My love was so elliptical it passed
Before the first one realised and grasped
But now I prefer the straight lines to connect
Or perhaps an obtuse angle I’ll bisect

In truth, I  married mental furniture
His mind was  parabolic in its shape
And filled it was by  study and nature
Yet spacious in its arts to let  me hope

He did not know of numbers  past belief
I enlightened him, yet he was filled with grief.
For as the caterpillar eats the very leaf
Learners  are depraved  like common thieves

I made an error beating him at chess
And when he died,  he left me no address.

Looking at the garden as a world
The overgrown becomes a rich terrain
Where myriad living forms seem uncontrolled
But  make a balanced whole in shades of green

What I hear are calls from nesting birds
The sway of  breeze among forsythia’s gold
The patterned  snails, the slugs cannot be heard
Nor can the slow worm’s wiser words be told

The  pattern is a natural life, a wood
Where Cambridge monks had ponds  and trees
Ten Cedars tall were chopped till dead
But still remain their long striped bees

Small in your eyes, infinite in mine
Such marvelled worlds can’t be designed

Cain and Abel fought the bitter fight
Like baby eagles,sharks and all that bites
For parents stand aloof as if amused
By sibling killing sibling for their food

This may be  the crime original
So common it may seem to be banal
Inside the heart of love lurk greed and hate
Genetics brings destruction as a fate

So hatred precedes love, if any grows
As dead egrets have not a claw to show.
Families have  their scapegoats all will harm
No-one seems to notice wild alarm

So Cain was not unusual nor mad
Indeed he was a hero to his dad.

His act perfected,speeches memorised
He looked upon her visage and made eyes
Why do you stare at me, she questioned him
Do you wish to take me to the gym?

I never knew we could in such gyms play
Exercise makes people feel so gay
Are you gender fluid,she replied
No,I’m not,in truth I’ve never lied

I only want to flirt and dance and sing
On hearing this a wasp gave him a sting
Oh, he cried,I feel my end is nigh
I fear I’ll be cremated  if I die.

Like a fool, he malice felt all night
By  morning he was dead from  his own spite

My friend misread my posts between the lines
So he accused me of a dreadful crime
He said he was from the top echelon
As  far as I could see, he was far gone

He told me off for  moaning at his words
In which just four rude letters  did appear
It seemed I must be chaste  enough for two
While  he would carry on as such men do

My face must always smile and never frown
I must  obtain some silken dressing gowns
I  should  take rather risque photographs
On hearing this, my  tortoiseshell  cat laughed

It seems I did not fit inside his frame
He cut my head off, then to love he came

When we’re born, it’s then we see the Light
After travelling squashed and so malformed
Through a tunnel like those fairground frights
With no-one else to keep us well informed
No bus stop,no rail station,no train track
There’s only one direction, which is out
The walls themselves gyrate behind our back
Some are struck   and stuck by  fearsome doubt
The head is squeezed, the brain protests with fear
The body’s like a fish stuck in a spout
Here there are no fall back engineers
No drain inspector, plumber to call  out.
Yet by  luck or fortune most emerge
To light a-dazzle and  to love  amazed

Original sin is making sense to me
As I watch the  News on my TV.
Of course,it’s not original at all
The sins are repetitious,boring foul.

I decided  that this sin’s society’s
Am I  born so evil,is this me?
No,I grew up seeing evil done
By  those with power to own the biggest bomb

Love and power are  intimately  confused
By those who wish to  take you in, to bruise
Those who love, each hope to  let you  be.
They will not impinge on our security

Is the original sin that we exist?
Or that when we’re born,we’re seldom kissed?

The  new Messiah will  fly  on a  great horse
A  burning stallion with perfect grace
As he crosses Europe he perceives
The scattered remnants of his fellow Jews

The Jews  who buried live  made Poland  heave
The ashes of the  ones cremated  grieve.
On he rides but where is he to go?
We do not see him coming  from afar

Does he come to give acclaim  to us
The Christians  who made the Jews accursed?
Or does he ride to tell us not to wait
There is no Kingdom for old Europe’s  State.

We deny that we’re complicit and what’s worse
Any nation state’s  as bad as us.

I dreamed that my blood test results had come
On paper like the Weetabix comes in
I can’t recall if they were good or bad
Or whether I just threw them in the bin

I found a pair of trousers, they’re not mine
To which these test results were pinned.
So it dawned on me an error had been made
As for those trousers, I was much too thin.

Someone else has got results not theirs
I have theirs and hope that they have mine.
But why are they fixed to my fresh laundry
And how can I discover them or find?

I don’t know what this dream may symbolise
It made me oversleep with shuttered eyes

Because the rate of change has been so fast
The newspaper are full of new advice
Older people living in the past
Were frequently admired for being wise.

But now I hear folk say, I’ll ask my child
As if they are afraid to take a look
As if a laptop is an untamed beast
They cannot hope to  understand the books.

So stress increases as we age and shrink
When we would love some  praise for labour done
The papers tell us what to eat and drink
And how to exercise  yet have some fun

For humour is an antidote to fear;
Laugh at all those ghosts who   gloat and leer

I edited  my sonnet sixty times
It didn’t seem so many to my mind
Although my ears were ringing with its rhymes
To criticise myself seems quite unkind

What seemed to be a metre was none such
I could not sing it like Gray’s Elegy
My language late at night seems Double Dutch
But writing will, like loving,  pleasure me.

If only we could edit when we speak
Instead of blurting out “the honest truth”
To stop our malice making others bleak
Or injuring their hearts with words uncouth.

When we reflect, we learn  to see our speech
As something not entirely out of reach.