April Showers

Thanks Jas

Well here's the but poem. I was trying to edit it a bit more before posting but it's time I move on or I'll never catch up. The second is an old Haiku I changed slightly. It still passes for structured poetry, right? I'm clearly getting desperate. Ah well, I think he'll get five structured and four freestyle and that will have to do:

11. Chemistry

I could have loved you
but there wasn't the time
to cut paper-chain people,
to dissect identical copies
from our too fresh flesh.

And we didn't have the science
to write our names in the stars -
but how close they looked,
burning under your mother's tablecloth.
But she painted us out,
remember?

I suppose we were fortunate,
really.
Think of the threads
we might have fabricated,
the pressure of hands, on our brains,
writing false memories
that would never occur.

I could have loved you
but I was fortunate really
since you're burning out.


12. Waiting

Her mornings are passed
alone with dregs of coffee
in a tea-stained cup.


This is one that I'm still working on. I'll have to find time to edit these unfinished poems before the end of the month:

13.

There is a grave,
waiting for me
and I don't know
if there will be flowers
or none.
It will be filled eventually
like the

14. Planted Upside Down

There was an occasion for fright
on the night
you abandoned the babe
on my doorstep.
Two eyes, brown like dirt
and a tuft on his head
told me he'd been planted
upside down.

I always thought root vegetables
were full of deceit
like the carrot lights in my eyes,
only half a glow spinning out
but it's hardly a surprise
I took him in.
What else could I do?

And he grew and grew
in his quiet way,
looking like you
with his firm set mouth until
one day he sprouted and
grew wings.
Then I knew for certain
he was mine.

15. The Easter Bunny

Maybe the Easter Bunny never
existed at all.
It might have been a hoax
from Santa Claus
to trick the tooth fairy
and so he visits house to house,
hopping about their gardens
in a bunny suit.

He leaves prints in the dirt
with a wooden rabbit's foot
and then scales the side of the building
and slips down the chimney because
old habits are hard to kill.

But where does he get the eggs?
This is the only part which troubles me,
how he must bend and squeeze
his jolly bulk into the miniature
coop and,
still warm from the mother,
steal those eggs
and transform them with a touch
of Christmas magic.

16. Perhaps we Live in Shadows

Perhaps we live in shadows
of a larger land
where worlds are but a pebble
in our father's hand
but if we do I want no part
in further trouble, all the grief
that comes with living,
still my heart
and let me rest in peace
at the beginning.

17. There Were Phantoms in the air

There were phantoms in the air
or so my daddy said
and so I thought it true,
how wonderful,
with painted wings
and golden pictures in my head.

I climbed on churchyard tombs
and caught them in my hands
but then my daddy said to me
Don't look! Don't peek!
That's the only regulation
if you wanna reach salvation.

I'll admit it's not my way
to trust in fairy tales
and so I brought one down,
and raised it to my eye.
But only to find that it had
never existed or died.

17.

I like the idea, this progresses nicely and there are some great lines like "I climbed on churchyard tombs
and caught them in my hands". I think stanza two is the strongest visually.

I think the rhythm and rhyme schemes are a little off...they just don't feel quite right to me. I'd try reading this aloud.
Jas