Sonnets to the lovesick
whether resigned
Since spring breezed past our love's become a snail,
slime rooted deep inside some lettuce leaf,
ignoring those fermenting jars of ale
half sunk up to the neck in vain belief
(though molluscs can't be duped to take the plunge
and dive straight in) they might be tempted yet
to dip a single toe into the gunge:
too late now for retractions or regret.
Forget the foot-loose nights of bedding down
wherever fancy beckons. Time to name
the date upon the dotted line and drown
in dregs of domesticity. The game
is up, freewheeling slug. You're fast on track
to strap a fixed-term mortgage to your back.
frustrated
With apologies to Shelley, Shakespeare and Elizabeth Barratt Browning
So where do I begin? It needs just one
well-tried and tested line: I'll change things and
nobody will recognise that long gone
romantic, travelling from an antique land.
Instead I'm saddled with a no-good stay-
at-home from Milton Keynes: shall I compare
him to a winter's morning when the lay-
about's pressed snooze? Intemperate! Unfair!
How do I loathe him? Let me count the cans
of lager stashed behind the couch, the smell
of unwashed socks and unwashed skin. That man's
immovable. Yet I remember well
how it began. One tried and tested line;
I swallowed it, quite sure I'd change the swine.
or compromised
How do you love me? All those countless ways
I bug you… like the plughole blocked with hair,
the heaps of fluffy cushions everywhere,
the “nothing’s wrong” that carries on for days,
the binning of those garage-bought bouquets,
the asking, then ignoring, what to wear,
the scoffing all the pudding when we share,
the sex life tweets for friends to reappraise…
not knowing that a cold means you’re half dead,
and that you don’t care who said what to who
– unless it’s what your blessed mother said…
not putting up the seat again for you,
nor putting up with breaking wind in bed…
I don’t know how you love me – but you do.