It is sometimes easier to siphon off blood on Tuesdays

“Blood letting“. Licensed under Public domain via Wikimedia Commons. “From a Stone” engages with the frustrations of bringing forth a poem when it feels like drawing blood from an inanimate source. Like “Glomurelonephritis” this is one of the rare instances where my personal health experiences feature in a poem. For 31 years I have lived

Proper Poetry

The beam of a true poem balances when each pan hovers with just right the weight. A real poem contains rhyme; Each line leads us to a prediction. — When I was at junior school, it was the end-of-term duty of the girls in the highest class, Standard 5, to gather news from each year.

Poem 104

Escucha My new muse is light in his visits, is late, never calls, smiles his cheek, tells me nothing. So I invent everything. My new muse wears white-soled trainers and a St. Christopher tucked against the tattoo, never seen in full. When the night begins, the muse’s t-shirt smells of clean laundry. My new muse

A little bird revisits

“The hummingbird stands for love” remains one of my favourite poems. In this Vermeer-style scene, I see a young woman at the window of a Dutch interior. She is bathed in light. In my version, she holds open a book or a letter, but gazes at the window. The opulent curtains and tasteful furnishings draw my eye.

Conscripted

Rain slaps against the windowpane. Wee! Wee! It jests and jeers. Look at our ease of water-dash and drip and fall while you – Haha! – neith’ eight nor sixteen lines have wrought on that page. It’s all for nought, despite your ink-filled fountain pen. Yes, I see the sky makes way its blue for