Love Song for A Sailor

You brought me, sweet, so many things
Before you brought me pain-
A case of tea from Sicily,
A rose from southern Spain.

You left me, love, that morning
A compass I've now lost,
A salt-streaked eye, a stormy sky,
An anchor for my cross.

The Sentimentalist

Spent a life mid dusty tomes
And the ghosts of antiquity,
Sighed his private longing sighs
For Something that Ought to Be,
Built his cottage in the air
At the shore of that sunless sea.


We let that bug-eyed jimmy know
Poetry don't sell
-Unless it's that new modern jazz,
Coffeetable razzmatazz-
Give em that reality
Right between the eyes.
Hot as Starbucks, instant mix,
The naked truth'll do the trick,
Shock if you can't surprise.

Nothin personal sonny,
But our research people show
Yer pretty does not work this crowd
And the stocks for love are low.

(And listen kid, you
Rhyme too much
To be
Genuine,
Y'know?)


His humour was unfunny.
His grief a private thing.
Anger didn't yield clarity.
Hard hitting was not in him.

So he retired to a paling paradise,
A mediocrity of a kind.
His last regret-
That Romantic death
Was now so hard to find.