John Irvine, NZ

 

 

Two Elizabethan Sonnets   My Poetic Hat   The Muse who once oiled my poetic way and with her seditious match lit my fuse, who graced my couch, and pressed beside me lay licking my mind with words of florid hues, has with one flick of her Medusa hair cast to perdition my most urgent needs. I grope for her flesh but find chill despair and shrug, smiling, while my jilted heart bleeds. No phrases sage and clever come to mind, nor philosophies to impress my peers, no triptych or villanelle do I find and I weep dry and bitter hopeless tears. Without my Muse, my poetic bonnet, all I can do is write a damned sonnet.     Rough Trade   Roses, well pruned, in serried ranks look well, and with restrained pansies genteelly hued stand pallid guard in rows all parallel. Beauty with careful regimen imbued. The humble buttercup, glimmering gold like elven beacons, dots the field aflame with wild glory as each new day unfolds. Will you regard this rampant bloom the same, although common by heritage and birth, unsung by poets Tennyson and Blake? Raw jewels strewn across the verdant earth, each a riotous hand for you to take. Do you to a well-groomed, sleek love aspire or mine: a sprawling, unrefined barbed wire?     Read Additional Poems by John Irvine   Haiga—song lyrics stuck; Haiga—rider looses race Ekphrastic Free Verse Haiga: Little Bo Peep Book Fair: Rat atouille for the rindless     About John Irvine, NZ   John Irvine was born in Lower Hutt, New Zealand in 1940. John and his writer/poet wife live in Colville on New Zealand’s picturesque Coromandel Peninsula, surrounded by hills and ocean. Here he occasionally lets his dark side out to play. He is the online administrator for a Canadian-based international teen writer’s forum. He has his own web site: www.cooldragon.co.nz John’s first collection of poetry, Man of Stone, was released recently to enthusiastic reviews in New Zealand during 2005 by Zenith Publishing Group, and is available internationally from the publisher’s website www.zenithpublishing.co.nz.  His second volume of illustrated poetry, Rat atouille for the rindless (illustrated by Dave Freeman) was published in 2007 by Preshrunk Press. John is editor and contributor for the recently launched illustrated collection of speculative poetry, Anomalous Appetites, which can be seen and purschased by visiting his website. This is John Irvine's first appearance in Sketchbook.