No Other Way but Deep [sonnet]
“Your trouble is you think too much,” they said
to me at school more times than I recall.
“There’s too much going on inside that head
of yours; you try to run before you crawl.”
They didn’t say it kindly or with care;
their only aim: To make me just like them.
So long as kids were dull and unaware
there was no peccadillo to condemn.
Yet more determined I did then become
to swim upstream with underwater strokes.
Although those forces still are meddlesome;
to dive down from the surface it provokes.
It’s true one can live lightly on the cheap.
For me there is no other way but deep.
© 2012, Alan Morrison
Scarf of Glory [sonnet]
[for Susanne]
She wore a scarf but not around her neck;
it nestled gypsy-like upon her head.
I looked but had to do a doublecheck —
the colour of her face filled me with dread.
Tressed and formerly flowing locks of hair
were chemically taken from her skull.
The tear-inducing fragrance of despair
my sunny day of joyfulness did cull.
But when I took a closer look at she
whose loveliness had still come shining through
my heart rejoiced at what there was to see:
A gorgeous princess then came into view.
For though some cells within were broken-down
that scarf she wore on top was like a crown.
© 2012, Alan Morrison
Sonnets
I swear that one can make any thought into a sonnet. (14 lines, 10 syllables per line, various patterns of rhyme, though I prefer the Elizabethan model (abab,cdcd,efef,gg) invented by the Earl of Surrey in the early 1500s. There are love sonnets, protest sonnets, propaganda sonnets, surrealist sonnets and even sonnets about sonnet-writing. Francesco Petrarca wrote 366 sonnets – all of them about one woman called Laura who he happened to see one day at a church in Avignon in 1327 and to whom he never spoke. Personally, I have written more than a hundred; so I’m catching up on Petrarch. There is something ravishing about Iambic Pentameter!
Complementary Creatures [sonnet]
We’re equal, spat the woman to the man.
Whatever you can do, I also can.
We’re just the same, she said, with venom voice;
the only difference is I have less choice.
He gazed at her with kindness in his eyes —
which she thought was a patronising stare
for men to her were something to despise —
if only she could see how much they care.
For deep inside her heart he saw a hurt
and damaged soul — her pain she had transformed
into this sharp unkind abrasive curt
self-righteous creature, whom he now informed:
Although we’re equal beings on this earth
We’re here to complement each other’s worth.
© 2012, Alan Morrison
The Sanctity of Skin [sonnet]
The sacredness of intimacy’s deep
enthral embrace is bleakened in this world
of sleepy cold and unawareness cheap
and so uncheerful wasteness unimpearled.
Saliva is another word for bliss
and love-juice aphrodisiac’s a moist
and sliding sleek glissando close-knit kiss
(a measure of the way love is unvoiced).
We overlook — by which I mean we fail
to see — the fundamental ABC
of skinsome close encounter’s alchemy
when liquids mingle and two souls dovetail.
Unless we know the sanctity of skin
we’ll never feel true passion burn within.
© 2012, Alan Morrison
Coachwork [poem]
Is there anyone left upon this global
outreach screwed-up new age dive
who isn’t called a “coach” — someone you pay
to orchestrate your life, your mind to probe?
(And all because you had a bad hair day!)
It seems to be the job of choice for those
who — having gone to a workshop or two —
decide that they are fit to run the lives
of those who are confused and misconstrue
just how a human being here survives.
The Flowery Mangled Hand [poem]
a petalled hand stretched out a tidy finger
[though it was amputated at the time]
its bloody stump a stinging mass of fine
flamingo-pinking sinking loudly down
I’d love to shake that flowery mangled hand
so we could feignly stand in temporary
lanterned circumstances’ sandless strand
consanguinity enhances young romance’s
downward dancing faintless fadely frowned
“What kind of Poems do you write?”
People often say to me “What kind of poems do you write”. I reply: “The kind of poems that I like to read”. That’s true.
Growth Rate [sonnet]
The spinning weathervanes of squandered hopes
have woven pirouettes around my pride.
My battered sense of honour now elopes
with joking wreaths of rash infanticide.
For all the newness latent in this yarn
was drowned in squalls of flood-bequeathing twine
which, trussing me with knots I can’t undarn,
amok with your mendacity combine.
So now that dust has settled on the stone
and peaky-pointed mountainsides of snow
the comprehension comes: You’ll never grow
to see beyond your puerile princess throne.
I wonder wishly what could take your place:
A woman, not a child, must fill that space.
© 2012, Alan Morrison
Medicine Mouth [poem]
It washed right through my many-coated
crude defensive multi-moated
barrier-reefs of weathered ways
so carefully built in recent days of
darkness. Your mouth a waterfall
of wonder struck my stupid wall
like thunder and, to cut the story short,
I, defeated by your beam, arose
through empty spaces springing
over frozen traces; ice blaspheming
all the writhing awesomeness of love
with pseudo-caution seeming from above.
The Naked Troubadour 