Appreciate everything
Have an attitude of gratitude
Stay motivated and dedicated
For this, will determine your latitude
Be elated and upbeat
That would be helpful
Always maintain the good demeanor
Remain calm and cheerful

Self-indulgent panic of the scarring emotion
Blood across a mirror cracked
Where her body lay for days

Disingenuous apathy of a solemn kind
To meet her gaze in the evening din
Lifeless she lay and he laid to

A wave that breaks, in romantic ocean breadth
A breath that fell silent
and so too does the head

White dress, petticoat, floundered folly
Lovers in the summer rain
That never shall see a sunrise again

He who rides his horse
through the mountains of love
while spitting down on those
in the valley of seething hate
should be struck from his horse,
and cast down among them,
for he is no different.

It happened in Physics,
reading a Library art book under the desk,
(the lesson was Archimedes in the bath)
I turned a page and fell
for an older man, and anonymous at that,
hardly ideal –
he was four hundred and forty-five,
I was fourteen.
‘Eureka!’ streaked each thought
(I prayed no-one would hear)
and Paradise all term
was page 179
(I prayed no-one would guess).
Of course
my fingers, sticky with toffee and bliss,
failed to entice him from his century;
his cool grey stare
fastened me firmly in mine.
I got six overdues,
suspension of borrowing rights
and a D in Physics.
But had by heart what Archimedes proves.
Ten years later I married:
a European with cool grey eyes,
a moustache,
pigskin gloves.

Sadness has a taste,
It's bittersweet, a soft bite,
It makes you crave more.