Andrew Lees

Andrew Lees Nov 2016

Outset

I'm dressed for travel!
Tattered rags and
Drawstring leather saddlebags,

Home-made shoes and
Unkempt hair...
A woven sack? What's hiding there?

A folding knife, a
Length of string, a
Photograph, a mandolin,

A lumpen package bound in twine,
An apple and a draught of wine,

An empty space I've yet to fill--
Lord willing, though, I think I will.

Wrote this at the end of a personal life stage, where I was moving on, literally and metaphorically, from a great deal I'd previously held dear. I was taken with the idea of leaving with nothing, but owning within me a cavernous new space to pack with what I pleased.

Andrew Lees Nov 2016

Breathe

Profusion burst, but
At the end of days,
Like a sunflower.

I wrote these three lines as an opening to a longer piece, then after a long time sitting and staring and looking daft I realised I couldn't really add to it without diminishing the whole.

Andrew Lees Oct 2016

Hither

The night sky stumbled, lost in thought
And caught up under slippered foot
By the scattered playthings of the dusk--
Pillows, tinsel, drifts of cotton wool, and
Brightly coloured sheets of fingerpainted
Foolscap paper. Gathering her haughty skirts,
Embroidered at the hem with silver coins
And lined with lightly patterned silk of
Deeply pleated royal blue, she turned an
Elegant and stately pirouette and flung her
Arms toward the bashful moon.

I added this as one of my first poems on HP, but I've made a few crucial edits and it reads vastly better now. I know free verse is the dominant form (and has been so for the past century, in one way or another) and I write in this mode myself quite a bit but I like the rhythmic drive meter lends - this poem is written entirely in iambs and trochees and it's satisfying to feel the specific rhythm this meter creates.

Andrew Lees Oct 2016

Freedom song

I don't like birds in cages,
I can't abide fish in tanks:
But the prison I'm in is the size of my skin
And it fits me just perfectly, thanks!

Inspired by the late, great Spike Milligan.

Andrew Lees Oct 2016

Reflections

Starlight stops and steps and skips like
Stones across the water while
The dragonflies
Land.
Pause, and gather thought.

Andrew Lees Oct 2016

Sonnet for her

My God, you’re dancing – hands like startled doves
And gently curving ankles keep my time
Just so. Syncopated hearts intermesh
With lips, rhythmic eyes and then the coda…

Twin systems colliding. It’s terminal.
Let’s mix. Leave me stumbling like a drunkard
And praising seven velvet witnesses
With words made of breath and eyes cast from starlight.

Gasp once. Trap air before it can betray
How close you are to melting like butter
And I to puddling at your collarbone.
It’s faster now, mixed like milk in coffee

Or intermingled breath flowing slowly
Down the valley forged between our bodies.

I know form poetry is passe these days -- it's strange to think free verse has actually been ascendant for nearly 100 years! It seems form poetry has been thoroughly licked, although free verse never quite seems to get over needing to prove itself.

However, sonnets are lovely especially when written in 'strict' form (three quatrains and a couplet, ten iambic syllables each - no cheating!) - the restriction is like a painter's frame, it is easy enough to paint freeform but the frame provides a lovely bracket, and what's not shown is as important as what is.

Andrew Lees Oct 2016

Four short poems on writing

An open book,
A feathered pen.
An inkwell? No, a vein instead.

A spider crawled across my page:
Just look at all the mess it made!

Words in rows of
Fullstop beat,
Iambic hearts and
Couplet feet
Pursued my pen with stately rage:
They chased it straight across the page!

But now their quarry's quit and done, they
Slouch off sulking, one by one.
The brave remain, by choice or chance:
Words in rows to turn and dance!

*Crumpled words and jumbled wire
Catch askance and ****** afire--
Burst in terse and tumbled flame,
Cursed, my verses burn today.

Burst in terse and tumbled flame,
Verses never heard again
Return their words, inert and tame.
Cursed, my verses burn today.