Love Sonnet (classic)

Adequate Words

Stolen words from cold dead lips

of poets from ages gone past –

when love was a bloom budding for the nip

and young starry-eyed lovers held ever fast;

courtly knights in evergreen meadows,

fair alabaster damsels with burning

love in their breast, penned to a fellow

in parchment sealed with wax. Yearning

for true love, eternal, dying. And soft!

The fair Hero hardly need speak

to gentle Claudio whilst he is sighing

over her beauty, so gentle and meek.

And now, our parents love has failed us -

this world leaves no room so swoon.

What words are left to assail us

and sow true love to bloom?

Jungle of Other

The Jungle of Other

I am the white minority

Envious eyes have me espied,

falsely believing my presumed power

in this jungle of other

I am excluded from the whole

Blind bright-white disjunction

forcing the foil in fatigued faces

in this jungle of other

I am my own worst enemy

Quietly, could I conform

and ready for racial ridicule

in this jungle of other

I am the irrationally feared

Subtly stripped of superficial stature

weak, alone, watched and weary

in this jungle of other