are freaking me out now. I’ve never even met you before.

Come away, come away, come away, my lover,
Come away to the poplar tree,
Where lovers sit and debate with each other
The fight scenes in Rocky III.

Right, I’m calling the police.

Run away, run away, run away, dear poet,
Run away to the sycamore tree,
Where poets hide in the thick, green foliage
To avoid captivity.