Two stanzas from Kept Man, the opening poem in my new collection.




2 in the wee smalls, wearily tweaking
Lines as shlothy as milky pobbies –
Calibrating those rhyming jobbies
Till they rhyme unplodding,
As brisk as Wee Willie Winkie's nodding
Pompom!
Who is it loves the man whose nom
de plume is Rogan Whitenails?
She is as kind as the keep he fails
To contribute towards is pressing.
She sleeps upstairs, for sleep's her blessing,
A place where no rhyme goes.
The rhyme-widow, denied a widow’s
Pension, sleeps upstairs,
As still as the profitless wares
Of poesy are abounding,
As wan as Rogan's resounding
Rhymes are pyrotechnical,
As true and non-ironical
As Rogan's devices are knowing.

* * * *

Ask me "How is it going?",
And I will tell you straight:
If the Rogan Whitenails Estate,
A century after I die,
Can support my smug descendants, why
Can I not do the same,
Right now, for my baby daughter, whose claim
Must surely be more compelling?
And who, from the selling
Of my fusty rhyming wares,
Will benefit - perhaps the heirs
Of my children's children's children!?