Two Poems

First Sight

Hi there, Joolz, my name’s Joe Blossom.

No, it genuinely is.

Just to say your vlog is awesome,

Absolutely does the biz,

That’s not like because you’re pretty.

Pretty isn’t what I meant.

I live in a different city,

In a different continent.

Miles and miles and miles divide us.

You are there and I am here.

Yet I’m richer than King Midas,

Sharing in your vlogosphere.

Chances are we’ll never meet, or

If, an age away, we do,

Still I’ll not have found a sweeter,

Beautifuller girl than you.

So I’m going to watch you daily

(I don’t watch just any shit)

And I’ll play my ukulele.

This is me like playing it.

Joolz, I love you. There, I’ve said it,

Thought I wouldn’t. Anyhow,

Out of time and out of credit,

I’m Joe Blossom. Bye for now.

Shakespeare’s Monkeys

The monkeys who wrote Shakespeare took their time,

But they had time to take; they had no cause,

Being governed by Lord Chance’s iron laws,

To choose an epithet or find a rhyme.

The mathematics of infinitude,

Is not the arithmetic of poetry,

The asymmetric wordhoards of the free,

Whose rules of thumb are ragged, rough and rude,

Books in a room, books in another room,

Their crinkled pages stained, their covers torn,

Their flyleaves smelling sweet with unsuccess:

Small fishes swimming down a catacomb,

The stammerings of the dead and the unborn,

The leaves of grass, the fruits of loneliness.

                                               John Whitworth