The psychedelic décor and Sergeant Pepper
wore the same uniformly gaudy tones.
Burgundy striped stockings hung on a lava lamp,
puff the magic dragon dwelt in our rented rainbow.
A poster of Leonard Cohen as a young man.
Shag carpet for cozy shagging.
A Paddington apartment above a smoky railway.
A girl drinking Liebfraumilch
waiting for me to come home
with a used album of Rubber Sole
We had vinyl prayer-wheels.
Beetles played in every hallway –
literally.
Figuratively,
we had red and yellow music, bottles of Blue Nun,
oodles of fun
for the horny young.
Best case scenario -
my fame walking on two legs
wearing a golden helmet
(I made a bowl which I hammered
out of a lump of copper in workshop-class
aged 14, not good,
but all is golden now, for he who comes after me
has written an autobiography
that has left-out most of my failed handiworks).
He speaks from the empty shell
of a hermit crab. Distant stars love him.
He continues restoring my poems
long after they have crashed
into brick walls.
Or, he may come as the woman,
the one I have been seeking
in that frosted window of a past life,
She who I can only recall
when drunk on Blue Nun wine,
a Liebfraumilch that knits
all star-crossed lovers together
as they write themselves
quietly out of history.
In that almost land
my beloved unveils herself,
waits for my mind to open
like a blushing coral
sea anemone.
On the other hand,
he who comes after me
that man who watched my life
as if my body were at the bottom of a cliff,
he who also goads me to tinker with words,
converting them into land-mines
that sometimes maim.
If he shows up after my life
then I am going to haunt him
because he deserves to be scared
of a guy like me.
The dilapidated décor,
and Sergeant Pepper
wore the same tones.
Burgundy stocking
hung on a lava lamp,
A poster of Leonard Cohen
as a young man.
Paddington apartments
travel by train unhurried by time.
A girl drinking Liebfraumilch
waiting for me to come home
with a used album of Rubber Sole
We had vinyl prayer-wheels,
a laminated love affair.
We had red and yellow music;
bottles of Blue Nun wine.
Looking for the formal definition, structure, and history of this poetry form? Visit the Poetry Dictionary entry below. Then return to explore how PoetrySoup members bring the form to life through their own poems.