Our lives were always
so interconnected,
so entwined.

Despite her years
of pain
and suffering,
her concern
for my wellbeing
was always
evident.

Since her death
my own health
has
miraculously
improved.
I am fitter now
than I have been
for years.

This morning
I awoke
to the most absurd
thought:
did she die
that I might live?

There is a tendency among
those poets who may be very young
frequently to put in verse
those foreign phrases, or much worse
the now dead words of oh so ****** Latin
to boast of classrooms that they’ve sat in.

And just in case you’ve never heard ‘em,
Let’s reduce a few to ad absurdum.
It was amore a prima vista
until he left her for her younger sister
for, after all, who could resist her,
so moving on to secunda vista
he took that step and boldly kissed her,
behaviour that is hardly utopista.

The trouble with modus vivendi
is that it sometime rhymes with eye
but there are those who don’t agree
and think that it must rhyme with tea.
Who cares? It’s all the same to I.
Or should that be the same to me?

You may say it is not de rigueur
that I defend with so much vigour
what surely is no more than hubris
that I attribute to Confucius
for he surely ha detto tutto
albeit un po convoluto.

And everyone’s heard of carpe diem.
If not, then I have yet to see ‘em.
But I prefer to seize a waist
which may be thought somewhat unchaste
though far more likely to have shocked ‘em
would be to carpe in the noctem.

Perhaps you think it’s ipso facto
that I’m intolerant of lacto
unless it comes directly from the breast.
I think it’s better that the rest
of this is left to your own opinatus
for which I offer no blank cartus.

Then there’s the modus of my own vivendi
that I indulge in cacoethes scribendi
the itch to write for which I daily
scratch myself or play my ukulele
which is my form of modus operandi
before I pour myself a king-size brandy.

And thus we leave this boring dull citare,
by this time you have certainly grown quite weary
of any further venture into tedium
Or as ***** Harry might say, fac ut gaudeam
For after all a day senza sunlight
Might altrettante facilmente be night

I strain my ear
to hear
a song that has never been written.
To hear it I need to explore
the innermost depths of my soul.
The song is me
and if I do not know it,
then how can I know myself?
And if I do not know myself,
how can I know another?

I thought she was my greatest love.

For more than half a century
I’ve nursed and cherished
a memory that haunted me.
My tinnitus and hearing loss
dating back to that bitter,
cruel and hateful
time,
has always been
attributed
to that recollected period
when I sat huddled and lonely
upon the vastness of
that couch in Antibes
and sobbed and sobbed,
and sobbed until I thought
I might expire.

And now . . .
having suffered a loss
that demonstrates how trivial
was that earlier experience . . .
and now . . .
having truly the need
to express my pain
in overtly demonstrable ways,
I find myself
unable to shed a single tear.
The pain is cutting me up
inside,
but no sign is visible
to others
and no physical relief
presents itself
to me.

Bite back pity.
Bite back pain.
Bite back remorse.
Disabuse myself
of trivia.
Embrace the exigent
and shed the
nugatory.
And then perhaps,
just perhaps,
I will learn the truth
about myself and others.
Perhaps I will learn
to accept my innocence
and place the guilt
where it truly belongs.
Perhaps after fifty years
I will finally see her
as the faithless creature
she truly was.

And then . . .
and then, perhaps,
I will be able to dispose
my grief where it truly
belongs.
And then, perhaps,
I will shed those tears.

My body has long surpassed
its use-by date
But despite so many
gloomy predictions
I believe its best-before date
is yet to come.

I have been stupid,
I have been wise;
and I know this will come
as no surprise.

Stupid is
more fun.

I bought myself a pencil.
I had a lot to write.
I bought myself a notepad too
it was a gleaming white.

I started to write upon it
but the words were very faint.
I went back to the paper shop
to tell them my complaint.

With the pencil in his hand
the shopkeeper scratched his head
and said “you need to change this
for a darker form of lead.”

I asked him most politely
with no hint of aggression
“2B or not 2B, " I said
"that has to be the question"

                                               Bill Shakespeare