Odds On Loser

To most people he was known as TFM, The Fruit Machine or Fruit, for a reason he did not find particularly amusing — he had one arm, he was a one-armed bandit. Ha ha. He lost the absent limb on a bank job when an automatic timer dropped a rather heavy vault door sooner than [...]

Pain

The pain of unreciprocated love
Is something that everyone knows once and
Fits this deep wounded soul just like a glove,
Holding the pierced heart in the bleeding hand.
In the end we all have to choose to die
Or find someone else we can crucify,
Forget your gender and render the sky
A new colour in your burgeoning eye –
You can [...]

Over The Disease

He swears to himself that he will
Not let the curse of a cancerous growth
Consume the power of a sacred oath:
Determination will defeat the hill,
Overcome the tumour that seeks to kill
Faculties, mental and physical, both,
His shortened span never allows for sloth
And he struggles on still though he is ill –
Certain others would throw him in [...]

14 Lines

Every single set of fourteen lines
In an eloquent form of verse enshrines
The message I’d wanted to put across:
That is why I truly love the sonnet –
I’d place the weight of my love upon it;
A structured form, the words, can truly emboss.
A successful sonnet defines
Its themes while following traditonal signs.
I write these lines for Shakespeare’s great [...]