EVA

Cursed with delusions of such grandeur,
your life was a work of art
forged from the low self-esteem
that tortured the depths of your heart.

With such aplomb you wore your masks
that disguised the authentic you
for days and months and years even,
until you believed them true.

With past retold of a noble birth,
you rubbed shoulders with the elite
and even moved in circles Royal -
they all found you "oh so sweet."

Yet just below the surface bubbled
of discovery such a terror -
what if they should find you out
and realise their error?

So you pretended even harder and
still deeper buried the truth,
for the worst thing you could ever conceive
was to incur your idols' reproof.

But you looked and acted the part so well
that no one could ever guess
this beautiful and elegant socialite
was an orphan and penniless.

Still the pressure of keeping the lie alive
was building up deep inside
and daily threatening to erupt,
so at times you'd vanish and hide.

Then when you hit forty it all imploded
and you suffered a breakdown because
your past caught up with you and exposed
the Earl's daughter who never was.

HOME MOVIE

How love deceives!
The romance, that close bond
into which we entered

so eagerly, now dissolves in tears.
Passion has gone cold
and resentment enters our hearts.

The dream, in it's rosy detailed glory,
has faded into formless grey -
like a precious memory lost in time.

Then there is the loneliness - the mourning
for the still-living other. Oh how it hurts.
I have become invisible.

While new lovers celebrate the night
I walk in circles,
a ring of self-questioning: where did I go wrong?

Laughter cannot come here,
we have forgotten how to play.
In a home movie,

two strangers deceptively happy, in another life.
Time has stolen their identities.
What has unraveled us?

Venus and Mars? Maybe.
Too much scorched earth -
we were doomed from the start.

JANUARY AUBADE

Observe this expanse of glowering sky
in slate-toned pagodas to winter's freeze
where north winds bite both nose and eye
and the blood retreats from bitter breeze.

A robin sings out mournful madrigals
to awaken slumbering daffodil buds,
while naked boughs bow like praying Cardinals
reflected in the unseasonal floods.

Crowding around a hanging fat ball
chirping sparrows compete to eat,
as blackbirds wait for crumbs to fall
beneath a lichen-encrusted seat.

And as Nature's cycle begins again
euphoria transforms my world-weary brain...

THE ACTOR

I am an actor. Stage lights dazzle.
The director
barks out instructions, tearing

the expectant silence
into shreds of meaning.
Fellow actors await

their cue, their time to shine,
become leading stars.
Competition is intense.

Time-worn boards creak
underfoot, woodworm-honeycombed.
Even the scenery has faded

into yellow-brown forest.
And we characters, we characters -
God! We are even more wooden today.

Voices too flat,
ridiculous
parodies, like drunkards

trying hard to pretend they're sober.
My costume
doesn't fit, constantly slips

from my shoulders.
Oh my, how the dream has crumbled!
Oh Caesar, how you elude me!

Striving, even in sleep,
to become you.
But your mannerisms defeat me.

Frustration abounds.
The betrayal I suffer
is wholly subjective.

Ambition, ambition,
I have exhausted myself with trying,
with agonising -

never quite good enough.
Let Brutus
plunge his dagger deep.

Let my demise, at least,
ride on mercurial wings
into resounding applause.

I am the actor
the Bard's pen defines, owns.
I am the blank page...


Dedicated to my son, Ayrton.