How do I love thee? Let me count the ways
I failed to tell you that I loved you,
and let me count how many times
I forgot to say you were
the most beautiful person
in my world.
Oh my darling baby,
when you were dying
in my arms,
you could only just hear
my hoarse, desperate voice, too late,
and now, for all of eternity,
the grave grasps you in silence.
In my hell, I shall but love thee better after death.

Mike T Minehan

Lonely word,
without rhyme or reason,
seeks meaning
and needs a good root.

Slightly faded but still opulent adjective
seeks mature sentence
and meaningful relationship
view long story
beside warm fire
with red wine.

Noun with no hang-ups
seeks juicy verb
for fun times
and swinging relationship.
Let’s split the infinitive together!
Conditional clauses not welcome.

Mike T Minehan

Hello, whale,
yes, you there wallowing
and swallowing crustaceans
with all your calliousity
and my insatiable curiosity.

What a laugh that calf
of yours was
when it frolicked up
to us diverse divers
wanting to be survivors
of its childlike impetuosity
and eighteen foot
preposterous, gargantuan monstrosity.

When you rose up underneath us
I thought you were going to eat us.
You scared me, whale,
when you flicked us with your tail -
the one you splinter yachts with
when you act as Davey Jones' locksmith.

Of course, I retired then
from my dive-in on leviathan,
happy to survive
your forty-five
tonne introduction.

Then you glided into gloom
and sang your eerie song
about your alien, baleen life
in vast, mysterious,
deep areas of oceans.

Good luck along the whale's road,
you mighty minstrel, you diva of the deep.
This diver hopes all humans and harpoons
will spare you and you can share
your song again.
God speed, whale.

Innocence.
Integrity.
No fear about mistakes.
Loving.
Giving everything.
Letting go.
No regrets.
That’s all.

Success *****, as they say,
hellishly.  She's a rich little
seductress who's certainly sensational
at blowing a man's brains out.
I know.  She had her teeth into me.
I can smile now, but for a while
I couldn't get enough. She was hot stuff,
that ***** goddess, success.

I was a real sucker for her charms
when she came greasing up.
I really got into the groove
when she pulled me off to the gravy train
where we gobbled down every drop.
I tell you, I couldn't stop.
What a succulent princess she is,
that ***** goddess, success.

But after it had all blown over
and she was hanging out with other guys,
I had a few days when my eyes weren't glazed.
Maybe she was a bit of a *****, actually,
always hustling for more.
Attractive to woo, but really, she *******
them, always pushing to score,
that ***** goddess, success.

I met her again the other day,
and she ran her tongue over her lips. Jeez.
I nearly went weak at the knees.
But we're only old friends now,
and I'm over her disease. So I wasn't desperate to please
her.  She's such a terrible tease. She wriggled her assets
but I didn't ask her to come again,
that ***** goddess, success.

Mike T Minehan

Lightening flickers between us.
The sky gasps and opens,
then the floods come
lapping upwards.
Do you remember
the torrent, my love,
when we surrendered to the wet?

That ****** of seed
was lust for life.
But then the world whirled
so quickly and
the dry came back.
The earth cracked between us
when we parted,
and the wet withered away.

So, while the sun still burns,
I stand this poem, *****,
against the sifting sands,
an obelisk for the wind to lick,
that I may remember later
the sustenance and succulence
of our season.

My heart and tongue quiver
when I talk again of
the wet.

A kind of lazy angel
swooped by one day
when I was skydancing carefully
on the corrugated roof of cirrocumulus,
minding my own business
and that of the world's,
supervising the sun
and the rinsed-clean fresh air
up there where blue was invented.

The angel showed me how to boogie-dance,
then flashed past and was gone,
leaving only laughter behind
and my admiration
for his easy grace.
You know, loose, with flow.

I was surprised at how easy it really was
to smoke on down in a delta
and dock with triple diamonds
by way of stair steps and a star
to flare it into snowflakes
and a teardrop.
Yeah.  What that angel showed me
was a head trip I'd always known.
But I simply hadn't been there,
on my own.

Ordinary people, bound by ground,
haven’t caught my act in the atmosphere.
But I don't really care -
I've been there, come back, seen around.

I ride the rainbow and roll the dice
on the great big stage of the stars
where the edge of eternity is the place I fly
as the point man on the wedge.
I skydance there quite often now,
for the love of it.  
For spice.