Sonnet Hack – Day Thirty

The Finish Line I’m not that rippling superman ahead, the one who bounds like some extinct gazelle that lorded over pre-historic fells, his names and works are lost and yet he leads: the one to whom we’re all in greatest debt, including Petrarch, spurred on by the call of Laura from the distant, eternal horizon [...]

Sonnet Hack – Day Twenty-nine

Pissing in the City at Night I do so knowing none shall make their bed in this grey corner of the square mile the rent-a-pigs won’t let the walking dead lay down amongst the suits and cramp their style nor will they try and halt me while mid-stream without my speckles splashing their toe-claps though [...]

Sonnet Hack – Day Twenty-eight

…but then again, who does? This moment can happen to anyone, when in the midst of the dull day-to-day, they spot upon the floor of their hallway the dull glint of the tin-foil unicorn. They clench it hard as slowly the truth dawns, they’ve been sleeping as days have slipped away, blinded by neon, hunched [...]

Sonnet Hack – Day Twenty-seven

The Poet Says Goodbye to his Old, Worn-out Winter Coat Thread-bare, moth ravaged, you’ve worn me well, five years of rain-trudge, pocket bulge, I clomped through London’s back alleys (not hills and dales) my early thirties skin, hefty and plump and more than a match for the winter winds, weighed down with paperbacks and Guinness [...]

Sonnet Hack – Day Twenty-six

The Poet Reflects on his Many Failures as a Musician I should have learned during that walk of shame on being dropped from the recorder class to never pipe Frère Jacques again nor torment hangovers at Sunday Mass. Guitar followed, those few three-fingered chords helped me play Cobain’s About a Girl, my young voice trembled [...]

Sonnet Hack – Day Twenty-five

To Commemorate the Twenty-fifth Anniversary of the 1985 Brixton Riot No moral pang can halt the bullet’s path once the cortex sends the message down the whole process is strictly aftermath before the trigger squeeze, the deed is done. You cannot stop the brick once it is thrown, physics overrules sudden remorse, the deal is [...]

Sonnet Hack – Day Twenty-four

Advice to Novice Poets Concerning Tough Crowds The crowd could be a clutch of art school bores, where coolness guilds their vapid, sterile minds— or pissed up pseudo punks with axes to grind the schmuck on stage is a target, nothing more. Or wine and cheese cabals at the Troubadour who’ll hum in recognition, if [...]

Sonnet Hack – Day Twenty-three

Meeting Jackie The guide urged me to touch the long, red fur despite the fact she could rip off my arm or drag me up the trees as her amour, seduced by my pungent, olfactory charms. Instead she struck me with her slight, sad glance, and shuffled off as we followed meekly, a slow lope, [...]

Sonnet Hack – Day Twenty-two

An Apology So here it is, my pinky on a plate cut right across the joint, a flash of pain, the swallowed scream escaped in beads of sweat and deepest red on purest porcelaine. I wonder where you keep all these stray digits like prompt replies from the complaints department stacked in the drawer of [...]

Sonnet Hack – Day Twenty-one

wordgames I heard it said by many freeverse kings that form’s more like a kind of crossword puzzle that plays around with pretty sounds and muzzles the true creative spark, reborn in ink from the unfettered hand, liberating the wild unconscious from the brain’s gristle, grasps the spikes of psyche’s blooming thistle: the freed verse [...]