Ghazal (Fire)
When the beloved is present, presence lights a burning fire.
When the beloved is absent, memory sparks a yearning fire.
Tributes
Three Haiku
The reading and writing of Japanese style short-form poetry is my grounding mechanism, be that ground high or low, urban or rural, external or internal. The poems included here were written while living in Bristol and in the past six months since moving to Wells, in the heart of the Somerset countryside, though in many instances their gestation can be traced to my South London childhood. I only wish I’d had access to haiku and its associated forms back then.
Ghazal—
The wine-dark pain spills over, in my bed alone.
In nighttime stillness is my heart beset alone.
Lawyer Poets, Poems, Tributes
What Is Your Idle Job?
—question (with typo) in a mass email’s subject line I wait for lunchtime at my desk, spinning like a boy
Cooking Frutti Di Mare On This Early Evening Before the Night Falls On Kentucky Hillsides
Today, as the locals love to say,
is so cold the wolves ate the sheep for the wool.
I open the bag.
How to Make Amends
He was hungry, so he ate the couch, the one with the pull-out bed. Of course, when the wife came home, she was disgusted.