Audrey’s Shower

A dainty slip in awe, our Audrey Rose,
her telescope aimed starward to disclose
a virgin comet's aspect in full flight,
unbraided both her pigtails there that night.
Rapunzel of astronomy, she waited
for Joe - a boy she'd liked but never dated -
when suddenly, each lens simpatico,
she spied the comet, snatched a glimpse of Joe...

With one eye trained a thousand miles away, and clearly,
the other lost in foreign inches blurred, and nearly,
our Audrey trembled as her boy encroached,
her heart now spilling as his Lynx approached;
while, shed upon the planet's stratosphere,
the flaming debris started to appear
as meteors igniting all she'd primed;
magnifi-scent as aftershave sublimed.

A lonely body gravitating to her,
engaged and showering streaks of passion through her,
was fleeting as each nectar hearth attracts
in gardens where the force of orbit acts.
A club for young astronomers to bloom,
to search and find, each voyage to assume;
this comet's first encounter with the earth
our Audrey's roaring passion given birth.

May : 2006

Equator of the Year

We're crossing the equator line, the planet's spine at rest -
where midnights shine and sea life basks
and all who sail attest
to summertime, bejewelled brine, the vapor veil of home;
from man to boy, each sailor asks
which hemisphere to roam?

We're crossing the equator now; our vessel's prow is south -
afloat on sea saliva 'twixt
the lip and the gaping mouth.
We pass beyond, invisible, this tan-line of the year;
the waist of the world is loose for us -
the belt of the sun wraps here.

We're crossing the equator, hoping, as a telescope,
our hazy-lain horizons hold
meridians of hope
for voyages past summertime, to points we dare to steer,
through lives bisected by the gold
equator of the year.

June 2006

A Hundred Frames per Second

I'd watch you slink on by with blonde abandon –
Demure to all; to me, in full regalia -
A striking Viking girl, not what I'd planned on
To make me horny as the Bacchanalia.
A teen in lust, each smile a high-wire act,
I loved you from the corner of my eye;
Your every blasé gesture would enact
The way I'd ask, and trip, and quickly die.
On Valentine's, you cornered me instead,
Invited me to watch some sappy flick;
You wrote and starred in every word I said
And never has an evening passed so quick.

My first love, by the reel of romance beckoned,
You wound my heart a hundred frames per second.

February 2007

Bolton School, Boy’s Division

11:57 am…

Inside, we grow anxious as the dew of morning class;
outside reigns the Ray-Ban and the smell of new-mown grass.
Ties, by noon, are nooses
and the blackboard sucks all humour;
and we’re sick with no excuses
while the summer’s still a rumour.

We’ve sweated more than if we’d each been dipped
as solutes in the liquid testing of propane;
we’re living, choking chemistry; we’ve slowly stripped
(and if we’d worn our blazers we would be aflame!)

The bell is epic, ours and imminent;
it has a gong-like power to end exams.
We need it now; to it all thoughts are bent
like squares as panting parallelograms.

12:00 Noon…

Fresh tarmac bakes as chunks of boiling liquorice,
and metal fences are re-forged by summer’s kiss;
beatific breezes swoon across the playing fields,
and every spotty, tie-in-pocket schoolboy yields

to summertime. With pies eschewed for icy cokes,
the world’s undone, and laughs erupt at smutty jokes;
and nothing is the way it was –
I’d have to look up “dour”, “austere”
for the year at last exhales because ~
By Frost! the English summer’s here!

Lunch break’s still an hour but it’s nowhere near enough,
as life seems folded backward like the shirt sleeve at the cuff.
I’m chilled and burning, there for learning nothing that I’m yearning for.
School’s history ~ who gives a (bleep) about the (bleep) Crimean War?

It’s sunny and I’m not about to give up
to physics when I've fizzy drinks to sup.
Another bell, but this one is a bummer -
it’s either wag or kiss goodbye to summer!

July: 2006