Too Many Books

I have too many books
Read once and shelved
Or piled up by my bed
Arriving daily in the post
Unlikely to be read

Too many poems
Wait between the covers
For their exercise
Or stacked in Plato’s cave
Like unsettled similes

Too many facts and fictions
Characters adrift on sandbanks
Children starved of attention
An old man glimpsed upon the pier
And then - no further mention

I glance at the book review
As I'm jotting down these words
And a neglected poet catches my eye
It’s another book to join the queue
Another book I’ll have to buy

Examination Piece

First tell me what I, the poet, need to find
before I decide
which of the two roads I must take.

Blue in line four
seems an odd choice of adjective.
Do you agree?
Which colour would you choose?

Have you ever metaphorically
Found yourself
In a similar poem?

How does this poem handle simile and rhyme?
And finally

How do you think this poem
will add to your enjoyment of poetry
as you enter adulthood?
A lot.
Not a lot.
Not at all.

Thank you for your time.

Love Poems

The Sweetest Song

The sweetest song
I ever heard
Was written just for you
The clearest stream
The widest word
The closest true of true

Of all the things
That dance and sing
Expressed in we and two
Let’s leap and laugh
And scatter them
Into our blue of blue

The Scale of My Love

On a scale of one to nine
I love you twenty three
On a scale of grass to dandelion
I love you tree
On a scale of drip to puddle
I love you sea
My love for you is off the dial
You weigh the world to me

On a scale of nudge to bump
I love you ricochet
On a scale of sigh to smile
I love you hip hooray
On a scale of each second lived
I love you every day
On a scale of here to there
I love you all the way

Access All Areas

She had a tag
Around her neck
It said

Mad person
In love
May be found
Wandering
Apparently aimlessly
In restricted areas

Please
Make allowances

Making a Poem

If you say
something
and make it rhyme
that’s
not
necessarily
a poem,
okay?

But
a kiss
always
is