Poetry

• Not a red rose or a satin heart.

  I give you an onion.It is a moon wrapped in brown paper.It promises lightlike the careful undressing of love.

  Here.It will blind you with tearslike a lover.It will make your reflectiona wobbling photo of grief.

  I am trying to be truthful.

  Not a cute card or a kissogram.

  I give you an onion.Its fierce kiss will stay on your lips,possessive and faithfulas we are,for as long as we are.

  Take it.Its platinum loops shrink to a wedding ring,if you like.Lethal.Its scent will cling to your fingers,cling to your knife.
• I met a traveller from an antique land: 'Two vast and trunkless legs of stoneStand in the desert. . . . Near them, on the sandHalf sunk a shattered visage lies, whose frownAnd wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold commandTell that its sculptor well those passions readWhich yet survive, stamped on these lifeless thingsThe hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed;And on the pedestal, these words appear:My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings;Look on my Works, ye Mighty, and despair!Nothing beside remains. Round the decayOf that colossal Wreck, boundless and bareThe lone and level sands stretch far away.'