Long Matchstick Poems

I’ve been cutting Peter’s hair for a year. When covid lockdown occurred, I learned to cut my brother’s hair - and yes, he still has two ears. When I first met Peter, he had a...

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  On white lines on valiant wheels
I head north leaving behind the City of Sails
       with its humourless streets,
    its casino steel and glass Sky...

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I can feel my 40 year old mind awake from slumber;
But these brown eyes stare back at me with a defiance 
That I know to have belonged to  a 14 year old me.
Consider this...

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Dear ......,

Its over, it's finished, I mean it - we're through!
I thought it was me but now know it was you.
I'm done with your lies, your greed, my fixation
insatiable urge that precedes degradation.

It's cost me...

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I

I am disinfected, sanitised from touch and eyes
Do not hold me. I am Bakelite and you smolder
Sat solid, the wall cold against my spine. A back-rest 
To concrete electrocution. 
I am distilled from Suburbia and...

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Pale white against the ghostly fog
Smoke curled for lack of oxygen
Black rim glasses hide, head bows
Conceal eyes of cool cat daddy-o

In dark, goatee, groomed and moody
Beret tilted silhouetted, covers identity
Captures blues wrapped in a sax
Brown...

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Mwizi! Mwizi! Mwizi!
Shika uyooooo
2am habitual
I toss my sheets stand by the window
They all speak at once
''Achomweee....''
I wear my walkies and switch my lights

I scrunch my nose
Freezing outside
Ni nani?
My anxiety grows
I join the mob
Fury is forehead...

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An alienation of Revelations

The rudimentary elements, all collapsed broke free
The whole ordeal made no sense at all
Eclipses and darkened wars of solitude made the eve
It was difficult to comprehend and to accept.
The deluge of torrid...

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Memories, someone asked?
Here’s one. Let me pull it out from the past,
Let me set it next to the grandfather clock in the parlor,
That used to count out time in chimes by the hour.
Mother is sitting...

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A scientist went a tripping and a floundering
in Einsteins conceptual sea
and all the arguments were left
to be considered in probable uncertainty
theirs to encounter
the parched throat of commonsense
sucked down by gravity
there were no spirits
the was no...

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I stand neck-high tall
within the quicksand
of my infirmities.
Green and gaunt,
I hesitantly genuflect.

Ravaged tendons and corpuscles
are barely breathing
within the vacant corridors
of a soiled carcass.

My ardor for vindication
has been abandoned.
I presently refrain from accepting
the consultation of 
umbrous...

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THE EAGLE

From sheer Jurassic precipice he soared
Surveyed the land for gifts it might afford

Across the broad flat valley’s rich domain
With viewpoint high, low altitude disdain

In languid circling track approaching nigh
The eagle now came level eye...

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Matchstick Bikes 

To tinkers and toilers 
     I salute, 
From mending boilers 
     to weaving jute, 
Man and boy 
     for generations, 
I...

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An Overview

When Villonia Beebe was a baby of three
She got it in her head to trim the Christmas tree.
She lit all the pretty candles,
Tossed the matchstick away,
Sister, brother, dad, and mother
Never saw Christmas Day.

Nine years...

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Sometimes people ask me... What's in your purse...
So I tell them the best that I can...
Lipstick, chapstick, matchstick
What’s in your purse?
Billfold, change purse, money counter, and clip?
Aspirin, Tylenol, Tums, coupons and stamps…
Tissue, pressure bandage, Mom...

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For years I have been waiting,
Waiting for someone to bring me love,
Someone who will be just enough
Someone who will always care,
Someone who will always be there.
Someone who will stand by me,
Someone who is perfect for...

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Before the metabolism slows and
With the decline in food and water and
Before the dehydration and lack of energy, before I lose my appetite,
I'm on a quest to find what life is before my soul escapes...

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I am a master of the Arts University of Only One.
If you having problems my words can solve them.
My voice can direct others, better yet they call me a prima donna.
My words turn into a...

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Hand surgeon, aptly named Charlie 
Had a habit most folk view bizarrely
Each day before patients lay on his table
He sniffed a line or two which made him able
To slice and dice, hyped up head felt...

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Glory goes to they who blaze
Their own trail upon the west.
They will be, if nothing else, remembered.
Their morality ambiguous
Scruples questionable.
At best, an antihero to be scoffed at and spit upon.
In fear of the fiends in...

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Obdurate goat tangles rough knotted rope
Stuck beside shadowy friend, Silky Oak
Hedonistic prisoner capricorn, cheap trope
Ethics remain riddle, morals mere joke


Towered timber utters truth in its creak
Canopy clapping hands crush recollection 
Billion fingered Silky Oak, silver...

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A Tribute To A Major Appliance

Long live my awesome stove!
A gift from His mother, and 
Intentions not as dark as hell.
Cooking and burning, as you see,
Will go hand in hand, 
Till my very last breath.
Inseparable...

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We are all born with a match box inside our body
We need oxygen and a candle to light it to accomplice
The oxygen has to come from a lover’s breathe.
Candle can be anything- a melody, a...

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Matchstick Girl.

Matchstick Girl in ragged clothes,
lace up shoes and purple toes.
'Come buy your matchsticks from me sir,
your wife all fancy in her fur'.
Every night on London's streets
there were matchstick girls
with clip clop feet.
Men with sticks...

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First you sit him down to dinner 
And you fill him full of sin, 
Then you nail him to the highway, sayin’, 
“Ya’ll come back again.”
If he bleeds, you cry, “Oh, mercy!” 
If he thirsts,...

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